And figured out how to post something on it... here is an excerpt...

"The Dagger Chronicles

At a time in our lives, we all look back at pivotal points and reflect on how they changed us. I was thinking the other day on my life, and where I came from, how I got here. This is my story… The life and times of Rippen Dagger.

I was conceived from love. My father, Chase Antonelli, was apparently murdered shortly after I was conceived, and my mother, BeBe Pink, found she was pregnant with me after grieving his demise for several weeks. Due to her activities in the Syndicate, she kept her pregnancy quiet, fearing it would make her an easy target. She even took to speaking to me in her ever expanding stomach, in a whisper. She and Miguel Klein, her very good friend, named me Fred. They thought I was a boy. To this day, Miguel still calls me that. The Syndicate had found out about my mother’s pregnancy, and sent Asylum Bandit to terminate both me and my mother. The attack was unsuccessful, my mother was injured badly, and because of the swift actions of a beat cop named Benjamin Stoneage, we were saved. However, I was born early, and because of being born prematurely, I was born with a congenital heart problem called a ventricular septal defect. In other words, I have a hole in my heart. It sometimes hinders my stamina, and causes me to wind easily. On rare occasions, my lips turn blue and I breathe real fast. My mother named me Bella Elizabeth Pink- Antonelli, and I came crashing into the world amidst violence, pain and fear.

At any rate, after the ordeal that was my birth, my mother feared for our lives and couldn’t care for me. She placed me up for adoption, and I was adopted by a couple, Bernie and Alison, who took me in for the monthly stipend they received for my care. They spent the money on drugs and alcohol. I was cared for, but it was no picnic. At the tender age of 5, I learned to use a microwave, dial a phone, and use a remote control to operate the television. My older brother, who I knew only as Peep, was also adopted by this couple. He was a lot older than I, and I guess he felt sorry for me, because most of my meals came from him, and I often was dressed in his old clothes. When I was 4, my toddler clothes just didn’t fit anymore, and they tore and ripped easily. One day, I stood up and my t-shirt ripped, and Peep dubbed me Little Rip. From there, it became Rippen, and to this day, I am known as such.

When I turned 6, a woman came to the house, she was dressed very nicely, and she smelled like vanilla musk. Her name was Susan Chambers, and she was a social worker. I don’t know all the details, but she told me I was to be moving away, to live in Louisiana with my birth mother and her husband. And so, suitcase in hand, I left Peep, Bernie and Allison, and met my mother, BeBe Pink. We lived in a small house in Voodou, with a small army. Disembodied Hand, Miguel Klien, Deshaun Sarlo, Alco Gerstort, Alika Yue and a host of other family lived there with us, my mother and stepfather, Deaf. I loved Deaf. I never knew my father at that point, and Deaf was the first father figure I had that really cared about me. I remember as a small child being fascinated by his mask. I would stick my finger in the nozzle of his mask, placed there to drain his bloody wounds as they healed, and would hold my finger in there until he choked. We would laugh about it, and often, he would smear his own blood across my forehead, to remind me that blood didn’t always mean family. He meant a lot to me, and his departure from my life was one of many departures that would shape who I am today.

Chance came to live with us shortly after I arrived in Hathian, and he was, in every way, my brother. We fought like cats and dogs, as all children do, but we also connected on a different level. Yes, I was back with my mother. But the formative years of my life were spent wondering why she sent me away to begin with, and Chance understood that. There was never a discussion on it, just a nod of understanding when we did things that weren’t “normal” for children to do. We were coping, and we coped together. Soon after, Aleric and Arabelle and Alika were born. The babies fascinated me, their small toes, their deafening wails, their stinky diapers. I loved them, and pretended often that they were my dolls."