If you come to this page, please, please—for the love of calculus—read my stories! If you're truly as awesome as I think you are, you'll also post a review of what you read—and that'll make me the happiest guy on the face of this, or any other world! More importantly, if I've reviewed you, then I expect you to review me—otherwise, I'll just keep on reviewing your work until the tide of guilt overwhelms you.

Also, feel free to PM me about pretty much anything: I love (and need) the company, and I get kind of lonely from time to time...

Also, also—I expect you to reply to the reviews I give you. I. Want. To. Chit-Chat. With. You.

Name:
You may call me CV, Alexander, Nicholas, or James (or any variation of those names, except "VC", "Jim", "Nicky-Loo", "Al", and "Xander")—none of which are my actual name, and, the last of which ("Xander") is the name of a particularly nasty, minor character of mine. You may also call me Vulpix (as in the Pokémon); it's my nickname over at the Review Game in the General Forums. However, this may cause some slight confusion, seeing as—Pokémon-wise—I'm currently a level 21 Charmeleon. (Go figure... XD). Anywho, continuing: do not call me Robert (or any variation thereof), nor Murray, nor VC—I will passionately ignore you for as long as you insist on doing so. Nor, for that matter, are you allowed to call me by any of the names of any of my characters—although I will appreciate the fact that that would imply you've read—or, better yet, are a fan of—my work.

People tend to fall into one of two, mutually-exclusive categories. A) They think I'm the best darned thing since sliced bread. B) They think I'm [INSERT FIGURE OF ULTIMATE EVIL HERE]-incarnate. It's always been that way. I've never understood why. I just hope that, whoever you are, you're in Category A. I've always felt a nauseating mix of shame and regret, knowing that Category B isn't empty...

Age:

21 (for now). 21 is the smallest number that can be expressed in five different ways as the sum of three primes. Cool, huh?

Sex Chromosome Karyotype:
XY (e.g., I'm a guy). Apparently, that puts me in a minority on this site—or so I've heard.

Location:
Somewhere in Southern California (40% of the time); Inside my own imagination/thoughts (35% of the time); Inside other people's imaginations/thoughts (20% of the time), with a 50-50 split between the imaginations/thoughts of people who are alive, and those who are dead; Real-World Places other than Southern California (5% of the time).

Location while on Fiction-Press: Either reading, reviewing, or chatting via PM, or at The Review Game; or at my forum The MadhouseGo visit either if you want good reviews, good company (including, but not limited to, yours truly ;D), or the RG's "Review Marathon" (TM).

Hobbies/Interests:
Thinking, Learning, Dreaming, Writing, Reading, Mathematics, Music, Science, History, the Arts, Video Games, Talking, Watching Cartoons, Movies, General Craziness, Cooking, Flights of Fancy, More Talking, Being Helpful, Writing Lists of My Hobbies/Interests, &c., &c.

Current Profile Avatar: A centauroid dragon-ish creature, wearing a suit of medieval armor, and holding a pointy spear. The image itself was an illustration for an 1889 edition of Mark Twain's fantasy novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The illustration was meant to accompany the line: "They thought I was one of those fire-belching dragons."

Favorite Video Game: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Random Fact of the Month: The four classical temperaments are Choleric (bad-tempered/irritable), Melancholic (introverted/thoughtful/quiet), Sanguine (cheerful/party-loving/easy-going), and Phlegmatic (stoic/focused/intense/unemotional).

Things I Don't/Can't Understand The rules of grammar, "Bronies" (the "My Little Pony" fandom), why people drink alcohol (it's yeast s--t, and it burns going down!), modern "art", the 1980s, sports riots, religiously-motivated acts of intolerance (why??), Fox News, male pregnancy in fiction (once again: why??) how some people can write so much so quickly, the Vietnam War, why people enjoy being selfish, etc.

I apologize. I have my biases—irritable little buttons that are far too easily pressed. You'll know whenever you stumble across one of them, trust me. I apologize. Likewise, I have my soft spots—things that I'll almost always start gushing over. I apologize.

I'm weird, and somewhat crazy.

I apologize.

Apologies make the world go round.

Author of the Month: EVERYBODY!

Reviewing "Policy": While roving through the electronic pages of this website, I will sometimes review what I feel like reviewing. Will gladly review works on request (Prose Only)—but, not if I get too many requests; I have lots of other things to do, including, but not limited to, figuring out what to do with myself, writing (for School and for my Soul), saving the world, brushing my teeth—you know, the usual stuff. I will give priority treatment to people whose stories have not been reviewed. Also—ahem!—I like to think that the people I review would have the courtesy to return the favor to me... Also, please stop by the General Forum "The Review Game"; it's good for your soul. And, not stopping by The Review Game, well... that's bad for your soul. It's been scientifically verified. Really.

Also: I consider it to offensive if you don't reply to a substantial review with a PM. A line or two doesn't really count, but, if someone spends the time to write a paragraph to you, you should give them the same courtesy. This works both ways: you review me, I reply to your review; I review you, you reply to my review. It's how we engage one another, and learn and grow as writers

My Kindness Quotient (As of April 2013): 414/235 = 1.7617 I'm over 75% kinder than the average Joe!

About "Kindness Quotients" (TM): As of March 30, 2013, I've decided to make a measurement for how kind a FictionPress user is. To get your Kindness Quotient for a given month, divide the number of reviews you have given by the number of reviews you have received. If the result is greater than 1, you are Kind Person—you have given more reviews than you have received (and thus, people owe you review debts that they haven't paid back). If the result is equal to 1, then you're Even Stevens: you've given as many reviews as you have received. you should be reviewed. If, however, your Quotient is between 0 and 1, then you are a Big Mean Hoarding Machine—you need to pay off your review debts, pronto!

I'm not gonna lie: I'm INSANELY jealous of anyone and everyone who has written more than me and/or who can write faster and more frequently than me. It's not fair, damn it! Oh well... I just gotta keep trying. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Riiiight???

A Motto For My Opinions About Writing:
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." (Percy B. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry)

My Own Writing:
Fantasy (albeit with the logos of Realism and Science Fiction); for some people, though, it'll read like Sci-Fi, regardless. I write novels and short stories; they're almost always set in my paracosm, Aurhìm (Copyright 1992).

Since my early tweens, I've been working on a huge, 6-or-7-book-long series set in Aurhìm called The Dahrian Chronicles (Copyright 1992). In a way, it's sort of my life's work—in that, I'll probably be spending most of my life working on it—at least 20 more years—and not just because of all the complexity and the world-building, but because of the depth of the themes that I'm writing about—the "big" questions that I'm trying to answer. These include, but are not limited to: the meaning of life, the "problem of evil" (a.k.a. Theodicy), the existence/non-existence of an absolute morality, what it means to be "human," the inherent moral character of human beings, and how all of this relates to the well-known facts of human nature and human evils. And, even more miraculously, I'm going to tackle these issues without taking the easy way out—that is to say, without becoming a parrot for any particular religion, unlike certain famous fantasy authors—ahem *clears throat* Lewis and Tolkien, ahem *clears throat*. My writing is the vehicle for my arguments, ideas, beliefs, and insights—all of which I desperately need to share with the rest of my fellow human beings.

Also, many of my stories will have footnotes to one extent or another—especially those set in Aurhìm. They are me, the author, speaking to you, the reader—and, I apologize in advance if any of them come off as condescending; I don't mean to come off that way. Anyways, I love footnotes; in my opinion, they're one of the best things to happen to writing since the invention of the novel. In my works on FictionPress, footnotes are indicated by a number in [brackets] and can be found at the bottom of the page.

(Current) Favorite Passage that I've Written:

"From his place far above, Reayx could look down and see the whole of the cloud-tops laid out beneath him—a prairie in the sky. The radiant beams of the setting sun bathed the clouds below in golden, autumnal hues, streaked with passion—violet and crimson. The sky, too, had been painted by the sun’s eastern brush; it had become a great canvas—framed in billowing wisps of the coming dusk, colored by the solemn pageantry of the day’s last light. Gorgeous."
(From The Dahrian Chronicles - Book I: The Song of the Wind)

(Partial) List of My Influences (People whose work and ideas I agree with, and incorporate into my life, my thoughts, and my art):

Arthur Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Samuel Clemens, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Ray Kurzweil, Pelagius, William Shakespeare, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonin Dvorák, Charles Dickens, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Roald Dahl, Kurt Vonnegut, Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, Anton Chekov, Edgar Allen Poe, Howard Lovecraft, Franklin Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce, Walt Whitman, Douglas Adams, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Frederick William III, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hans Christen Anderson, Issac Asimov, Jean Sibelius, Homer, Alexander Pushkin, George MacDonald, Ovid, Giuseppe Mazzini, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, and so on.

(Partial) List of My Anti-Influences (People whose work and/or ideas I oppose, and/or will attempt to one-up/counter in my life, my thoughts, and my art):

Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Ayn Rand, St. Augustine, Pablo Picasso, Christopher Paolini ("Eragon" series = Star-Wars, but with dragons), Clive Lewis (reading "Narnia" = going to Sunday School), Herbert Spencer, John Tolkien (although "The Hobbit" is unbelievably awesome, "The Lord of the Rings" is unbelievably boring), John Caldwell Calhoun, Stephanie Meyer ('nough said), Marcel Duchamp, Joanne Rowling (though the "Harry Potter" series is set in an amazingly detailed and immensely entertaining fictional world, it is weighed down by a relatively banal—though, still exciting—plot), Filippo Marinetti, and so on.

Feel free to send me a Private Message. As you may have already noticed, I love to talk (both with, and without other people), and, I have a lot of things to talk about.

Suggested Topics to Talk to me About:

Reviews/Writing Advice: I'd like to think that I'm a devilishly thorough reader/reviewer—I'll be happy to take requests via PM. I'll try to follow them up as best as I can—I can be a bit of a procrastinator, and, unfortunately, I'm not really in control of my muse(s)—they come to me, not the other way around. My reviews are legendary and/or infamous for their length, and their depth. But mostly for their length. xD

"The Dahrian Chronicles", Aurhìm (the world they all happens in), and any of the other stories that I've written: Hopefully, this'll be as entertaining for you as it will be useful for me in getting my ideas down on paper. Please, though, no idea-stealing (ask about Idea Generation if you desire suggestions).

Idea Generation/Things to Get You Thinking: If this profile page hasn't made it clear already, there's a lot of stuff in my head just screaming to burst out into the real world. I've been known to fabricate entire plots in mere minutes. I've also been known to give fantasy authors the kind of breakthrough where they completely re-work their epic story, having finally realized how to make it work perfectly. Also, I'm virtually guaranteed to be as interested in your story-world as you are, if not more so.

On a related note, if I go the extra mile to get interested and curious about your world and the details of your story, I expect you do to the same for me. It's only fair. And, trust me, I need the interaction.

Stories, History, Mathematics, the Meaning of Life, Science, Art, Critiquing the Hegemony of the Haute Bourgeoisie, Talking About the Kinds of Food that Make me Nauseous, etc.: You know, just your average talking points.

All work on my account—as well as the fictional contents/ideas/worlds contained within—are copyrighted by me under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. So don't steal from me—okay?

Also—as a warning—if you do steal any of my ideas about Aurhìm or the Chronicles or any of my stories, then, in the words of the Harpy Librarian of Boréno (a.k.a. "The Mistress of the Books"):

"I weel find you: I weel come for you een dee night; I weel fly eento your house… and I weel... GET you! Ha Ha! Ha Ha!”
(From The Dahrian Chronicles - Book I: The Song of the Wind)

In other words, you'll make me very, very, very sad, and I'll think mean things about you, so that, when I'm an old professor—penniless because you made money off stealing my life's work—I can have something interesting to complain about to my grandchildren—if I ever have any, that is.

Thanks for listening/reading. You've just become an honorary member of the Marish Psychotherapy Squad (well... not really, but... oh, what the heck...).

Also, Bubbles says: "Meef!"

(All content Copyright 1992 - 2013; MCS)

Note: As of now-ish, my focus is to work on Aurhìm and the Chronicles—specifically, writing more for, and filling in the gaps in The Song of the Wind. My dragon-rider parody story, Shanghaied!, is not top-priority, but, I am not abandoning it.

Other note: I'm a mathematician and a historian, among other things. I'm also somewhat boogalah-boogalah. You have been warned. XD