I thought about a pen name. The advantages of a pen name would be that my writing career would be held separate from my academic identity, and I could hide writing romantic fantasy from my colleagues. The disadvantages? That my writing career would be held separate from my academic identity, and I could hide writing romantic fantasy from my colleagues. Why hide? I like who I am, with all my bizarre facets.

If I had a pen name, however, it would be Marie DeLoye. Admittedly it has a bit more of a romance feel to it. It sounds like gothic romance, though, which is not what I write (although the first draft of what became Apocalypse had gothic elements to it. It was pretty dark).

I got the name from my dad’s side of the family, the French Canadian side. My grandmother’s maiden name was DeLoye, and Marie was my grandfather’s first love. It’s a catchy name. But it is not mine.

Daily writing prompt

What’s a moment in your life that felt like it was straight out of a movie?

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One day, many many years ago, I was 25 years old and in a mood. I could get moody when I was younger, before I was medicated. I was walking alone on a blustery, grey day, my cloak flapping. I wore my headphones, and the song that came on was “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana as I walked through the grass across a park. The moment so matched my mood that I felt like someone should be filming the scene. That was a movie moment. I seem to like dramas.

Another moment was when and how my husband proposed. We had gone to a shop in Valley Junction (Des Moines) that had, among other things, claddagh rings. I mentioned how some people used them as engagement rings, not as a hint, but as a thought. When Richard and I arrived back at his apartment, we sat on the couch. Richard said, “I was thinking …” He said this, and only this, several times over the course of a minute or two. Then he finally asked me to marry him. We went to the jeweler the next day to buy each other claddagh rings. Silly romance, but it works.

I think movie moments should have background music. I had soundtrack music for the first scene; the second scene needed some music. Vivaldi? No, something folky and adorable. I can’t think of what exactly. Maybe a bluegrass version of “Solsbury Hill”. I don’t know!

I’m 62 years old. I remember life before computers, when a TI-30 calculator was the epitome of technology. I remember the IBM-PC and the excitement of the WYSIWYG interfaces of Apple computers.

And I remember the Internet. And the Internet before the Internet.

Arpanet was considered the Internet before the Internet according to the history of the Internet. I remember sitting at a VAX terminal on Internet Relay Chat. but there was another system that featured chat, group chat, notes, and games. And that was the PLATO system. PLATO was an educational system that put terminals in colleges and universities, and occasional K-12 schools.

The interface was, by today’s standards, primitive. The classic PLATO terminal was a hulking box with an orange on black plasma screen. (The definitive book on PLATO is actually named The Friendly Orange Glow, by Brian Dear.) But the interface was far friendlier than the cryptically driven Arpanet. PLATO’s programmers and designers built an interface that allowed users to congregate in topic clusters (notes files) and communicate (chat). In addition, with very crude graphics, one could game.

This resulted in a fertile social milieu. PLATO people gamed together, chatted in interest groups, flirted online. There was (informally) online dating, and there were catfishers (I personally knew one, perhaps even the first one). I online dated and attended meetups before the cautionary tales. PLATO spawned its own slang, its own nerd culture.

PLATO and its programmers laid the foundation for things we take for granted on the Internet today. Our web browsers descend from the early browsers that were written by PLATO alumni. Dungeon-style online games started with the crude graphics of PLATO.

So I remember the Internet before the Internet, where I was a gamer and chatted in chat rooms, dated online, and wrote poetry in what we would now call forums.

I have a couple collections, being middle class and comfortable enough to afford them, but my biggest collection is practical — in a way. I collect coffee pots.

I have several ways of making coffee. My daily coffee is made in a Technivorm Moccamaster, which is a high-end automatic drip coffee pot that I bought at a discount. My husband roasts beans with a Behmor coffee roaster, which will roast one pound at a time.

Then there are my other coffeemakers, which I don’t use on a daily basis. I have two dripolators made of aluminum and ceramic, two different styles/sizes of aluminum moka pots, a Chemex auto-drip pot, a WWII-era glass vacuum pot (no rubber gaskets), a later (1950s) glass vacuum pot, a modern Cona glass vacuum pot, a stainless steel vacuum pot, a Royal Belgian siphon pot (which I got for $50 used), two press pots, a cold brew pot, and an iconic Pyrex glass stovetop percolator.

I have all my coffee pots in a display cabinet where they share space with a few teapots (which I have collected in the past). I don’t have room for any more, which means I won’t be collecting more esoteric pots like a Neapolitan flip pot or a Bohemian coffee pot.

I don’t know why I collected all these coffee pots. I have a veritable coffee museum. Now to drink another cup of coffee…

I do not do nearly enough to be involved in the community. I am a pretty solitary person, not the sort for team sports and the like. I don’t belong to the community chorus like my husband; I do not belong to a church; I do not do volunteer work. For the most part.

I am involved in moulage (casualty simulation) with Missouri Hope, which is local and through the university. Moulage is the use of makeup and prosthetics to simulate injuries and illness. I also do moulage for the county docudrama, which is a drinking and driving scenario performed for the area students. This speaks to my expertise and my interests.

I would like to be more civic-minded, but I like being alone more. I like writing more. I am not called to community service. Maybe it’s just where I am in life right now.

I vote in political elections. This means I get up early to vote over at my election place at 6:30 AM before work, show my voter ID, take the ballot to one of the partitioned booths, and fill it out with Sharpie marker. That’s how we vote in rural Missouri, with a Sharpie marker.

If I don’t vote, I don’t influence the politics in this country. I’m only one person, but if more people with my viewpoint voted, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re currently in with our president.

Anyone who didn’t vote has no right to complain, in my opinion. What did they do to keep us out of this mess? Why did they not care enough to make their voices heard? Why do they think their complaints are accomplishing anything when their vote could have?

I get worked up on this topic, obviously.