About Emma Jane Davies
Hello, I’m Emma Jane Davies. I’m British. I grew up in Nottingham. I’ve also lived in Sheffield, Matlock in Derbyshire, and Nice in the South of France. I currently live in Manchester with my boyfriend Saxon. I own a manic but very clever chocolate-coloured working cocker spaniel called Jasper, but he doesn’t live with me any more, due to shared custody issues. He’s still my baby.
My dad is a college lecturer. My mum was a nursery nurse and teaching assistant, but she’s no longer alive. My little sister, Sarah, used to be the bass guitarist for a girl band called “Hepburn”. Hepburn reached number eight in the UK singles charts with their first single “I Quit”. You might remember the annoying cockney accent of the lead singer. They also appeared on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack. This will forever be my claim to fame.
I have two degrees, one in social sciences, and the other in writing. After leaving university, I taught myself to program computers and design websites. I write visual basic, vb.NET, SQL, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, I’m familiar with Photoshop, Fireworks and Flash, and I tinker with wordpress a lot. I can never stick to learning about one subject.
I have toyed with the idea of doing a medical degree. Under another persona, I used to do a lot of blogging on the subject of health, nutrition, and medicine. I used to run a support group for people with food intolerances, ADHD, fibromyalgia, and other illnesses that fall through the cracks of regular health support. Lots can be done for these problems. I myself was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was thirteen, but it turned out that this was a misdiagnosis, and I actually have a complicated autoimmune thyroid condition. I wasn’t properly diagnosed for twenty years, but now I’m taking the right medicine, I’m mostly better, though one is never one hundred percent with an autoimmune disease. As such, I work from home and earn my way as a web elf.
Because I’m rather quiet and blonde, people tend to assume that there’s nothing between my ears. In fact I have an IQ of 150-160 (it seems to vary). Although I am rubbish at maths. Some interesting genes and personality types run in my family. We seem to produce either wildly extrovert musicians and actors, or crazy solitary inventors and engineers. I can be very shy and difficult to talk to at first, though once I know and trust you, I can be hard to shut up. I work better in one-to-one situations. I have come out of my shell a lot in the last couple of years though. I’m almost normal. But not quite. I will always have a tinge of Asperger’s. I am, after all, an archetypal girl geek.
It is always dangerous to talk about politics and religion. I’m an atheist. I’m not even slightly mystical. I’m a scientist. I greatly admire Richard Dawkins. Because of my background in sociology, I passionately believe in equality for all, feminism, sexual liberation, rights for young people, and the end of racism, homophobia and transphobia. Though I am too cynical to believe in the Marxist dream anymore.
I like goths, skaters, hipsters, punks, emo kids and alternative types. Pagans fascinate me. I am not a goth, an emo, or a hipster, I am a chameleon. I have a kooky dress style. My hair is often blonde with funny colours (usually pink). If I could dress up as a pirate every day and get away with it, I would. I do not subscribe to any one social group, as I like dressing up too much.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since being small. I love speculative fiction, anything escapist – science fiction, fantasy, fairy tales. I wrote several lengthy unfinished novels and many short stories when I was younger. I have attention span problems, however. I’m usually in a state of writer’s block, so I have a habit of writing prolifically on all other subjects than the ones that I should be writing. I’ve knuckled down in the last two or three years. I’ve finished a contemporary fantasy novel, and I’m half way through another. Things are in the pipeline, shall we say, and I intend that life will not get in the way forever.
For those who have arrived here via google and still want to know: no, I’m not a comedy actress, a showbiz agent, an artist, a glamour model, or an olympic cyclist. Those are all other Emma Davieses.
