I hardly remember the small house on Hoover Street where I lived the first two years of my life; it was a block north of KCET Studios (apparently sold in 2011) but, when I was two years old, my parents, older brother, and I moved to Los Feliz, several miles closer to Griffith Park, where we shared a large and interesting house with my great-aunt. I've always considered myself blessed to spend the next decade living in a three-generation household until my Auntie May left this life. She was a fascinating woman and I may some day write up some kind of account of her, as known and loved by a small child. She was born in 1878 and had a college degree, which is amazing for anyone born in the 19th century but especially for a woman. She was a fine watercolor artist and had taught Latin in high school. When she died she left her property on Hoover Street, across from where I was born, to my father and later, as a young adult, I would rent the large back house with a my husand and a small community of friends; a number of years later after that marriage ended and I began to get my sea-legs back, I rented the front house on the same property with a roommate.

So now I have a grown son (highly recommended) from a high-school marriage (not recommended); Shannon married in 1997 and has kindly made me a grandmother (also highly recommended!!). I inadvertently gave up 17 years in a second marriage to an L.A. studio musician and found myself with an unexpected new life at a time many of my contemporaries finally settled down to raise late-born kids. I took my love of art, music, and film and studied the production end of the business at UCLA. In 1996 I produced an extremely low-budget movie called The Magazine with writer/director Sallie Seltzer and worked with writer/director Martha Cotton on her AFI - DWW (American Film Institute's Directors Workshop for Women) short in the summer of 1997, followed by a teaser for a television series.

Along with two friends I optioned Connie Willis' brilliant novel Doomsday Book and spent three years trying to get Paula DiSante's amazing script (hey, even Connie loved the adaptation) into production but to no avail: insufficient juice. phooey. I still fantasize about making that movie; it could be great.

I made a curious detour through the realm of psychology and the disciplines of Christian 'inner healing' and for a long, intense season became a rather odd magnet for a number of women suffering dissociative identity disorder, several of whom remain close friends. I recognized an ability to minister and an inability to charge money for it. Workwise, I've continued to create websites, do some freelance editing and publicity work, a little writing, and a lot of volunteer work for church, individuals in need, and the Mythopoeic Society where in my current role I help organize the annual conference, Mythcon, so I remain busy but under-employed.

I experienced a huge life disruption in the second half of 2013 when I moved from Poppyfields in Altadena to Escondido. After 34 years, this was one massive endeavor and the unpacking will take a good long time! It was exhausting but I'm really enjoying my new location, although I drive up to my Niños prayer group usually twice a month.

I've had a web-presence since before the turn of the century (heh, the turn of the millennium!) but within the last decade I've taken to creating websites using Notepad, html, and CSS. Being entirely self-taught the results can be interesting (definitely please let me know if you've got pages here in my site that refuse to load properly) I've been pleased to help some friends and associates with their websites, including First Nations artists and Bible teachers at Indigenous Messengers International, Resurrection Church North County, St. Jude's Anglican Church (now joined with St David's Anglican Church, and a tie-dye website for my high school reunion in 2011, as well as my own various sites and pages. If I can create something for you, don't hesitate to contact me! I can also work in WordPress, which is a powerful tool for running websites, especially sites with sales and more than one person updated the website, but I personally find them visually less interesting than the static sites I prefer to build.

I have also been doing a fair chunk of artwork, particularly on the computer, such as manipulating photos for Diana Glyer's wonderful book on Christian life and spiritual formation, Clay in the Potter's Hands and, soon, a workbook for groups using the book as a study. Playing with many of the same images since 2010, I've also created digital collage art for the companion calendar. For those of you interested in staying up to date with these projects, there's also a Facebook group for Clay in the Potter's Hands.

The rock doesn't roll in my life is Jesus because, when everything else comes crashing down around your ears, you gotta know the foundation is sound. It's great to finally be at a place where I can agree with the psalm: I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go unto the house of the Lord.' From 1994 until late 2013 that house was St. Jude's, a charismatic Anglican-flavored Episcopal church in Burbank. When I moved to Escondido in October of 2013, I joined Anglican Church of the Resurrection in San Marcos, now called Resurrection North County, in Vista . I also recommend highly the discipline of Bible Study Fellowship as a way to increase knowledge of the Bible; in my ever so humble opinion, {grin} a person is neither well-educated or well-informed without a solid knowledge of the Bible.

My first album project is still available on cassette (Dolby B, "At Long Last Lynn," a collection of ten original songs, including the oft-requested "If You Can't Live Without Me, Then Why Aren't You Dead?") and will one day be re-mastered for (do not faint!) CD. You can read more about it at Truly Maudlin Music and my publishing site, Moonbird Music; some songs have links to mp3 files where you can listen. I've also put together a few videos on YouTube, though one is dark.

The St. Jude's worship team put together a semi-spontaneous collection of songs in support of a friend's out-of-the-country wedding; it included my song, Shepherd Me, a worshipful and personal take on the much-loved 23rd Psalm. I also wrote House of Bread, a song cycle based on the book of Ruth from the Bible; I'm very proud of this work although it has yet to be recorded well.

In the meantime, I do the occasional 'filk concert' at science fiction conventions, usually regional events like Loscon, Condor, and Conjecture (another fine San Diego based SF con which ran for about a decade), and occasionally Westercon. But in 2006 I gave two concerts at L.A.conIV, the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon). In November of 2009, I was was amazed and honored to perform a couple of songs for the 75th Anniversary of LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society); there are some cool photos here, although possibly not visible to all. It was amazing and sobering to hear Dr. Jerry Pournelle say he was excited to see the first man walk on the moon - and he never dreamt he would also see the last man walk on the moon. I was glad I sang High Frontier.

I've been involved with The Mythopoeic Society since 1982, and served nearly 10 years on the non-profit organization's board of directors and, after a break of about 12 years, I am once again serving on the Council of Stewards as the Steward for Mythopoeic Conferences. The Mythopoeic Society is a literary organization focusing specifically on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams (three of the primary Inklings) and the genres of myth and fantasy in general. We encourage scholarship and we reward excellence, both in scholarship and new fiction, with the annual Mythopoeic Awards.

In addition to great scholarship via Mythlore and the Mythopoeic Press, there is also a high degree of focused play; in 1990 this included The 1990 NOT Tolkien Calendar which I spearheaded, and a very limited edition that is! One of the ongoing joys of the MythSoc, as it is fondly called, is its annual conference and, in addition to great papers and intelligent discussion, part of the joy of a Mythcon is the chance to play with far-flung friends.

A not-too-far-flung friend is Eleanor Farrell and the two of us, in a Mutt & Jeff pairing (large blonde and petite brunette) started a spoof of Siskel & Ebert's film reviews (anybody remember Gene Siskel? Or even the more recently deceased Roger Ebert...) for the 1992 Tolkien Centenary Conference's "ents" - a glorious weeklong event held at Keble College, Oxford, co-sponsored by The Tolkien Society and the MythSoc, incorporating Mythcon 23. Thus Lynn "Egrets" Maudlin and Ellie "Sizzling" Farrell reviewed the three non-existent film productions of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings allegedly released in the previous year, directed by Woody Allen (!), Oliver Stone, and Ingmar Bergman. The Bergman version used CGI to cast Gerard Depardieu as Frodo and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Sam; Sizzling Egrets presented a "clip"... Ellie lay motionless (except for the occasional spasmodic heaving of her rib cage as she stifled laughter), playing Frodo after Shelob's attack, while I performed Ahnold-as-Sam's "I'll be back" scene - check the novel; the dialogue is appallingly appropriate! Despite the international attendance (Finland, France, Russia, Italy, Australia, Norway and many more were represented), the audience "got" the film-review reference and roared with appreciation.

It was amazing to see how Peter Jackson's frustrating but visually wonderful interpretation of The Lord of the Rings utilized CGI in a more major way than we'd joked about, less than a decade earlier.

Sizzling Egrets wrote a "con report" for Mythprint, the monthly newsletter of the Mythopoeic Society, and reprised the 1992 performance for Mythcon 24 in Minneapolis. Sizzling Egrets came up with a new bit in 1995 for Mythcon 26 in Berkeley. SF author Tim Powers was the GoH and the dissing duo reviewed non-existent movies made from The Stress of Her Regard and Dinner at Deviant's Palace with the ever-popular "film clip" from Last Call. Sizzling Egrets also appeared at the C.S. Lewis Centenary in July of 1998 at Wheaton College in Illinois. You had to be there. Skewered were The Screwtape Letters: The Movie (purportedly edited together from outtakes of "The Devil's Advocate" with voice-over by John Cleese...), The Wreck of the Dawn Treader (imagine "Titanic" meets Reepicheep - oh, the humanity!), and the now infamous "film clip" from Ed Wood's long lost last film, discovered and finished by Tim Burton for release in glorious black and white: Malacandra Attacks!, complete with descending spaceships made of paper plates and wind-up animals... Definitely you had to be there (or get Arden to show you his videotape; of course, it shudders real good when the spaceship appears because he still hasn't learned how to laugh and shoot at the same time...). I was the treasurer and registrar, which kept me extraordinarily busy.

Sizzling Egrets: Back From The Grave made an appearance at Mythcon 32 during the interval before masquerade awards: "welcome the return of the intrepid film reviewers, Sizzling Egrets, who will analyze impossible new releases based on the works of Charles Williams." Their next posthumous appearance is overdue.

Another Mythcon classic, and somewhat hard to explain, are the Not-Ready-for-Mythcon Players. I'm sure there are lots of embarrassing photos out there but at Mythcon 41 in 2011 one of the segments spoofed Twilight; the absurdity of mature moi portraying the adolescent Bella with fellow Steward Lee Speth as the vampire, Edward --wearing sheets; sheets are an essential component of the Not-Ready plays-- well, enjoy the folly. Mythprint then-editor Jason Fisher looks on, in the guise of our author GOH Tim Powers. In a moment Gary will disrupt everything by appearing as Jacob the werewolf... (Sylvia, Gary's artist wife, made his 6-pack abs).


Mythcon 42 was held in Albuquerque, NM (another Mythcon first), in July 2011. Ellie Farrell and Emily Rauscher came up with a brilliant play for the Not Ready For Mythcon Players, building off Guest of Honor Michael Drout's amazing speech at opening ceremonies. Suffice it to say that it involved turning "little monsters" into "little critics" by the application of fascinators by Lady GaGaladriel of Canyon de Lothlorien.
 
 
Then there's the Mythcon food sculptures... just see what Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Neil Gaiman had to say about Mythcon food sculptures... Here's Mythcon 40's author GOH James Owen looking over the Bread Dragon and, if you can handle the thought of Mythies in Hawai'i, you'll find an example near the bottom of this page.

C.S. Lewis pen & ink drawing copyright by Patrick Wynne; used with his kind permission.
 

email: Lynn AT lynnmaudlin DOT com