About the Author

Name: Erin “Aywren” McManaway
Gender: Female
Age: 30-something
Interests: Fantasy Fiction Writing, Webcomics, Graphic Art, Web Design, Blogging, MMORPGs, Oldskool Video Gaming, Internet, Software, Computers & Technology

Writer

I have a degree in professional writing and work full time as a technical writer for a software company. At heart, I’m a fiction writer, focusing on the genre of fantasy, as I have ever since J.R.R. Tolkien’s world captured my imagination as a child.

I have successfully completed ten years of NaNoWriMo and currently have two online net novels:

Dreigiau – my original NaNoWriMo fantasy novel, spanning eight years of writing. I’m working on getting this self published (as you  may notice).

Runne — A sequel to Dreigiau, and my current on-going NaNoWriMo fantasy. It’s a series of shorter segments, rather than the large, epic novel format.

Coming of the Darkstar — a FFIV-based fan novel that I started writing when I was a teen, long before net access and the term “fanfiction” was known to me. The story has been a part of my net projects for a decade and finally found completion on Christmas Day of 2008.

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Webcomic Artist

I’ve been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. Though my style keeps developing and changing, there’s definitely an anime/manga influence to what I do. If I were pressed to answer what I enjoy drawing best, I would say that the heart of a picture is the emotion it conveys — so character expression and emotion is what I focus on most in all of my work.

I currently have two long-term webcomic projects, both which intermingle with the plotlines and characters of my writing projects listed below.

Wayrift: This was first posted on the net in March of 2001. It now has a pretty massive archive of materials, many characters and lots of friends/readers. It’s updated M/W/F pretty much without fail.

Shimmer: A little slower in story than Wayrift and a bit more experimental — you’ll see my style change drastically throughout the chapters. This one has also been around for a while and has its share of friends.

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Gamer Girl

Lord of the Rings Online

I played LOTRO starting at the very end of closed beta, on through open beta and the first month or so after retail release. I put it away for a while, just until the Moria expansion. Have been playing off and on ever since, along with Syn and other folks from the Sygnus.org site.

Guild Wars

I’ve been playing Guild Wars since a few weeks after its release — I did beta it on one of the open beta weekends, too. Syn and I run a guild there called the Wayrifters, which is mostly a group of friends IRL and folks from Sygnus.org.

All of my characters represent figments from my different stories. All of them are at various stages of level 20 with my Dervish being the official Main Character.

Guild Wars 2

I was there on pre-launch night, when we established a Wayrift [WAY] guild as a carry-over from the original Guild Wars game. Just as in GW1, my characters here represent figments from my different stories.

The Secret World 

I picked up TSW right after launch and really got into the darker, grittier and more story-oriented play in this game. Plus, I just like sticking it to some zombies. My main is a Templar on Arcadia and I am a member of the League of Monster Hunters.

Second Life 

I’ve been a resident of Second Life since 2004. I enjoy wandering around and exploring, but most of all, caring for my many breedable pets. In fact, I have a second blog I created just for them! You can check it out at My Second Life (With Pets).