Melanie Bates

I'm a writer, a nomad, and a nondescript heathen. I don geekdom like other girls shoulder a Fendi. Daytime finds me helping those who are setting the world on fire as a Virtual Assistant to Powerful Women (& a Few Kick-Ass Men.) Nighttime witnesses my nose in a book, my hands on a game controller, or my toes in the dirt.

My most joyous moments in life, however, come from "applying ass to chair." I began my writing career at the age of seven when I penned my first brilliant short story about witches with carbuncles. As a teenager my writing moved toward the morose when I attempted to write my vast memoir at the age of fourteen. Finally, at seventeen, with my towering experience in regards to the matters of love, I wrote a few pages of a romance novel. I am currently working on a young adult novel which I plan to finish this century-ish.

I've moved over thirty times, hence the nomadic nature, but for now I reside in the Wild, Wild West with the love of my life So-Kr8z the pup. To some this urge to move might seem exciting, however, there have been times I've ended up in the deepest bowels of our great Mother Earth. For example, I spent a year living in Rawlins, Wyoming where I was blown back and forth across the road and where I ran home from school every day on the lookout for dark vans that kidnapped children. I once peed my pants while frantically searching for my latchkey.

Artwork by Nate Taylor

Monica Wilcox

My childhood festered around the school playground, a sewage creek, well-used train tracks, a gas station with Pac Man AND Tetra, a miserable 7 year crush on a boy who refused my offer of marriage in kindergarten, and a 12 speed bike. Yet, the only drama I could muster up was a pin prick to my pinky for my “blood sister”. By 8th grade I knew my content life was not going to justify the adult identity of “tormented author creating surreal material”. The best I had was a dismal display in P.E. (a wicked volleyball return from the bridge of my eyeglasses; twice). So what! Eighty percent of us spend middle school slurking in and out of the gym. There was no choice but to sacrifice geometric proofs for a career in soap opera script writing. I had all my friends meeting, dating, and marrying the members of Duran Duran. This shot my gift-with-the-word into the Jr. High Strat-os-phere, until I wrote all of them into nasty divorces with their teen heart throbs. A sad, sad lesson in overestimating my reader.

So I returned to math, only to find I was more interested in the “characters” traveling through my imagination than quadratic equations. These characters would mumble on and on with some wild story, until another ego elbowed in. I tolerated it through H.S, college, and my 8 year career as a counselor (it’s true, counselors hear voices too), until I had kids. All those hours locked in a rocking chair gave me time to have a really good listen. . This spiraled into my first novel, which is currently being slashed down and dressed up. Although my own life continues to shy away from high drama, it does spice up; spitting out some material backed by my own voice. That’s what I’ve given here; a few observations on life’s spice.

Melanie and Monica met in the fourth grade in a creek crawling with crawdads.They sealed their friendship in a large tractor tire by pricking their fingers with pins and sharing their blood. They shared all the things normal girls share; Jell-O packages stolen from their mother's cupboards, swoons over a boy named Keith Wing, ghost stories, séances, and pillowcases filled with Halloween candy, but they also shared a love of the written word and a dream to be writers. Thirty-some years later the Jell-O stains have faded from their fingertips, but the friendship remains as sweet as ever.