My name is Melinda. I am a 24 25 year old Midwesterner, an aspiring novelist, and a full-time freelance writer and blogger.

I love to travel. Though I have only been to 26 of the 50 US states, I have traveled overseas several times and have stood on four five continents in addition to North America. I lived in West Africa for seven months after I graduated from college, working for a non-profit humanitarian organization. Ironically, in spite of my many overseas travels, I have never been to Canada or Mexico.

I am an academic at heart, and crave knowledge every day. I love to study and learn about the world around me.  In college, I sought a bachelors degree in education because of the freedom it gave me to take classes in nearly every academic field.  But I have no desire whatsoever to teach, so I’m basically a total oxymoron.

I am a Christian. However, I have seen and been on the receiving end of enough poor behavior by “Christians” and “churches”. For that reason, I don’t like to be associated with the vast majority of the Western church. I hope I can be better than that. Occasionally I will blog about God or church-related issues, but I try not to blog about religious things too often.

I’m a crossword junkie.  I’m a teensy bit nerdy, so this suits me well.  I’m also a fan of other puzzles and games.  During college, I could get so mesmerized by a computer card game that I would forget to sleep.  Sometimes when I am procrastinating I will lose myself in a game.  I may have a serious addiction.

I love history and genealogy.  Most of the time, I watch history documentaries while I work.  It’s totally fascinating.  I live near one of the nation’s best genealogy libraries, and every couple of weeks, a friend and I go there for an afternoon to research our genealogies.

If you have any questions, I can always be contacted at melinda@melindamusil.com.