 Through these successes, though, her love was chiefly for Laconia and its residents (past, present, and future). What started out as an extremely elaborate version of imaginary friends evolved to a Cinderella story if the prince were actually a contract. The fairy godmother, Sally Odgers, she met at Fanstory.com. The award-winning, amazingly prolific Tasmanian author, wordsmith, teacher, and manuscript assessor provided Donaya with advice, encouragement, and eventually a letter of recommendation. Now she is her primary editor at Eternal Press and a mentor without equal. "Donaya" is taken from the Pali Sanskrit word for "daughter", pronounced "DAWN-ah-yah", and it is "HAY-mond", not "Hammond".
She attends college in Virginia and spends winter and summer vacations wherever her parents happen to be living at the moment. Her Thai is fluent but barely shy of being illiterate (she can read road signs in Thailand with some strain, children's books with help and agony). She enjoys fencing sabre, but almost always loses a bout. Her singing is better than her feeble attempts at athletics but nothing particularly distinguished. She identifies herself as having Bipolar Disorder that usually doesn't prevent her functioning at a high level, though it is sometimes necessary that she be given accommodations. Raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by her father, despite having a Buddhist mother, she now claims ideological kinship with the Unitarian Universalists despite her rarely going to the meetings - she adores the local congregation but simply has no convenient mode of transport. Her greatest fear is driving a car. Her greatest wish is that love will turn out, in the end, to have been enough. |