Meet
the Moderator:
Kay House (strigidae)
Kay
House first became a moderator in Holly Lisle's Forward Motion Writing Community
when she was tapped to fill in as Mystery and Suspense Moderator during Ron
Brown's absence. She has read
widely in mystery, science fiction, romance and fantasy.
House's
obscure screen handle, strigidae, came into being when a former community host
refused to accept her name or preferred screen handles (night owl, bookworm,
etc.) as a login name. (They hosted
a lot of communities.) In a fit of
annoyance, she decided that, as a writer and wordsmith, she could and would find
a word that was not already taken. She
marched off to find The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds
and looked up owls. The species
name for most owls is strigidae. That name was not already taken on the old host's system, and
she took it -- quickly!
Having
practiced law from 1979 to 2001, when she was sidelined due to disabling
migraine headaches, House has finished more non-fiction reports, briefs,
pleadings, memoranda, agreements, funding applications, contracts, wills, deeds
and other legal instruments than she can count. Finishing fiction, however, comes hard for her.
Even finishing non-fiction has proven difficult, despite the fact that
she has two published professional papers to her credit.
"Ordinarily," she says, "I knew I had finished a piece of
writing when I finally allowed my beleaguered secretary to tear it from my
clutching fingers in time to meet the deadline of whichever express delivery
service had the latest available pickup."
House
first realized she wanted to write fiction when, at the age of eight, she read
Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Some
of her early poetry was published in high school literary magazines, and she
spent two years in the high school department of St. Mary's Jr. College (now St.
Mary's School) in Raleigh. As an
undergraduate, House carried a double major in English and Political Science.
In the end, however, she allowed her family to persuade her to go to law
school on the theory that practicing law was a more practical way to make a
living than writing fiction. She
took both her academic degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill: a B. A. in 1976 and a J. D. in 1979.
In
1987, House got her first computer, and began littering her hard drive with the
beginnings of stories that never got finished.
As her career as a legal aid lawyer continued to prosper, the needs of
her clients came first, and her writing got less and less attention.
When she was decisively sidelined with daily severe migraine headaches,
her husband, Dan Besse, encouraged her to set a reasonable writing goal for a
woman with less than 6 usable hours a week.
On his advice, she decided that, instead of trying to write a great
novel, she would try to write a mediocre short story.
Finally, shortly after joining Forward Motion last winter, she achieved
that goal. While it remains the only piece of fiction she has yet
finished, House reminds herself that setting small gentle goals is important,
and that one must work around one's physical limitations as well as one can.
With
Ron Brown's return and Rob Flumignan taking over as team leader for Mystery and
Suspense, House has stepped back to assisting with the moderation of the Mystery
and Suspense, General Fiction, Rants and Tutorials boards.
She hopes to finish another mediocre short story in the near future.
Her
professional publications include:
CEOing:
Something Completely Different, Management Information Exchange Journal
, Spring 2002, Volume XVI, 1.
Interviewing
the Pro Bono Client, North Carolina Bar Foundation, Pro Bono 101 (2000).
Copyright 2002 Anniekate Finley
|