Biography
In a rash attempt to summon the Muse, Robyn Parnell once saw the profile of the love child of Emily Dickinson and Chuck Norris formed by the dust bunnies under her computer monitor. She chugged a caffeinated, fiber-rich potion until the image faded.
Robyn Parnell was born and bred in Santa Ana, California. She graduated from the University of California at Davis with an oxymoronic degree in Criminal Justice and then somehow, inexplicably, forgot to go to law school.
Ms. Parnell has, at various times in her working life, served hamburgers at Disneyland, filed agricultural periodicals for a university library, edited classified advertising for CPAs, installed computer systems in radio stations, assisted in a private OB/GYN medical practice and in women's health care clinics...anything to avoid The Call to write fiction. The Call, however, would not be denied. Parnell "retired" from her career as a Reproductive Health Educator (no one was listening, anyway) in order to write.
Parnell is a member of the Author's Guild and the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators. She has published short stories, a book of short fiction, a children's picture book, a juvenile novel, essays, poems, a theatrical play...yet somehow she neglected to pen even one tale about irresistibly seductive but celibate, immortal blood suckers and their underage inamoratas. Her vampire-free works have appeared in over ninety books, magazines and journals, several of which have not filed for Chapter 11 protection. Her one foray into songwriting — a C & W-flavored ballad, "If You Can't Live Without Me Then Why Aren't You Dead?" — mercifully remains unpublished and unrecorded.
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BIOGRAPHY, The Sequel.
This time, use your Masterpiece Theatre intonation. At least try to sound more respectful of the awwwwthorial life and those of us who devote ourselves to serious lit-'r-chure.
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BIOGRAPHY, The Sequel. Part Two: Bio Harder
Author's bio notes? My sorry life should be of no matter. Like any marginally competent writer of "fiction" (ha!), I've vowed to disregard the quaint concept of privacy and have chosen to plagiarize the personal histories of others — specifically, my beloved family, friends, and associates — for hackneyed plot devices and cheap laughs.
Nevertheless, one and all, far and wide, commoners clamor for the amazing story of ME.
I am the second of four children and the middle daughter; thus, the highly esteemed science of birth order psychology destined me for either radical gender role usurpations or middle management in Tupperware® Sales. Orphaned in a tragic Slip 'n Slide® accident, I was raised by ospreys, and left the nest at age 38. I live and write in Hillsboro, Oregon (city motto: "Okay, we're not Portland, but at least we're not Chula Vista."). I share my life with one husband, two successfully fledged young adult offspring, too many cats, and innumerable free range house spiders and dust bunnies. My blood type is a deep, viscous red, with a bouquet of sun-ripened Marionberries. I like walking along the roses at sunset and always stop to smell the beach. I'm afraid of anything Less Filling or New and Improved, and of having a supercilious award title ("Winner of The Condoleeza Mae Brown Faulkner Prize for Fiction in Support of Social Change and Diverse Personal Hygiene") appended to my name...and also of having to pronounce words like supercilious in public.
In my leisure time I rehearse my NEA grant refusal speech, annoy PETA members by campaigning for the extinction of the spineless weasel, and consider obtaining professional help to enable me to compose a more pretentious and self-aggrandizing Author's Biography. When not working on innumerable fiction projects I study state and federal Articles of Incorporation, in hopes that by December 2025 I will have opened the doors to "A Goddess in Every Garage," the nation's first combination feminist political consulting firm and auto repair shop.