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Lariel: Madwoman or genius???

A bit about me...

Let me just get one thing straight. I'm British, and therefore my spelling is different. I like writing, reading, travelling, doing web stuff, eating chocolate and listening to music. I play the guitar a little, and sing when I'm alone. I get drunk on the minimal amount of beer (I'm very proud of my reputation as the four schooner screamer), watch sci-fi programmes and used to spend my time glued for far too long to a computer screen but now I'm better.

I was born a long time ago. As you can see, I was quite a cute child, and with my blonde hair and big blue eyes soon became typecast as an angel in school nativity plays. I've been trying to shake off this "good" image ever since.

Always shy and bashful, I tried to avoid the limelight. I even dyed my hair. My rebelllious youth was understated, and I was a model pupil at school. Inexplicably, it was people around me who got into trouble - being blonde does have its advantages. Still, somehow I managed to get through those vulnerable early years, to become the woman I am today.

This one.

After a surprising but not unpleasant encounter with Ted Raimi at a Xena convention in 1999, I soon discovered that my startling physical resemblance to Renee O'Connor could have advantages as well as its downside. With wild abandon, I threw myself into Rendom. Realising that I just didn't have the abs to pull off a BGSB, I reinvented myself not long after as Kerry Stuart. At least that way, I got to wear jeans and a sweater.

Realising that my amazing similarity to Renee was doing NOTHING for my career, I decided to set about writing. But you see, nobody in work seemed to care that I was an award winning bard, and I began to wonder - why should Renee O'Connor have ALL the fun? So I decided to take my new Fallen Angel haircut and treat it to a holiday. So in May 2000, I gave up my job, bought a round the world plane ticket and left.

In Australia, I was fortunate enough to meet Temora, Archaeobard and MaryD. Plus some long lost relatives, lots of koala's, roos, snakes and creepy crawlies. Australia has many different ways to kill a person painfully. I broke my ankle, got terrorised by wild pigs in the Daintree rainforest, almost drowned at the Great Barrier Reef, nearly had my horse fall on top of me in a tea plantation... ahhh, the list of my adventures goes on. What a great place.

Of course, being a Renee lookalike, I had to go to New Zealand. It was my plan to camp out on the front lawn of RenPics the whole time I was there, but NZ is just too fantastic for that. Majestic mountains, spewing volcanoes, boiling mudpits, spectacular beaches, glaciers and fjords... the landscape of NZ is beautifully varied - just go see Lord of the Rings!

Having fallen in love with a country, but NOT been discovered by RenPics, I then found myself in Canada. Lots of strange things happened to me in Canada. One strange person in particular happened to me in Canada, and he knows who he is. But who can stay in a country where the policemen dress in red? Eh?

Still, I had embarked on my trip hoping that it would change my life, and I guess it has. As for my man, I am a bit suspicious of the fact that he is completely devoted to Renee and keeps asking me to wear her go-go outfit from Lyre Lyre, but at least he's agreed to squeeze into Ares' leathers from time to time. Can't say fairer than that.

All photographs (apart from one - see if you can guess which <g>) are mine and were taken by me. Well, the one of me as a baby is mine but was taken by my mother... and she doesn't know I've stolen it...