What

S0 you’re working, or trying to work, and you keep falling asleep, or getting up for a snack, or remembering that you have to put the laundry in the dryer, and you can’t quite get yourself started. So you figure, I’ll just work on something else for a little while, something completely unrelated. I know, I’ll write about my pathetic onion harvest, or flamboyant cuttlefish, or I’ll work on that poem I’m wrestling with, or something else again, and your brain gets to clicking and suddenly your description of the ridiculous little onions seems to border on the celestial and you get that jazz, that razz, that deadline pizazz, and you go back to your project and, baby, a rhinoceros could storm the room right now and you wouldn’t notice because you are jammin’! And you stay up too late running on nothing but adrenaline and the clicking of your own brain, and the next day you’re not even tired.

And the onion thing turned out pretty well too.

And you hand in that gorgeous project (“Wow. This is gorgeous.”) and you get your paycheck and you toss your notes and tidy up… except there’s that onion thing. Hmm. Poor homeless little onion essay, looking up at you with its teary little eyes, “What about me? I’m not so celestial anymore?”

So that’s what this is: a home for the celestial onion essays, the castoffs of my clicking brain: poems, essays, pieces of mystery novels, things that might end up as parts of other things, things too odd to name… all here for your reading ecstasy.

Who

And who is this woman, this Deborah Bancroft?

I am a writer. A technical writer by day (and a good one too, if I do say so myself…) and novelist/essayist/poet/hack by night. My current projects include a mystery novel, a young adult novel, an ongoing effort to get all of my poems into electronic form (let WordPress store ’em!) and articles about my random little obsessions. Like onions. And flamboyant cuttlefish.

I am also a singer. Once upon a time I was a coloratura soprano: I sang Mabel in the Pirates of Penzance (and in the original key, thank you very much Linda Ronstadt!) My voice has aged… uh, matured… and deepened into a more natural-sounding alto. I can still pull off the classical pieces if held at knifepoint, but I am currently in love with the cool jazz vocalists of the 50s: Peggy Lee, Chris Connor, June Christy, Peggy Lee… oh, and also Peggy Lee. (God, I love Peggy Lee.)

I live in one of those sleepy little New England towns with my husband, our two gorgeous, brilliant children, and our two stupid dogs. OK… only one of them is actively stupid. But they work as a team.

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By way of disambiguation, there are any number of Deborah Bancrofts I am NOT…

Most of the time I am NOT this babe, Deborah Bancroft, New York socialite. She’s all over the place. I’m sure she is a very nice person… but she’s messing with my Google rank!

I am also NOT any of these Deborah Bancrofts:

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I AM this one, but…

what is that look on my face?  That’s me with Steve Safran… who is apparently talking some bulls#*t. That’s my husband in the background, pretending not to know us.

And here Safran has made me laugh. (I know, amazing huh?!)

That’s pretty much me, right there.

Except… not so fuzzy.