Artemis Smith Speaks for Herself

I was born in Rome, Italy, of Austrian-Norwegian parents, and I am a Baronness, my family originating in Transylvania, where Dracula and Carmilla camped. I am 25 and have been in the U.S. 19 years, having escaped most of World War II. My one memorable experience in Europe was the time that I was bitten on the nose by a beautiful white peacock in one of the parks outside Rome this may have been a good augury, in the old classical tradition

At prosent, I live with my roomate, Billie, in a small apartment which also serves as our office. To have been together nearly five years and have two cats, both female, and both queer. We support ourselves through advertising and graphic arts accounts that we service in our own agency, called Artemis Associates, and also through my writing. ODD GIRL is the first novel I have sold, and Beacon Books has just bought a second which will be roleased some time this fall. Billie also writes, but her

novel is not completed as yet.

ODD GIRL is only partially autobiographical.

Actually,

my past has been more colorful and more diversified than Anne's. I started very young trying to make a career in the theater, acted in a few plays, and then became a nightclub singer for a while nothing very successful, but it flung me into the over-sophisticated world of the theater where the norm of behavior was like that of Both in my book, and I conformed closely to those standards for two years. After that, I decided to leave the theater and concentrate on my writing

an urge which began when I was three and composed my first poem which, translated, goes something like this:

I look up to smell perfume with my eyes

For the stars are the flowers of the skies.

Since both my parents were creative, and my mother was a well known painter, every gem I have ever uttered has be en diligently prcserved.