Aviation
My raison d’être, and also my day job. I’m a pilot for an airline flying in Southeast Alaska (You could call me a bush pilot, but that typically conjures a different image than what I do). I also give flight instruction from time to time in the SF bay area. I used to spend time and money flying aerobatics for fun and have lots of time upside-down. Certificated flight instructor. Advanced ground instructor.
Ice hockey
I’ve been playing and reffing ice hockey for over a decade. I play high-level adult recreational, but I ref all levels including college and high-level competitive youth hockey.
Swordfighting
As a kid, I got into swordfighting fairly early, doing small jobs for a friend of mine who was a swordsmith and a salesman for a respected armorer. I earned my first sword and training before I was ten, and my first real job was competitive and staged live-steel broadsword/florentine/mixed weapon/mixed period fighting at various shows around the southeastern United States from the age of twelve. (I left school in the 7th grade)
I did it for almost six years, so I can help with pretty much any swordplay-related questions, and I can help vet combat scenes involving any combination of western-style weapons. I can help you avoid writing a story featuring twenty pound swords and people running around in suits of plate armor. Then again, maybe someone like me is the only one who’d notice anything wrong with that. Sigh.
Music
My parents are professional musicians and have been playing together for almost half a century now. I grew up playing music and singing with them, and have toured with them as well as played shows around the southeast, which was the second paying job I took, often at the same shows as the first, but in the evenings. ^.^
Alaska
I live and work in the amazing state of Alaska. I haven’t lived here very long, and I live in the Southeast part of the state, so I probably can’t help you with your dog-sled, 40-below, or polar-bear questions. However, I might be able to suss out relevant information faster than most due to what local knowledge I have. Also, if it involves flying in Alaska, you’ll definitely want to talk to me. ^.^
Motorcycles
Growing up without much money (Swordfighting, music and computer work in a small town collectively pay very little), I turned to motorcycles from an early age. Also, I like them better than cars. I’ve been riding—and combat commuting—since I was about 17, and have done some pretty fun stuff on two wheels, including a 46-hour coast-to-coast ride in ~20F temps in the middle of winter. (And riding through all manners of ice and snow on the way back). My experience is with sportbikes and sport-touring bikes, as well as a bit of racing experience.
Sailing
I sailed and raced sailboats for years (Merit 24, J/24, and J/109 mostly). Usually worked foredeck. Have often considered living on a boat, and may in the future.
Swamp
I grew up out in the swamps of northwest Florida, and used to go out for days—sometimes weeks—at a time camping by myself, living off the land, with a sword, a backpack full of books, and some basic tools. When I was 13-16. Can you imagine parents letting their kids do that today? But I digress. Anyway, the swamp was my home and its sounds, systems, scents, denizens, moods and motion I can always help with. (Though every swamp is vastly different from every other swamp! Big water river swamps can be pretty terrifying even to someone intimately familiar with backwater bayous when the rain comes.)
Southerners
If you use the word “Yall” (or “Y’all”, if you insist) as a singular, I won’t be kind.
Large-scale computer systems
Wait, what? Ok, so here’s the thing. I grew up poor. All I ever wanted to be was a pilot. Swordfighting and music are notably unreliable methods of making enough money for flight training, and after I finished my private pilot’s license I ran completely out of money. I was able to do one flight between when I finished my license and when I left Florida. What does a seventeen-year-old swamprat swordfighting seventh-grade-dropout musician from the Florida swamp do to earn money? Why move to the Bay Area of California and get a job as a unix systems administrator in the tech industry, of course.
That progressed over the course of my career to unix systems architect to the nebulous ‘cloud systems architect’ title I finished my career with almost twenty years later. My strongest area of expertise, sadly, and the career that has made me more money than I’ll ever come close to seeing again. If you don’t cringe at the scene in Jurassic Park where she says “It’s a Unix system! I know this.”, then please give me a poke before you decide to write a scene about your clever hacker wtfpwning a system. I might just be able to suggest an exploit that will give your book some tech cred among discriminating readers rather than a hackneyed cliché that will alienate your tech-savvy readers.
American civil war
Oh yeah. I was also a civil war re-enactor in my swordfighting days. Artillery and infantry, and occasionally dismounted cavalry… which is pretty much yellow-trimmed infantry with revolvers or carbines. North and south. I got really into it for a long time, did a lot of living histories, etc… Probably not the most popular genre in furry fiction, but … just in case…
Second world war (esp. PTO naval and ETO aviation)
Did I ever mention that I read a lot as a kid? Fiction, science fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction… but one of my biggest guilty pleasures was reading WWII blow-by-blow accounts of the naval battles when I was in the single digits. (Which is why I could tell the history teacher she was absolutely wrong, which is why (among other reasons) I left school in the 7th grade… oh well!)
At any rate, that progressed to reading about aviation, US fleet sub operations, U-boats and tech, and … well, a whole lot more about aviation. Asking me about WWII infantry won’t yield much beyond the basics, but ask me about the difference between USS Darter and USS Baleo and watch my eyes light up. ~.^
Diving
This is only an afterthought. I’m sure there are many who know the subject better than I do, but for a while as a kid I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist and study cetaceans… so I managed to volunteer for some marine research positions, some of which involved diving. I haven’t done a lot of it, and when I moved out to California I did five or six dives before deciding that the water was just too dang cold. I live in Alaska now, so… but I can help with obvious errors, and—as with some of the things above—I’m equipped to possibly research things a little more quickly than some might.
Sex
I’m a fox. Pick something at random off the list and I’ve almost certainly done it. I’m not sure how that can be useful, but I’ve seen others list it as an area of expertise, so…
Anyway, please feel free to poke me! It may take me a bit to get back to you, but I WILL get back to you. I love to help when I can.
-Fox