My name is Scott Parkin. I live in Santaquin, Utah (about a third of the way down, and right in the center of the state). I'm married (17 years so far) and have 5.87 kids (last one due in December), 2.75 cats (one's just too scrawny to qualify as a whole cat), 7 fish (fully formed and complete), and one wife (though we do have the Rocky Ridge polygamist community just down the street).

I work as a product manager for an enterprise software company and spend a lot of time on the road visiting customers in exotic locales such as Beijing (last year), Berlin (this year), Belfast (next month), and Omaha (last month).

I also write stories, essays, pop criticism, reviews, and blogs. I've sold more than 30 short stories, and have published more than 200 pieces in a wide variety of venues. I'm currently in the process of starting up a new Mormon publishing company--more on that as it progresses.

I've been involved with AML for twelve years since a friend told me about AML-List and I made the leap to the larger organization. I've served as coordinator for the AML awards, and generally try to help out how I can. For better or worse I'm famous for using a huge number of words to say almost nothing, and still qualify as one of the top three total posters over on AML-List with well over half a million words in ten years of posts.

I'm a firm believer in the power of literature to enrich our lives, expand our minds, and build our humanity. I read, write, and teach writing, and I believe that the experiences of Mormonism are more than worthwhile fodder for exploration in literature, some of which should be written for all audiences and some of which should be inside literature for us and by us. It's thought and production all along that continuum that will help us become the unified people we ought to be.

Coming soon--The Scotted Line, a blog on literature and Mormon thought by Scott Bronson, Scott Parkin and assorted guest Scotts to be named later.

Congratulations!!!!! Glad you got to the hospital on time. I recently got an email from my old boss describing his harrowing adventure delivering his wife's baby in their kitchen because they couldn't get out the door faster than their new baby apparently. :)