Joined when I was 46. American. Lived for 30 years in Tucson, AZ. [I wonder if I ever saw ucsbdad while I was there and just didn't recognize him!]
I'm now living in Buffalo, NY as of 2015 because of being legally blind (thank goodness for text-to-speech and JAWS).
The first, most important, thing you should know is that my absolute favorite character (and actor) on TV or in movies is my Avatar.
I love Castle and Castle Crossovers and Castle and AU Castle. And FIREFLY! (Oh, and by the way, I WANT MORE CASTLE and ABSENTIA!)
I also love Forever, The Librarian (both movies and TV), Buffy/Angel, Star Trek, Stargate, Farscape, as well as the MCU and DECU movies.
I've been a Beta a bit, but haven't tried my hand at a story yet. (although I do have an idea for a Halloween multi-chapter).
I prefer longer stories of at least 10,000 words, but the bigger the better. I especially like the way degunther or greygoose70 did their stories. ALL in one posted chapter !!! Plus, greygoose70 is similar in that he/she posts the entire story at once (even if there are multiple chapters).
As a way of providing background to this next bit, I prefer to save all the stories I like from here from as ePub eBooks. That way, I can read them even when I'm offline. For example, since my tablet only has Wi-Fi on it, this comes in VERY handy if I'm out and about. And because of creating those eBooks, I like to give my eBooks their own unique covers.
Now some authors here do go and create images for their covers or else they'll have someone else do it for them. I love Lord of Kavaka's covers!
But I've also noticed that some authors will just use their own author avatar as their book covers since that's how it is by default unless you assign something different to a story. And of course, some won't have any book cover (or avatar) at all.
And ultimately that's fine. We're all here pretty much for the stories, not pretty pictures (even if some of them are really pretty). Still, I don't think my ePub eBooks would be "right" unless they had covers that seemed to match what the story is about.
Thanks all for writing the great stories you do, and reading this bit! (and viewing!)