oBlIgatOry

My Biography page. Just like an autobiography, but without the car.

Well, I've been threatened by the Internet Police. If I don't include a biography with my site, it's 300 lashes with a wet noodle.

There will be holes in this. Some will be there because there are just some things I don't want you to know about me, starting with my name. Put it this way. There are enough elements of myself on this site and in my writing, that if you aren't 100% sure you know who I am by now, then you don't know me. You're more likely to spot me on the street from my pictures, so study them if you feel like stalking me.

If there is some burning question that I don't answer here, mail it in to pfantazm (a gmail � com and I'll put the answer up in my iFAQ if I'm willing to answer the question publicly. That will be almost anything except detailed information about me (such as name, financial information, address, or anything I'd need to go to the doctor to find out), anyone I've ever slept with, or anything incriminating, which I'll just deny anyway, so why ask?

Name? You're not a very good listener, are you?
Age? Thirty-three. I was born on November 30, 1973, just in case I don't update this like I should.
Astrological sign? We Sagittarians don't believe in that garbage.
Location? Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (Burnaby, really.)
How long have you been there? Since May of 1998.
How do you like it? I really love it here. I've been fighting to stay. It's expensive on this side of the continent. I think I'm pretty much entrenched by now, though.
So where are you from? Toronto area. It's too cold and there's snow.
I love what you write. You single? I am single, and planning to stay that way for a while. I realized that I'd spent all my time out of the closet either in a relationship or looking for one, and now I'm just exploring.
Are you dead yet? Since I'd have to go to the doctor to learn how to take my pulse, I refuse to answer that question.
Are you male or female? Since anyone with enough strength in their arms can turn me over, I can tell you that I'm predictably male. Born and raised, and no thoughts of changing it.
What is your sexual orientation? Most people would say gay. I've never been physically attracted to a woman. I have been attracted to men, but very rarely at a purely physical level. There always has to be the mental connection for me. On the other hand, I have been attracted to some women's personalities, though I've still never wanted to sleep with one. So whatever you call that.
How long have you known or suspected you were gay? I first got the inkling in spring of '97. (I never write these dates down.) I had just got the family computer into my room a couple of months ago and I was giving in to the temptation to look at porn on the 'net. Since the froggin' thing crashed whenever it tried to download large jpegs or gifs, I stuck to text files. I started with the straight sites, and quickly found that I liked those stories that featured the men most prevalently. In my wanderings, I found a few bisexual sites, some of the contents of which I liked better, and that path led me to the Nifty Archives.
After finding that great place to be, I pretty much had to face up to the fact that I was gay. I haven't looked back ever since. Accepting it was pretty easy for me.

When did you start writing? Not sure. Quite some time before I started posting stories to Nifty, I know. Before I moved out west. Probably the fall of '97.
What made you start writing? Well, it was a reaction to a story I read on the Archive. It was about two knights who meet in a tavern. They both have the title "Dragonhunter", which is a rare coincidence. Each one convinces the other that they have searched their half of the known lands thoroughly, one to the north and the other the south, and are quite sure that there are no dragons left to be slain.
Now, the twist is that both of these characters are actually dragons cloaked in human form. So they both believe that the other is responsible for the obliteration of his race, and that he is the last of his kind. Each of them is filled with a seething hatred for the other. (It doesn't stop them from going upstairs and bumping uglies later, but does it ever?)
At the end of the tale, the two leave the tavern, and, after a safe distance, cast off their human disguises to live in their halves of the kingdom in safety, but alone. It's an excellent story.
I read that and thought, wow. That's really depressing. They were on the same side and they couldn't be together in the end. And then I thought that it might be a good idea to have two people traditionally on opposite sides and... well, you can guess what happened.
Shortly after I started publishing The Knight and the Thief, there were a few other fantasy series that cropped up. I don't know if it was the domino effect at work there, but I know at least one of those authors wrote me after reading one of my stories. I was reading his new series as well and complimented him back.

So who do you read on the Archive? To start with, I stay away from the Young Friends, Adult-Youth, and High School directories. If you write these stories, sorry, but gettin' it on with little boys doesn't interest me. Ditto for incest; you haven't met my family....
Encounters is read sparingly. Too many of these stories fall into the category that one reader summed up better than I could ever hope to: "I met this cute guy in the supermarket and plowed him bowlegged. The End." Sure it's missing the description of the players and the bit where they leave the supermarket... if they leave the supermarket, but that's basically it.
Even when I'm just reading, I need that mental connection. Male bodies fucking probably won't get my juices flowing, but people having sex might.
That being said, usually the longer stories with plot in them are my favorites. I don't want to offend a forgotten writer by leaving him out, or have to keep updating the list with what I've enjoyed lately, so I'll stop there. There seems to have been a decline in the quality there, so I don't even read much anymore.

Which writers inspire you, then? I have a few mainstream authors whose work I love, but I wish I could be as clever and funny as Terry Pratchett, and as together and common-sensical as Spider Robinson.
Where did the name "Pfantazm" come from? And why is it spelled so strange? When I started writing, I realized that I would need a pseudonym, since I was extremely closeted, and I wasn't about to use my own name. I've used other pen names for other things, mainly places where they're the norm and not the exception, so one more couldn't hurt, and certainly wouldn't put ny strain on my sense of identity.
I made myself into a phantasm, the little man who wasn't there. I spelled it like that so that I could be fairly sure that wherever I went online, I wouldn't end up with a nom like phantasm617. The numbers looked untidy. Now it's more a matter of tradition. There are even some folks out there who know my real first name.

How do you write a story? First I need an idea. (Don't ask me where my ideas come from. If I knew that, I could make them stop.) Once I get the plot right in my head, I start writing. I don't usually set the storyline out on paper; what's in my head is a good enough road map for me. I will admit, though, that I occasionally end up on an unexpected detour.
When I write creatively, it's always with pen and paper. (So if you ever see a young man scribbling furiously on a clipboard in Vancouver, you never know....) It's a pain to transcribe later, and it adds time to the process, but it means I can edit for content. If there's anything I wanted to include but missed, anything that doesn't make sense, I can fix them now.
Then I run the plain text file through my word processor's spell-checker and grammar-checker. I note the changes I want to make and edit the text. I know spelling and grammar quite well, so I can edit myself for those, and not everything the program complains about do I agree with. It often complains when I start too many sentences that are close to each other with the same word. What the hell is that? I keep using it though, because their are sum errors the spell-checker mite miss.

Which religion do you ascribe to: Mac or PC? PC, though i now also own a Mac. Which breaks down more often than my PC does. Go fig.
Same question: Coke or Pepsi? Do you care? I don't.
Now really, what religion are you? I was raised Catholic, but I'm not anymore. I have my own belief system, and it's not for everyone. How many of you could make it through your day if you really believed that whatever Creator or Creators there may be out there have stopped paying attention to us in any meaningful way (from our point of view)? How many of you with your hands up can be happy about it because you think that's a good thing?
I have taken from organized religion for my own beliefs, though.
Back to Spider Robinson for a second. In Callahan's Lady there's a story about a woman who managed to gain control over all the main characters and everyone around her. The more politely she would ask you to do something, the faster you'd jump. I'll skip the details, but Lady Sally eventually got the device the woman was using and won the day. However, everyone was still under the control of that device and whoever was holding it.
She set everyone free with a sentence that went like this: "Feel free to do anything you damn well please for the rest of your life, so long as it doesn't harm anyone unnecessarily." Upon reading that sentence, I kept it for myself, as surely as if Lady Sally had been in my room with the controller.
Some of you may recognize it as the Wiccan Rede: "An thou harm no one, do what thou wilt." (Robinson added the "unnecessarily" bit.) If there was an organized religion I'd follow, Wicca would be it. I just can't see myself casting a circle, though. I write medieval fantasy; I don't want to live it. On this score, though, I think they have the right idea.
(One reader replied to this, saying that Wiccans don't believe that they're living in an SF-fantasy world themselves. I understand that, and didn't mean to offend. While I agree with the philosophy, I'm really a scientist at heart. For me, the two aren't compatible.)

More controversy! What are your political views? I don't follow politics.
What do you do for a living? I'm a teacher at an ESL school downtown.
What's your dream job? Writing? Actually no. I'd be a video game designer, or just an ordianry game designer. Or a full-time puzzle writer. Or something.
Are you going to try to get this stuff published in a book? Probably not, at least not the stories that are here now. If a publisher ever does look at them seriously, and buys them, I'd have to pull them down off the site and off Nifty. Then the publisher would tell me what to do with the characters. I don't know if I could handle that. If I ever try to be a professional (read: paid) author, it'll be with original fiction written specifically for that purpose.
I have found a site that would allow me to publish what I have here on the cheap, though, so keep watching this space.

What are you going to do next? I'm really not sure.
I got told recently by someone trustworthy that my stuff was publishable. Almost the worst thing he could have said. None of it can be published because it's all available for free on-line. Still trying to figure out where to go from here.

Say, didn't the graphics in some of the sections change since the last time I was here? Why, yes, they did. I've been codifying fonts I've designed and replacing all the headers and such. Now all of the fonts are of my own creation, and you can find them for download at Objets Dart.

back pics log sign links

Name?	You're not a very good listener, are you?
Age?	Thirty-three. I was born on November 30, 1973, just in case I don't update this like I should.
Astrological sign?	We Sagittarians don't believe in that garbage.
Location?	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (Burnaby, really.)
How long have you been there?	Since May of 1998.
How do you like it?	I really love it here. I've been fighting to stay. It's expensive on this side of the continent. I think I'm pretty much entrenched by now, though.
So where are you from?	Toronto area. It's too cold and there's snow.
I love what you write. You single?	I am single, and planning to stay that way for a while. I realized that I'd spent all my time out of the closet either in a relationship or looking for one, and now I'm just exploring.
Are you dead yet?	Since I'd have to go to the doctor to learn how to take my pulse, I refuse to answer that question.
Are you male or female?	Since anyone with enough strength in their arms can turn me over, I can tell you that I'm predictably male. Born and raised, and no thoughts of changing it.
What is your sexual orientation?	Most people would say gay. I've never been physically attracted to a woman. I have been attracted to men, but very rarely at a purely physical level. There always has to be the mental connection for me. On the other hand, I have been attracted to some women's personalities, though I've still never wanted to sleep with one. So whatever you call that.
How long have you known or suspected you were gay?	I first got the inkling in spring of '97. (I never write these dates down.) I had just got the family computer into my room a couple of months ago and I was giving in to the temptation to look at porn on the 'net. Since the froggin' thing crashed whenever it tried to download large jpegs or gifs, I stuck to text files. I started with the straight sites, and quickly found that I liked those stories that featured the men most prevalently. In my wanderings, I found a few bisexual sites, some of the contents of which I liked better, and that path led me to the Nifty Archives. After finding that great place to be, I pretty much had to face up to the fact that I was gay. I haven't looked back ever since. Accepting it was pretty easy for me.
When did you start writing?	Not sure. Quite some time before I started posting stories to Nifty, I know. Before I moved out west. Probably the fall of '97.
What made you start writing?	Well, it was a reaction to a story I read on the Archive. It was about two knights who meet in a tavern. They both have the title "Dragonhunter", which is a rare coincidence. Each one convinces the other that they have searched their half of the known lands thoroughly, one to the north and the other the south, and are quite sure that there are no dragons left to be slain. Now, the twist is that both of these characters are actually dragons cloaked in human form. So they both believe that the other is responsible for the obliteration of his race, and that he is the last of his kind. Each of them is filled with a seething hatred for the other. (It doesn't stop them from going upstairs and bumping uglies later, but does it ever?) At the end of the tale, the two leave the tavern, and, after a safe distance, cast off their human disguises to live in their halves of the kingdom in safety, but alone. It's an excellent story. I read that and thought, wow. That's really depressing. They were on the same side and they couldn't be together in the end. And then I thought that it might be a good idea to have two people traditionally on opposite sides and... well, you can guess what happened. Shortly after I started publishing The Knight and the Thief, there were a few other fantasy series that cropped up. I don't know if it was the domino effect at work there, but I know at least one of those authors wrote me after reading one of my stories. I was reading his new series as well and complimented him back.
So who do you read on the Archive?	To start with, I stay away from the Young Friends, Adult-Youth, and High School directories. If you write these stories, sorry, but gettin' it on with little boys doesn't interest me. Ditto for incest; you haven't met my family.... Encounters is read sparingly. Too many of these stories fall into the category that one reader summed up better than I could ever hope to: "I met this cute guy in the supermarket and plowed him bowlegged. The End." Sure it's missing the description of the players and the bit where they leave the supermarket... if they leave the supermarket, but that's basically it. Even when I'm just reading, I need that mental connection. Male bodies fucking probably won't get my juices flowing, but people having sex might. That being said, usually the longer stories with plot in them are my favorites. I don't want to offend a forgotten writer by leaving him out, or have to keep updating the list with what I've enjoyed lately, so I'll stop there. There seems to have been a decline in the quality there, so I don't even read much anymore.
Which writers inspire you, then?	I have a few mainstream authors whose work I love, but I wish I could be as clever and funny as Terry Pratchett, and as together and common-sensical as Spider Robinson.
Where did the name "Pfantazm" come from? And why is it spelled so strange?	When I started writing, I realized that I would need a pseudonym, since I was extremely closeted, and I wasn't about to use my own name. I've used other pen names for other things, mainly places where they're the norm and not the exception, so one more couldn't hurt, and certainly wouldn't put ny strain on my sense of identity. I made myself into a phantasm, the little man who wasn't there. I spelled it like that so that I could be fairly sure that wherever I went online, I wouldn't end up with a nom like phantasm617. The numbers looked untidy. Now it's more a matter of tradition. There are even some folks out there who know my real first name.
How do you write a story?	First I need an idea. (Don't ask me where my ideas come from. If I knew that, I could make them stop.) Once I get the plot right in my head, I start writing. I don't usually set the storyline out on paper; what's in my head is a good enough road map for me. I will admit, though, that I occasionally end up on an unexpected detour. When I write creatively, it's always with pen and paper. (So if you ever see a young man scribbling furiously on a clipboard in Vancouver, you never know....) It's a pain to transcribe later, and it adds time to the process, but it means I can edit for content. If there's anything I wanted to include but missed, anything that doesn't make sense, I can fix them now. Then I run the plain text file through my word processor's spell-checker and grammar-checker. I note the changes I want to make and edit the text. I know spelling and grammar quite well, so I can edit myself for those, and not everything the program complains about do I agree with. It often complains when I start too many sentences that are close to each other with the same word. What the hell is that? I keep using it though, because their are sum errors the spell-checker mite miss.
Which religion do you ascribe to: Mac or PC?	PC, though i now also own a Mac. Which breaks down more often than my PC does. Go fig.
Same question: Coke or Pepsi?	Do you care? I don't.
Now really, what religion are you?	I was raised Catholic, but I'm not anymore. I have my own belief system, and it's not for everyone. How many of you could make it through your day if you really believed that whatever Creator or Creators there may be out there have stopped paying attention to us in any meaningful way (from our point of view)? How many of you with your hands up can be happy about it because you think that's a good thing? I have taken from organized religion for my own beliefs, though. Back to Spider Robinson for a second. In Callahan's Lady there's a story about a woman who managed to gain control over all the main characters and everyone around her. The more politely she would ask you to do something, the faster you'd jump. I'll skip the details, but Lady Sally eventually got the device the woman was using and won the day. However, everyone was still under the control of that device and whoever was holding it. She set everyone free with a sentence that went like this: "Feel free to do anything you damn well please for the rest of your life, so long as it doesn't harm anyone unnecessarily." Upon reading that sentence, I kept it for myself, as surely as if Lady Sally had been in my room with the controller. Some of you may recognize it as the Wiccan Rede: "An thou harm no one, do what thou wilt." (Robinson added the "unnecessarily" bit.) If there was an organized religion I'd follow, Wicca would be it. I just can't see myself casting a circle, though. I write medieval fantasy; I don't want to live it. On this score, though, I think they have the right idea. (One reader replied to this, saying that Wiccans don't believe that they're living in an SF-fantasy world themselves. I understand that, and didn't mean to offend. While I agree with the philosophy, I'm really a scientist at heart. For me, the two aren't compatible.)
More controversy! What are your political views?	I don't follow politics.
What do you do for a living?	I'm a teacher at an ESL school downtown.
What's your dream job? Writing?	Actually no. I'd be a video game designer, or just an ordianry game designer. Or a full-time puzzle writer. Or something.
Are you going to try to get this stuff published in a book?	Probably not, at least not the stories that are here now. If a publisher ever does look at them seriously, and buys them, I'd have to pull them down off the site and off Nifty. Then the publisher would tell me what to do with the characters. I don't know if I could handle that. If I ever try to be a professional (read: paid) author, it'll be with original fiction written specifically for that purpose. I have found a site that would allow me to publish what I have here on the cheap, though, so keep watching this space.
What are you going to do next?	I'm really not sure. I got told recently by someone trustworthy that my stuff was publishable. Almost the worst thing he could have said. None of it can be published because it's all available for free on-line. Still trying to figure out where to go from here.
Say, didn't the graphics in some of the sections change since the last time I was here?	Why, yes, they did. I've been codifying fonts I've designed and replacing all the headers and such. Now all of the fonts are of my own creation, and you can find them for download at Objets Dart.