Jessica McFarland

When I’m in company, and someone asks me where I’m from, I say, “Chicago, Illinois”.

This is what Chicago looks like.

1. Batavia isn’t really Chicago, but part of the sprawling mass of suburbs surrounding the city.
2. I only lived there between the ages of 7 and 17, and rarely go back.

It would be more correct to say, “I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago”…but that doesn’t sound as cool.
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For those of you who may not know me, and for those who do but would like to know more, I’ve assembled a list of little-known facts about myself, in lieu of an ‘About the Author’ page (which I really couldn’t be bothered with).

• The first CDs I ever owned (as I began to phase out cassette tapes, if you can remember those) were: The Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, The Andrew Lloyd Weber Premiere Collection, and a collection of America (the band)’s greatest hits.
• I need glasses to see anything further than about 8 inches away from my nose. I lost interest in contacts and have never had any interest in non-life-saving surgery, so there ya go. Glasses.
• Early childhood fears include the moon, digital clocks with the time on the hour (double zeros), and the state of California. (This last one is the combined fault of The Eagles and the kid at school who swore up and down that there was a hotel in California that they wouldn’t let you leave.)
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Today someone asked me if I was Canadian (again).

The asker, who was a very sweet woman, went on to say that she had guessed Canada because I had a very “gentle American accent.” I explained that I was from the States, but having lived here in the UK for nearly four years, my accent has changed (along with my spelling).

The unspoken underlying assumption being, of course, that Canada is somehow the midway point between the US and the UK. Purple mountains’ majesty plus Her Majesty the Queen; the universal right to health care plus driving on the right hand side; British Columbia. So because my accent is a combination of North American and British, many people average the two and guess Canada.

Of course, these people probably haven’t spent much time amongst real Canadians, or the fact that I don’t say ‘aboot’ when I mean ‘about’ and end every other sentence with ‘eh?’ would be a dead giveaway.
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(And this probably says an awful lot about me:)

Lying in bed after a night playing musical theatre reeds, getting sleepy, one light on, glass of rosé wine, reading Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Learning about the efforts of the people of the planet Terminus to re-establish technology after the fall of the Galactic Empire. Enjoying the author’s projections about what technology will be like thousands of years into the future (atomic power and ultrawave; I guess mobile phones were already a thing of the past).
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