Introducing Mandi! Our New Thursday Blogger!

Staring next Thursday, Mandi will join our blog!  I just wanted to give you a quick introduction to her.  Be sure to give her a nice warm MMW welcome!

My name is Mandi.

I have always been a writer.  There is no hobby I enjoy more than writing about characters and places and events with such detail that they become as real on paper to others as they already seem in your mind.  Likewise, there seems to be no greater thrill than reading the works of others, who characters you come to know so well you might chance to call them friends.  And that is why I have always been both a reader, and a writer.

I have always wanted to be an author.  I have two short stories published in a anthologies, and won several writing and essay competitions in my youth, but never felt that my education was sufficient enough to allow me the daring to make the leap from writer, to author.

Instead, I've invested several years into my self-education:  I've attended three LDStorymakers Conferences, taken writing courses and workshops, been an active member of two different writing groups over the past three years, and spent as much time as I could reading and writing.

This past fall, something changed.  If felt a deeper desire to take my writing to the next level.  Despite several hurdles which made it seem easy to pass up the challenge, I committed to enter NaNoWriMo 2011, with a burning desire to finish.  And I did.  At 8:45-ish pm on November 30, 2011, I crossed the finish line.

Here is a little about me: (From the introduction on my personal blog)

MAYBE I'M CRAZY...

In an ideal world, I would live in a cute little two story house with a large garden, greenhouse and a menagerie of pets (including a chameleon, tropical fish and plethora of assorted cats and dogs - oh, and don't forget the guinea pigs! Why? I have no idea). I would read and write and play with my kids all day, preferably in my pajamas.
In the real world, I live in a squishy main floor rental with my handsome husband, three angelic children, and a spunky very social little beta fish named Donkey Kong.
My husband is a student, I run a small dayhome, and we enjoy regular trips to the library where we max out the limit on our card every time.
I have an insatiable appetite for books, I have a difficult time doing the dishes without daydreaming about my latest writing project, and I wistfully sigh at the sight of my cement enclosed back yard, dreaming up schemes of how to make plants grow from concrete.
It may not be the dream life I mentioned earlier, but you know what? I'm still happy.
Mabye I'm crazy, or maybe I'm just Mandi.