In lieu of a proper profile, I'll just show you this first page of what was going to be a sorta ongoing online autobiography from the old "Inferno" (sorta a precursor to "Echoes From The Pit") while I try and figure out what a "proper profile" actually is. Obviously this and the following page have SOME inaccuracies...like Tia now being my wife as opposed to my fiance'...little things like that...

I was born Thomas Edward Lee on August 14, 1973...whadda year, eh folks?..to Patricia and Gerald Edward Robert Lee Sr. I was, and still am, haha, the second youngest of a family of 7 kids; 5 sisters (one not for another two years, though) and one brother, so I was pretty much p-whipped from day one folks, haha. We lived in scenic Santee, California, a suburb so whitebread it would make Ward Cleaver feel ethnic. I stayed at the same house for EXACTLY 24 years, when I moved out with my beautiful fiance', Tia...but I'm getting WAY ahead of myself here, haha...

I picked up reading shortly afterwards, about when I was two. Seriously. According to family legend, I walked up to the babysitter and asked her why Scooby-Doo wasn't on. She asked me, "Why? Is it normally on right now?", to which I held up the TV Guide and replied, "No...but it says it's supposed to be on right here!" I ended up, much to my chagrin, reading various Dr. Seuss books to my mom and the various housewives of the neighborhood all afternoon. I think this was where I first picked up my pench ant for storytelling...and my near-legendary aversion to work, too, probably...

Well, one afternoon when I was still but a lad, I had to go to the doctor and get a shot...I don't remember what for...but, because I was so brave and hardly cried at all, Mom took me to he local drug store to get a treat. She was thinking a toy or some candy...but, when I got there, my eyes flickered over the comic rack and locked with the unshakable fervor of youth upon ROM Spaceknight #15. I stood there and flipped through it in the store, then pleaded with my mom that THIS was what I wanted. She relented (I didn't find out until years later why; turns out SHE was an avid comic-book reader in HER youth, too...go fig...), and we went home, me reading and re-reading the book over and over. It was INCREDIBLE, too...the cover had ROM smashing through the doors of a church during a wedding, seemingly vaporizing the groom with some kind of blaster while the horrified pastor dodged to the side, revealing, in bold print in his service book, the words "Till Death Do Us Part..." The story itself actually had little by way of action; the scene on the cover didn't occur until the last four or five pages, where I learned the "blaster" was actually some kind of scanner for detecting the shape-changing Wraiths who were the book's villains, but there was a scene earlier in the book where the REAL groom (the one at the wedding was actually a Wraith about to marry the human girl ROM loved in secret...) escaped with the help of a female photojournalist named Ace who blinded the Wraiths with her flash long enough for him to escape. She wasn't so lucky, but all you knew was that her screams echoed through the corridors as the groom escaped, and he swore to avenge her sacrifice (trying to figure out what the Wraths did to her gave me nightmares for WEEKS...). The book had angst, horror, honor, unrequited love, heroism, desperate stands, a hero who was seen as a monster and often was attacked on sight; one issue had more epic themes and grandeur than this suburban white-boy had EVER experienced...but, as with most things, the comic got filed away, out of sight, out of mind, and I forgot about it...for a while...

I went to school at Rio Seco Elementary School (where they honestly didn't know if I was a genius or in need of "special education") before graduating to Santana High School (where they gave up trying to decide and just let me drift wherever my grades dictated; imagine their surprise when a student with a 2.6 grade-point average scored in the upper 2% of his graduating class on the SAT's! Me? Bitter? Naaaaahhhh...). I had always written stories; while at Santana, however, I first seriously started pursuing what was to become my second creative passion: drawing. In junior high, my brother started dragging me to comic-book stores with him, where I rediscovered my love for them; one in particular, Ninja High School, had a direct influence on my developing art style and led directly to the creation of the character who would help define my college years and beyond: Louis Fender. Of course, my art teacher was a wanna-be hippie, so we spent more time learning to focus our positive energies and channel our right-brain/left-brain dichotomies into creative endeavors than doing any actual learning or drawing; needless to say, my manga-influenced cartooning went over about as well as clubbing baby seals would. Despite this, however, I got a reputation as a skilled "artist" (a term I loathe applying to myself; artists work with paint and get their stuff hung in museums and collected in big coffee table books; I draw pictures of obviously unreal "things" in off-beat, bizarre, or humorous situations, thus making me a "cartoonist"), which granted me some fame as I was tapped to design the backdrop for the homecoming court float and the ASB t-shirt my senior year, which was admittedly pretty cool.

Of course, I didn't stop writing entirely, thanks mainly to the efforts of two of my English teachers, Ms. Dettweiler and Ms. Gilmore (I refer to them as "Ms" because I honestly can't remember if they were married...). They and my math teacher, Mr.Stanko, were the only ones on the staff who seemed to think there was more to me than a long-haired nerd who kept falling asleep in class (Stanko, however, found that out mid-way through the semester when he got back the results to the Golden State Algebra Exam and had to wake me up to tell me that I'd received High Honors on it; this event was repeated the following year with the Geometry Exam, even though I only received Honors). Ms. Dettweiler, in particular, seemed to hold me in surprisingly high regard; even when I failed her class for almost a full semester, she still calmly and kindly told me that I was better than what I was doing, that if I applied myself even just a little, I could do ANYTHING. Her words really stuck, and, by the end of the semester I'd managed to pull a C (do the math, baby, and you'll see the effect she had on me...). For her British Lit class, I wrote a science-fiction story that was a play on Beowulf for one report; she gave me 10 extra credit points (the ONLY time she EVER did that for me, I SWEAR) and wrote a note saying she'd proof-read it for me in case I wanted to try and publish it. I had to break out the Jaws-of-Life to get my swelled head through the door that day, I tell you...

Ms. Gilmore held me in a similar standing; when I took her creative writing class my senior year, our mid-term project was to write a short story. Mine was about a demonic possession from the demon's point-of-view. When she returned the stories to the class, she set them in front of their respective writers, giving them a quick critique and some creative advice (like "You have an excellent grasp on dialogue, but perhaps you need to strengthen your characters motivations," and stuff like that). As I waited patiently, she handed out all the stories, skipping me each time. Finally all were out except mine; she returned to her desk, picked up my story and, her face grim and her mouth drawn into a hard, thin line, she strode purposefully up to my desk, slammed my story down in front of me with an audible "SLAP", and said, in her most matter-of-fact voice, "Quit school. Become a professional writer." She then gave me a huge smile and a rather nice hug, and some of my classmates even applauded. Out came the Jaws-of-Life again...

Well, I've yattered on more than long enough...gotta save some stuff for the update, including my first comic convention, my first foray into college...and, of course, how I met my Tia.

I bet you all just can't wait, eh? Haha...thengkew, you've been a wonderful audience, don't forget to tip your waitresses, okay? And remember...

Everytime we say good bye, I cry a little...
Everytime we say goodbye, I wonder "why" a little...
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