FAQs are dubious. You're not really sure if the questions cited are really frequently asked. Certainly they aren't here. So I'm renouncing the whole FAQ concept and just coming straight out and telling you about me and this Website.

Writer and Arranger

My name is Jeff LaSala and I'm a freelance writer with an irrevocable interest in speculative fiction, with a strong leaning toward fantasy and sci-fi. I have a day job, and it's a pretty good one, but my passion is storytelling. Creating. This website aims to showcase some of that, mostly through entries in the Writing section. This is my "night job," and it's a lot of what fuels me.

• " Click here to see my WotC interview from March of '08.

My wife (see picture below) is Marisa. We've been married 4 years now. She's the bestest, my own Argentine mermaid gypsy. And she's fervent about many things—mostly about family, God, and theatre. She is my companion, my counterpart, a soul that makes me feel like my daydreams are permissible.

Ashlock? Huh?

Anyone who's ever encountered this word will have wondered, if only for a moment, what the heck this word means. It started off meaning one thing but now it's evolved. It's a name, one personal to me and grounded in my own adolescent daydreaming. And it's been my online pseudonym for a very long time.

Tied into that is the root word ash. As a color, it can be black, white, or grey. It is a tree whose resilient wood is often made into various implements, such bats or bows. In Norse mythology, the first man was formed from an ash tree. The great World Tree, Yggdrasil, that connects all other worlds, was said to be an ash.

Its origin: Ashlock was a character in a novel I started to write in my teenaged years, named for his lock of ash-black hair. I think he's unwritable at this point, since he idealized for me everything I wanted to be. Incidentally, I'm told the name sounds hilarious in German.

This Website

This is merely a place where I can post news (weblog-like), muse virtually, promote myself and my friends, and generally serve as a nexus of online communication. Yeah, it's my website, so it's definitely biased, but in time I hope to keep expanding this thing beyond me. My vision for it is very loose at the present time. What will happen here?

• Rush (the band, not the guy) will be quoted.
• Opinions will be given.
• Fun will be had.

I don't intend to take this website too seriously at this point in time. I hope to put up articles, link a heck of a lot, and enjoy a Web presence I've not had much before.

So that's all you the explanation you get! Move along!