Amanda “Queen of the Wiki” Cales was born on August 2nd, 1988, and is currently a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee. She’s also pretty sure they don’t know what’s hit them yet.

Sometimes known as Aray, Mandaray or Kurichan, Amanda lives with a very large & silly German Shepherd, a lordly cat, and a couple of people who insist they are genetically related to her. She does not believe them, since she is clearly made entirely of Awesome.

Amanda has been an aspiring writer since the tender age of 8, when she discovered what great fun it was to type phrases from her favorite Lion King book into the family computer. Thankfully her mother was present to turn her away from a path of plagiarism, instead suggesting that Amanda write her own original stories into the computer. Needless to say, young Amanda was impressed with this suggestion and hasn’t looked back since. She was also encouraged to be creative by her father, who helped her invent new stories over the years.

During her early teen years, various aspects of Amanda’s life conspired to all but annihilate her confidence her writing abilities, leaving her a very sad, unhappy person. She made several attempts to finish a book, all of which failed miserably. Even “winning” NaNoWriMo 2003 didn’t help. Convinced that she would never become a true writer and that making endless attempts to be one was just a waste of her time, Amanda eventually walked away from the keyboard, never to return.

Thankfully, podcasts happened. After watching a particularly life-changing Firefly marathon on the Sci-Fi channel, Amanda was so Firefly crazed she went scouring the internet for anything to do with her new favorite show, and found “The Signal”, a Firefly podcast. Baffled by this new form of media, Amanda investigated it further, and eventually found Mur Lafferty’s “I Should Be Writing”. Shocked that she was not the only person in the world who had trouble writing, and that YES, she WAS allowed to suck, Amanda quickly got over herself and leapt back onto the writing horse, finishing a 200,000 word novel later that same year.

In 2006, she participated in NaNoWriMo again for the first time in three years, and won the challenge in 21 days. After adding her ‘06 manuscript to the one she had started in ‘03, she produced her second book, which she edited for awhile before deciding the material wasn’t as interesing to her as it had once been. Still, she regards her time working on that novel as an excellent learning experience, especially in regards to the tricky subject of editing.

In the early summer of 2007, a certain nutcase named Justin Macumber posted a thread on the “I Should Be Writing” forums asking if anyone wanted to join him in a new podcast by writers, for writers. Though she was hesitant about the idea at first, Amanda set her fears aside and asked Justin to become part of what later became The Dead Robots’ Society, which is of course why you’re sitting here reading this now.

As of October 2007, Amanda acquired an actual day job at a local grocery store and began to learn what it’s like to actually be out in the real world with the rest of humanity. So far, it’s been a blast. She’s made a lot of new friends, gained new insight into human behavior, and of course made some lovely spending money. Everything she’s learned has strengthened her writing considerably and while sometimes the job is exhausting and frustrating, overall she’s happy where she is and plans to stay for awhile yet.

Currently, Amanda is working on a story called “Dreamfall” which is published on her website every week or so, in order to receive constructive criticism from her peers and exercise some of the weirdness that happens inside her brain. She’d love to know what you think of it and encourages you to go there right this very second. There are other stories she’s working on as well, but nothing that’s out of the planning stages at the moment. In the meantime, Amanda has taken up yoga, a love of video podcasts, cargo pants and cast iron cooking vessels, as well as nursing a growing obsession with the works of James Patterson, particularly his Women’s Murder Club series.

When she’s not writing, Amanda is also a skilled cook, learner of Wiki code, extremely excitable Doctor Who fangirl, iPod addict, long time RPGer, lover of movies, video games and technology, LOLCat enthusiast, Listener of awesome music, maker of webpages, wrangler of gibbons, Tomb Raider devotee, Wiki dabbler, and interviewee for the NanoMonkeys podcast. She is also currently the only girl in The Dead Robots’ Society, something which amuses her greatly.

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The Basics :

Email: amanda@amandacales.com

Website: http://www.amandacales.com

IM program of choice: MSN messenger amanda_cales@hotmail.com

Skype: amandacales

Personal Blog: http://pookerdoos.livejournal.com/

Favorite flavor of tea: Tazo “Zen” green tea

Works completed: Two novels, both of which are currently in the rough draft stage, one Doctor Who short story, which was written for a Big Finish anthology contest (I didn’t win), and one short story which is as yet unnamed and has only been shown to two people on the entire planet. Eventually it may see the light of day elsewhere, but don’t hold your breath folks. Dreamfall is also in the works, though it’s not “completed” yet.

Preferred genre(s): Fantasy and sci-fi, but I’m open to writing pretty much anything from chick-lit to mystery. Secretly I plan one day to do it all. =D