Hi Everyone! This post is basically a rundown of what I’ve been up to for the past ten years or so. I decided that if I was going to be offering you advice about how to deal with your personal problems, you had a right to know what sorts of things I’ve experienced in my life. I’m not going to go into exhaustive detail, just give you the highlights. When appropriate, I’ll share tidbits with you about my own childhood and adolescence, and if you have specific questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. I don’t believe in hiding the details of my life. I’ve made lots of bad decisions and learned lots of hard lessons, but they all helped to bring me to where I am today, which is a pretty great place.

First, for those of you don’t know me, my name is Pat Nelson Childs, known to my friends as Patrick. I am 41 years old and currently live in Western Maine, though sometime next year I hope to be moving to Seattle. I am a Fantasy & Sci-Fi writer by trade. I published my first novel this past year and will be publishing book two this fall. You can read all about them on my website (www.samersguild.com).

Before I was a writer, I was a computer support technician. The story of how I got from being a computer technician to being a writer is a bit complicated. In order to tell it, I have to also share with you the fact that I have been HIV+ since 1996. When I first tested positive, I handled it like many people do – I just ignored it and hoped that it would just go away. I had a long-term boyfriend who was also poz, so I didn’t really have to deal with the dilemma of having to tell guys I dated and being rejected, and I didn’t get sick right away, so I just went on with my life as though everything was normal. That worked out okay for several years. The hubby and I moved from Ft. Lauderdale, FL to Ann Arbor, MI and so that I could take a job at the home office of Borders Books. I made some great friends there and really liked the job and the company.

Then things started to go wrong. First I broke up with my boyfriend of five years. That’s a long story that I won’t get into here and now. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t a happy time. Soon after that, things began to happen at work that made it not such a great place to work anymore, so I was unhappy at home and at work. So I decided that I needed to make a big change. What I wound up doing was giving up my job and my apartment and going to live in Prague with my faithful cat, Raja. My plan was to teach English while I learned Czech and then find a job with some computer company over there. I found a place to live there and settled down to find a teaching gig. Well, I went at the wrong time of year and there were no openings at any of the language schools, so I wound up essentially taking a four month vacation, which I pretty thoroughly enjoyed. Prague is arguable the most beautiful city in the world. I’ll post some pictures of it soon. I highly recommend it as a great alternative to any European city. Anyway, four months after I got to Prague, my attitude about my HIV situation came back to haunt me. Turns out that my immune system had been steadily declining for the past several years until I essentially had no immunity left. I got a bad case of PCP (AIDS pneumonia) and had to come back to Maine to live with my folks while I got treated. I thought I would be able to get well and go back to Prague in a few months, but I was actually so sick by the time I finally was admitted to the hospital that most of the doctors didn’t hold out much hope of my making it through the weekend. I frankly didn’t think I would either.

Well, as you can see, I did. Thanks to massive doses of antibiotics and breathing treatments and a few other modern medical miracles and a lot of stubbornness on my part, I survived and began to get better. It took me about two years to get back up to my present state of health, which is good except for intense chronic fatigue and pain in all my muscles and joints. My HIV is under control now, and my immune system is in good shape, but I can’t work a regular job anymore due to the pain and fatigue. I went on Social Security and tried to figure out something I could do within the physical limitations I now had. At one point, I was digging through my box of old poetry and stuff, and I came across the outline for this Fantasy trilogy that I had written back when I was 20 years old and living on Cape Cod. I had tried back then to actually write it, but I just didn’t have the writing skills or the self discipline back then to really pull it off. But I still really liked the ideas and characters in it, so I decided that I was going to sit myself down and give writing another try. This past November, a little under a year after I started writing it, Orphan’s Quest was published. At about that same time, I started looking at gay youth websites. I not only wanted to get the word to them about my books, I also wanted to see if there was some way that I could help them out, either with their writing or with just the troubles of being a gay (lesbian, bi, tran, queer, questioning) teenager or young adult. Working with queer youth is something I’ve always wanted to do. My own adolescence was a very lonely and miserable time, but I got through it alive and reasonably sane, and ever since then I’ve wanted to try and find a way to help others get through it as well. Jeff was kind enough to offer me this forum on Oasis, so I decided to combine my two principal passions – writing and helping queer kids.

Thus The Clubhouse was born. In this forum, I’ll be offering some writing tips and doing some mini-projects. You can post your writing here. The difference between posting it here and posting it in your own journal is that I will definitely critique it if you post it here, whereas if you only post it in your journal, there’s no guarantee that I will. In fact, now that this forum is up and running, and the Samers Guild Project is underway, it’s unlikely that I’ll have much time to do much commenting in other journals or forums anymore. The same is true with advice. So if you want my input on your work or need some advice from me on a personal issue, you should definitely post it in here. Others can still chime in, just like in the other forums, but by posting it in The Clubhouse, you can be assured that you’ll get an answer, advice or a critique from me. Now, there are many things that I am not an expert in. For example, as far as writing goes, I consider myself a fairly good poet, and have been writing poetry all my life, but I’ll admit right now that I really don’t know much about critiquing poetry. So while I’ll be happy to give you my layman’s opinion of your poems, I’m frankly not likely to be able to offer any great or profound insights on it. In the realm of personal problems, I’ve been through a lot, but not everything. I will never pretend that I know something when I don’t, and if your issue is something that I don’t feel comfortable advising you about, then I will point you toward someone or someplace that is better equipped to help you out. One thing I am very good at it finding appropriate resources for people who need them.

Well, this has been a very long post but, in my opinion, an essential one. For this forum to be successful, I feel that it’s important for you to know what I’ve been through and to trust in the fact that I care very much about all of you and will do everything in my power to help you both with your writing and with your problems, whatever they may be. I appreciate you taking the time to read this. Your comments and questions are welcome. I’ll be making other posts periodically about issues I think are important and about the field of writing as well, but basically this forum is yours to do with what you will and I’m here to help you. With that, I hereby declare the Clubhouse open, and I look forward to the opportunity to make both your writings and your lives a little bit better.