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Delaware, United States
Deborah Hawkins, penned Debra Renée Byrd, began writing after a blank book project in elementary school and never stopped, fashioning stories based on her favorite TV shows and movies before creating more original works. She studied at the University of the Arts and Florida State University before settling down and graduating from Temple University. She now resides in her hometown of Dover, DE, where she spends most of her time at work or at church. She loves fantasies, superheroes, is a trekkie and a brown coat. She loves television and lives for Final Fantasy video games, having collected most of them. She has read a myriad of authors, and her favorite authors change whenever she finds a new book that changes her life... "When you can't run, you crawl. When you can't crawl...well, you know the rest." -Tracey, Firefly, "The Message"

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Friday, August 21, 2015

Pitch Wars Mentee Bio + Friday Hops

This is a special edition of Friday and unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess), not the last you'll be hearing about Pitch Wars from me.

First off, hello! Many (let's be real) Some of you may be here because I tweeted something on the lines of #PitchWars #menteebio and put a link there which led you here. If so, Hello again!

I'm Deborah, Deb for short, Debra Renée for longhand authorship, Write Mage for Magic Tavern and blogger purposes. I started writing as a child in a classroom where they handed us a blank book and said, "Go!", but really, I fell in love with writing because of a little animated series called X-Men, and I've been battling my inner screenwriter ever since.

A little about me: I'm the middle child of three girls, left-handed, born under the sign of Cancer, so I live a complicated and imaginative life. I love music and have nearly perfect pitch. I pretend to play piano, but I'm not all that great. I apparently sit on the cusp of the Type B and C personalities and am known to my friends as having no filter. I'm either very chill or ready to kill. (Sounds like a movie hook.)

So what do you write, No Chill Deb? Well, I have a huge love for YA contemporary stories. They held the trophy for me for several years of my adolescent writing journeys, and I still dabble with them. At the moment, though, I am trying to push a YA Fantasy novel that came to me in a dream and was inspired by my favorite gaming franchise Final Fantasy (when I woke up). I started writing it just before college, so it took about 6 years to write the first draft and another 5 or 6 when I learned all that there was about what happened after you feel your novel is ready. There may be more Fantasy works to come for me, but only time will tell. I have a short speculative story published by Cactus Heart Press under my old pen name Debra McKellan, the biggest thing to happen for me this year, and the link to the e-zine is up above this blog somewhere, where all the tabs are (there's also a sample of my short). To have been recommended to submit was such an honor, and I was even more elated to be picked!

I'm not sure what else to say here...So if you want to stick around for Express Yourself and Fast Five Friday, you can! ;D Every week, two ladies you may or may not know (Dani and Jackie, the Cover Girls) created these hops to get know those of us who follow them, and that they're able to come up with so many questions is magical.



This week for Express Yourself, they asked us what TV or book characters do we relate to?

I'm going to go with TV on this one, and I chose Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls. When the show came out, I believe Rory and I were both sophomores. She was a quiet bookworm with a dream of journalism; I was a quiet bookworm with a dream of being an author. We both have very animated mothers and estranged grandparents (though I think my grandmother is NOTHING compared to Emily). We both had a bit of a bad boy phase, with virtually the same scenario playing out (except Jess got his life together, and I still wish he and Rory will be together in the non-existent GG future). We both took a break, though I took one after high school, and Rory took one during college, dated a douchebag boyfriend, and then graduated successfully. What a ride!



Now, Fast Five Friday (which I always almost spell Fast Frive) is a little quicker (obvs), and the ladies asked us to name our Top 5 Apps. Here are mine in alphabetical order, so I don't lose my mind.

GroupMe
Instagram
Pinterest
Shattered Pixel Dungeon
Twitter

Thank you so much for stopping by! Have a great weekend.

2 comments:

Heather R. Holden said...

How cool that you can relate to a character so well! As for apps, Twitter is one of my favorites, too. (Can you believe I haven't gotten sucked into Pinterest or Instagram yet? LOL. It's probably only a matter of time before I am, though...)

Debra Renée Byrd said...

hehe Pinterest will suck you IN. I have a whole board dedicated to baby animals. lol