Date:         Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:03:04 -0700
From: Lorenzo Sierra <lsierra@ACAONLINE.ORG>
Subject:      FILL: BIO: Greetings Earthlings

     A thousand pardons my beloved e-friends, but I seem to have committed
     an e-faux pas. Although I have read thousands of postings, commented
     on a few and submitted once, I have not yet properly introduced myself
     in the form of a bio. So let your gentle eyes skim the next few dozen
     words.

     I guess I have been an alcoholic since my mid teens and . . . shit,
     wrong group. Sorry, I thought I was at my weekly confirmation. Anyway
     here is the writer bio.

     I am a hack -- a blunt, oversized hack. I started writing for
     newspapers when I was 15. My mom would drop me off at the high school
     football games I was covering. She would then pick me up and wait in
     the Arizona Daily Star's parking lot until I finished writing my
     story.

     In college I majored in journalism and wrote for the school newspapers
     at the three institutions I attended. I won a few awards, drank a lot
     of beer and managed to graduate with a piss-poor GPA. Actually, I was
     lucky to get out of college because I always seemed to be consumed by
     the student newspapers I was working at.

     After college I served as my own pimp and started my career as a
     corporate journalist. I got married during college and could not live
     off the newspaper  *wages*  that my friends were making. Sure, it was
     less glamorous, but at least I was making good money.

     Currently, I am an editor/writer at a compensation and benefits
     association in Scottsdale, Ariz. I write about the ways employers pay
     people. I also do stringer work for the Mesa Tribune (a daily, circ.
     100K) Sports department. I go to a variety of youth sporting events
     and recap the kids' on-field heroics. I really enjoy this because I
     know the stories I write become part of a family's lore. I know my
     clips get put in peoples' scrapbooks and sent to grandmas and grandpas
     all over the world. I also write for a Phoenix-area music magazine. I
     have been doing this for about four years. I get free crap, get to go
     to concerts for free and get to rub elbows with many of my heroes. I
     also do a column that is drier than the Arizona desert I live in. For
     the most part, I am a smart-ass, cynical slacker Gen X type.

     I recently got on to the Writers group and the urge to do some
     creative writing is pounding on me like a couple of Jehovah's
     Witnesses at my door. I don't know if I can go beyond my hack nature
     and produce anything of substance. I have no clue as to what the
     market is for creative writing -- no idea at all. Do people actually
     buy this sort of stuff? If so, please let me know. If I can make some
     money at this, I might be able to give up my plasma-donor gig. I plan
     to submit some creative writing samples and I will try not to bring
     down the value of this e-neighborhood.

     That's my writing life in a nutshell.

     Lo (that s what my friends call me)

     lsierra@acaonline.org

     My current software does not allow me to create a clever signature,
     but here is a temporary one:

     I'm Superfly TNT. I'm a mushroom-cloud laying mother fucker. I'm the
     guns of Navarone. - Jules (Pulp Fiction)