Daoine

Daoine. Pronounced "Dee-nah". From the Daoine Sidh, which refers to the folk of the "fairy" mounds of Celtic mythology. (Sidh is pronounced "shee")

When I first chose daoine as an Internet username / nickname, I expected to be asked often what it meant and how to pronounce it - but in more than five years, only one person has ever asked for the pronunciation, and no one has asked about the meaning. Perhaps more people are aware of Celtic mythology than I first thought.

I answer to all sorts of variations and misspellings: Dao; Dee; D; and "D mate" are a few of the better ones.

Elle is another nickname (pronounced as in the letter "L"). I also answer to El, Ellie, or Ella, if you really have to.

My real name is Elsa, but please don't call me that. Only people who write me cheques or receipts get to call me Elsa - so that they put the right name down on the documentation!

So, who am I?

I'm a storyteller. I'm currently writing children's fantasy books, but I previously started with adult crime fiction, and have an adult science fiction novel on the backburner. I'm still a child at heart - I'm trying to write the story that I most wanted to read when I was young. It's elusive; I haven't found the exact story yet, but I have found some pretty good ones so far. When I need a break, I read or watch other people's stories. I'm addicted to fiction.

I'm also pretty good at telling stories off the cuff too (although a bit out of practice) and apparently I do good voices when I read aloud, especially Terry Pratchett books which are my hubby's favourite.

And, for an amateur, I'm a fair to middling artist. This is my relaxation mode when I need time away from words. The image above is my latest work - a male King Parrot, like the one sitting on my hand at the start of this lens (acrylic on canvas).

I live in Australia and I was brought up with UK English spelling and grammar and so this is what I use for my lenses. I am well aware that the main readership on Squidoo hails from the United States and I am also aware that in SEO terms UK spellings are worse off (although Google is pretty clever at catering for UK terms).

I love the fact that we have a global community here, and one of the ways it stands out in the sometimes anonymous cyber world is in the different ways we use the same language simply because we come from different parts of the world. So I don't want to try and blend in and serve my readers the spelling they expect, creating the illusion that we're all in the same country. It broadens everyone's worldview when we come across unexpected differences and stop to savour them.

Yup, that's what I said. I gave birth in the comfort and serenity of our home earlier this year and I'm planning to do it again in a couple of years' time.

"But what about the pain?" is the question I get asked all the time. And I think that's a great title for a lens on the subject. When I get my birth story written I'll share it on a lens and tell you why giving birth at home is less painful than giving birth in a hospital, even (especially) without "pain relief" drugs.

I can say that I had a bout of severe food poisoning many years ago and that episode was ten times more painful than birthing without pain relief...

Natural birth is amazing!

I joined Squidoo in August 2006 with my first lens "Make Your Own Harry Potter Wand". I followed that lens with more ideas for making Harry Potter accessories and other Halloween costumes, including Pirate Costumes.

In April 2007, Megan Casey emailed me and asked me to be one of the newly established Squid Angels, blessing good lenses and keeping an eye out for spam. I served as a Squid Angel from May 2007 to April 2008.

And in March 2008 I reached the goal of becoming a Giant Squid, and then I upped the ante and became a Top 100 Giant Squid in July 2008.

In October 2006 my "Pirate Costumes" lens was chosen as Lens of the Day, and reached the Top 50 for Lens of the Year for 2006.

"Make Your Own Quidditch Game" was awarded a Purple Star on
12 June 2009.

I'm still grouping my lenses into "Lens-Subographies" - in the meantime you can visit them all here.

Unless otherwise indicated, content of all my lenses are copyright © Elsa Neal, 2006-2009. All rights reserved.