Big question here: if I'm a Virgo, then why is my desk constantly messy?

Anyway, welcome to my profile page...

The name's Gaby (or Gabriella, if you must know). I'm English, now 17 (whee!!), and I've just moved back to the UK after spending 9 years in France. Big changes, eh? :)

Erm...I like writing, drawing, rocking out at my Yamaha Portable Grand keyboard, dancing, seakayaking (when I have the opportunity to!) and chilling with my trusty iPod. I also got into fanfiction last year - well, "phanfiction", really :) - when I rediscovered my love for the story of the Phantom of the Opera, which I saw in the Bristol Hippodrome when I was about six.

Music-wise, at the moment I'm into the band Hadouken!, any crazy dramatic film scores, and generally rock-y stuff. I also think Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer are geniuses. :D

Songs I'm quite enjoying at the moment: Rasputina's "Transylvanian Concubine" ("fangs ruin any cute pout..."), "The Olde Headboard" and "Antique High Heel Red Doll Shoes"; the "Call Me" cover by In This Moment; as well as "Let's Get Outta Here!" by Madina Lake.

I also do a bit of fanart on deviantART for PotO, and some bits and pieces of photography...but I'm a bit of an amateur so be warned if you're off to take a look!

I have been into creative writing literally since the years I learned to scribble my wobbly words onto paper. Apparently the fact that I read books rather than chewed them as a small child influenced this, haha. My very first story was written at the age of about six, and was something about babysitting going wrong, I think. Then at eight I was into enacting self-written stories that involved getting married to a vampire (looking back, I guess I really was an odd little girl).

From twelve onwards, however, I began writing up all my stories on the computer, even though I never really posted them anywhere. Even now, many years later, the ones I write usually end up fizzling out and littering my laptop, half-finished. But today, I think if I manage to get myself together enough to actually finish one or two decently I'll definitely post them here!

Places I've been so far: Greece (though I don't remember it), Spain, Bulgaria (my mother's Bulgarian, actually XD), Venice (so beautiful in winter!), Malta, Germany, and Scotland.

Places I want to go to: Scotland! Definitely. Sounds odd, but that's the place for me! And I'd love to go and see the USA one day. :D

Random trivia about me:

- I'm half Bulgarian, and even though technically Bulgarian is my second language, I speak French way better...:S

- I can read cyrillic! (Very slooowly...)

- I knew my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother. They were lovely people.

- My paternal great-grandmother (not the one I knew) was Irish and apparently had a knack for stories. :)

- My grandfather's on wikipedia! :D

- I went to school with the famous Polar explorer Shackleton's great-nephew and great-niece. The great-nephew was very tall and his sister was very violent in basketball, and both of them were in their last years of school.

- I was in the shock-wave area around a factory that exploded a while back! All the doors blew open and we had to stay inside all day in case there were some poisonous gases around...

- My Maths teacher in France was the brother of the bestselling author Elizabeth Noble, and he was absolutely brilliant.

- I have not yet been to Paris despite having lived in France for a very long time.

09/07/09:

Here I am back in the UK after nine long years, and to my surprise, in this scary ancient office of my grandfather's, there is a computer with BROADBAND. Whee! Temperamental English keyboard aside, this is far better than the old dial-up I used to have...

I'm not sure when I'll be able to post anything new up. I've already been given holiday homework from my new college, and IB is not going to be easy. At the moment, I'm reworking Just a Fan in the hopes of perhaps getting it published.

I hope I'll get time to post some more new things, though - recently there are so many little stories that are popping into existence all over my laptop. I'd better try and stick to one of them in case they try and take over the world. :)