Sally Caves is new and relatively unknown. She's been publishing fiction slowly since 1990 and writing it far longer than that. At age three, she drew her stories--and her mother, appointed as scribe, took dictation. Since her mother has called it quits in this capacity, Sally's had to turn to the presses. As a "young adult," she made up languages and people to speak them, and she guesses it landed her where she is today.
Okay: enough of the third person. (Although I did write a story called "In the Second Person"--see above, and my first two published stories were in the first person.) Where it landed me today is in a university teaching medieval English and Celtic languages and literature, cultural studies, and film, fantasy and science fiction. I publish scholarly essays on a similar range of topic--all under my "given" name.
I'm often asked if my background as a medievalist affects what I write creatively. If by that they mean do I write stories set in the middle ages, featuring Old English heroes and medieval Welsh bards, I'd have to say no. That's my professional area. For fiction, I'm enthralled with the now and the high tech. I have, however, illustrated a number of books on Old English, under my "given" name, of which the pic below (several hits down) is an example. Mostly I write contemporary fantasy, magic realism, creative non-fiction. I write about animals. Women's issues. Mothers and daughters. Kittens who become girls. Robots who don't become human. "Steam Punks." Lunatics. Literary Agents. Dolls. I slip between categories. I'm trying right now to peddle some mainstream.
My very first sale was to the Star Trek industry, where I'm the creator of Reginald Barclay III, shy space guy, musketeer, neurotic, and holodeck addict ("holoddiction"--that's my term. So is the "Goddess of Empathy"). Barclay has since appeared four other times on TNG and DS9, and made a cameo appearance in First Contact, the second Next Generation Motion Picture. I alone have the original (much more hilarious) rejected first version for "Hollow Pursuits," and not only has Barclay made it into the action figure set, but I was delighted to discover that he has inspired a couple of "shrines" on the net. See
and especially
(for the shrine!). This IS the "brag page," remember. To continue in that vein: I also co-authored the idea behind "Babel," the Deep Space Nine Episode where all the characters are prevented from speaking coherently (a real concern of mine). These were by far my most lucrative sales, but I really prefer the autonomy of print fiction (Reginald Barclay was originally MUCH more malicious before the committee got to him, but I have to admit: I was impressed with Dwight Schultz).
I've finished a novel (a dark, comic, contemporary fantasy about my obsession with miniatures) that I'm in the process of finding a publisher for, and I've started another novel about an invented language (you write what you know). Meanwhile I'm doing research on learned men and their androids, and on imaginary languages. I'm an artist by avocation, a calligrapher, an illustrator, an historical linguist, a burgeoning ballroom dancer, and a mediocre but enthusiastic ice-skater. I live in Upstate New York with my musical husband and our polydactyl cat (inspiration for "Mia" in "Ketamine"), a rendition of which I've provided for you at the click of a finger.