Where to begin? I'm not quite sure.
You could start with some social-networking sites where I maintain a regular presence, like LiveJournal (yes, still!) and Twitter; or other Web 2.0 options where I can be found, such as Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace (yes, still!), and even Wikipedia and YouTube (but not Facebook, for a variety of reasons).
Otherwise, I normally tend to think of myself as a fairly straightforward person, but other people don't seem to see it that way. Apparently, I'm much more complex than I realise, so explaining myself could prove difficult.
Let's start with some simple facts.
My name is Edgar, as you know--though people tend to settle on addressing me as one of Ed, Eddy, or Edgar, regardless of how I initially introduce myself to them. No, I was not named after a distant ancestor, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar the Good Son from King Lear, or any other real or fictional Edgar whose fame predates my birth.
I was born and raised here in Winnipeg (a wonderful city despite the inclement weather), and I studied English and Film at the University of Manitoba. Although I love intellectual pursuits and could see myself pursuing graduate and even postgraduate work at some point in the future, I found myself afraid at times that I would end up trapped in the soul-numbing depths of academia. Certain professors who seem to have lost all the passion they may once have had for their chosen field did not help me feel any better about this...
I spent a lot of my university time outside of class socialising with the Cool Theatre People (despite the fact that I wasn't a Theatre student), becoming increasingly involved with the local Model United Nations Association, and hanging out with a group of friends that was simply dubbed The Table, referring to the table we all sat around (one that is no longer there, sadly) in a certain lounge on campus. They came from many different backgrounds and fields of interest, but I have any number of wonderful memories associated with them from that period in my life and I continue to value my friendships with all of them.
Around that time, I volunteered at the XIII Pan-American Games, which Winnipeg hosted, and I had a lot of fun being part of it. On a somewhat related note, I also had the opportunity whilst I was Down Under to volunteer at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, so if you caught a glimpse of someone in the crowd at the time who seemed to look an awful lot like me...well, it probably was. (You may be interested in my Quotes of the XXVII Olympiad to get a sense of what the latter experience was like on a personal level.)
I have various and sundry interests, if that wasn't obvious enough already (a quick look at my Amazon Wishlist should make it clear), and I tend to want to put my two cents in about all of them--much to the chagrin of many people I know who are caught unawares when I begin a rant. One of those interests which proved surprisingly popular online is fictional timelines, the pursuit of which has gotten me some media attention on multiple occasions.
As far as personal philosophy is concerned, I consider myself an equalist. It is my firm belief that all humans are fundamentally similar, and I do my best to help people see that the differences between them are ultimately not a barrier to communication and connection. To that end, some local and national causes I support regularly include Chez Stella, Indspire, PEN Canada, the Rainbow Resource Centre, and the Women's Health Clinic. Groups operating beyond Canada which I support include Amnesty International, GLAAD, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Planned Parenthood.
The most fulfilling thing I can accomplish is to successfully challenge people to re-evaluate their assumptions, and the principal means by which I hope to do that is through my writing. (I've always been an avid writer, which perhaps explains my early fondness for the Internet--no matter what I'm typing, the clicking of the keyboard feels safe and reassuring.) As it is, though, I am still that most common of entities, the aspiring writer, published professionially for the first time with my Star Trek: Enterprise short story "You Are Not in Space" in the anthology Strange New Worlds 10 from Pocket Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster), which can be ordered from both Amazon.com (even Amazon Kindle) and Amazon.ca. My innate geeky tendencies (and the practice of other Star Trek writers doing the same thing) led me to eventually follow that up with a set of annotations for the story.
My own frustration at the inadequacies of language occasionally prompts me to create new words and phrases, further serving to befuddle other people, while the same combination of innate geeky tendencies and wanting to challenge assumptions inspired me to compile a growing set of research statistics about polyamory.
Struck by a continuous sense of wanderlust, I've done a fair bit of travelling over the years which has given me the chance to see wonderful sights and meet many diverse people, pleasing me greatly. Nothing is so pleasing, however, as the time I spend with my friends.
Many of those friends are people I've met through media fandom in one form or another--either online or at various conventions. Such conventions almost always prove quite interesting (which is what I expect from them), and cons as a whole usually leave me with a few stories to tell the curious. The first con I ever attended was Keycon, a local science-fiction convention held over Victoria Day weekend in May, and being a regular attendee there provided the opportunity (amongst other things) for my first film appearance (in the independent short Starwatchers). Other local cons I've attended include Worldcon (when it was held in Winnipeg in 1994), Central Canada Comic Con, and Winnipeg Comic Con, which I continue to attend each year.
I didn't get to any con beyond the city limits until I attended Legacy (a Highlander convention) in Washington, DC in 2000. Having gotten a new sense of wanderlust this way, I later attended DragonCon and Valleycon in 2006 (with an eventual return to DragonCon in 2012, by which time it had grown considerably), and I finally became a con guest myself at Baltimore's Shore Leave to promote the publication of Strange New Worlds 10. Not satisfied with that, I attended another Worldcon in Toronto in 2003, then eventually made Worldcons a regular part of my convention planning by going to Dublin in 2019, Washington in 2021, and Chicago in 2022.
If I had the resources to travel even more often to attend cons elsewhere, I would.
Each July, I also spend a lot of time at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, which never fails to be a highlight of my summer, and I volunteered at the Fringe for over a decade. It provides me with exposure to all sorts of entertainment and culture, as well as the chance to meet and talk to creative people from around the world--not to mention fellow Winnipeggers, some of whom have become my friends as a result. (Have you sensed the general friend-making theme yet?) I love the Fringe so much, in fact, that my familiarity with and passion for it indirectly got me a gig writing theatre reviews (for the Fringe and beyond) as a Senior Contributor to The Charlebois Post.
Does that help, at least a little? I hope so. There is so much more I could say here, though I can't put words to it all. Those that know me have probably noticed gaps already, and no doubt they will let me know what I've missed.
Smack Dab in the Middle of the Blue