Hi everyone,

I'm not very good at this, but I'll give it a try. I am currently a 18 year old living in Holland, Michigan.

I love to read, but I'm still pretty new to writing. My favorite kinds of stories are Fantasy, SciFi, and anything with a good twist. I'm working on my first novel, based off of some ideas i've been working on for a while, and it would be great to receive feedback or advice from anyone more experienced than me (that's mostly everyone here).

I've been absent for a while now because the computer I was complaining about crashing all  the time finally died. It had to be replaced, along with all files on the hardware, so it took several months. Life lesson for me, I guess. I'm gonna backup all files from now on...

So, I'm back , and back to work on writing. Between a heavy load of school work and limited computer access, it's going slow, but I'm making progess. Lately I've been working on a few short stories, but I'm still making Guardian of Flame. I plan to see it through to completion.

On another note, a friend of mine introduced me to this great site, www.tvtropes.org (thanks a lot, as if my attention span problems aren't bad enough already). It's structured a lot like Wikipedia, with articles describing  commonly used themes in fiction, or tropes (with examples from movies, books, video games, and tv shows from both the east and west). Tropes include not only every cliche you've ever heard of, but many other ideas that see common use. This site has actually given me so much random inspiration, and I plan on both using and lampshading a few tropes mentioned there. I recommend this site to anyone who needs ideas, as long as you have a few hours free, of course. Try not to fall victim to what the site calls Wiki Walk. Where you stop, no one knows...