User:Ovationaangel

Angel Propps is an LGBTQ activist and educator as well as a multi-published writer of romance, poetry, horror and nonfiction. She also works as a freelance writer. She has served on the board of several conferences, including SouthEastLeatherFest and contributed to the Women's Leather History Project which is on view at the Leather Archives and Museum by interviewing nearly four dozen women during the year she carried the working title of Women's International Leather Legacy. Angel is an out femme, a vocal survivor of childhood abuse and a staunch supporter of same-sex rights.

Her writing has earned her many nominations and several awards. Her story Back to Square One appeared in the Samois Anthology Award winning Lipstick Lovers, Xcite Publishing(1). That same year her short story Wild, Like Honey which appeared in the Ravenous Romance produced anthology Dangerous Curves, was also nominated for the John Preston Award.(2) That particular anthology centered on female characters who are larger than the typically media sanctioned erotic heroines. More recently her short story The Daddy I Didn't Know I Needed appeared in the Lambda Literary Award winning anthology Wild Girls, Wild Nights(3). The story won her good reviews for her explorations of butch/femme vulnerability.(4) While she is most known for her romance and erotica works she is a literary writer and poet of some note. Her poem Schoolgirls,Broken earned her good reviews(5) and her poem Riot Grrl Memory appeared on the feminist magazine and website s/tick. She had two poems published in ImageOutWrite's inaugural edition and three of her poems appeared in quiet, spread out over three separate issues. She will also be featured in the Voices Project with a poem called Rowhouse In An Empty Town.

Her horror writing has also been widely recognized. Her short story The Time Hangs heavy originally appeared in the South Africa-based online magazine Something Wicked before going to into the print anthology also put out by the magazine. Her story A Quiet Corner of Town was accepted into {{Fear]] by Crooked Cat Press and the proceeds went to charitable causes. She also appeared in the Soup of Souls anthology as well as various others.

EARLY LIFE
Angel's father "Bubby" returned home from Vietnam suffering from what was then termed shellshock. After his alcohol-fueled rages turned physical Angel's mother Carol, who would later adopt the name Stacy, left him, taking her four toddler aged children with her. They moved into a small house in Columbus, Ohio and Stacy worked two jobs to support her children.

Soon afterwards Stacy met her second husband, Ben, a former military man. The family began to move across the country: traveling from San Jose,California to New Port Richey,Florida in search of a better life.

Eventually they settled in Vine Grove,Kentucky where Ben worked as a game warden on Fort Knox. Stacy worked cleaning offices at night while attending cosmetology school during the day. Their first home was a cinderblock house next to a quarry and it was there that Angel began writing as a way to escape the grinding poverty and the abuse of her stepfather. The family moved to a larger home and Angel published her first poem at the age of 9 in a book put out by the school district. Despite the promise she showed in writing and other schoolwork Angel was so withdrawn that her teacher attempted to have her removed from the classroom and placed in classes for learning disabled children. The incident so traumatized Angel that she refused to speak in class for nearly four months, writing everything down or simply ignoring the teacher instead, which led to disciplinary action from her teacher.

Angel would later chronicle the abuse she suffered at Ben's hands in the anthology Dear Sister, released by [[AK Press}}. In her letter she describes an attack by her stepfather that occurred at the house that the family lived in in Vine Grove although the town itself is not named.

Vine Grove is also the setting for Thin Ice, an upcomingf/f romantic suspense novel that Angel penned.

Eventually Ben rejoined the military and the family moved again. In Colorado Springs,Colorado Angel attended James Monroe Elementary. It was there that her sixth grade teacher Mr. King introduced her to the concept that the stories she wrote could become a career and also to vegetarianism which she practiced off and on throughout her life before embracing it finally and fully in 2002.

In Columbus, Georgia she briefly lived on Stark Avenue, right down the street from the childhood home of Carson McCullers. Angel became a huge fan of the writer, and through her found her own voice in horror fiction.

Angel credits Kestrel Barnes, the author of Shark, which appeared in the anthology Fist of the Spiderwoman as her writing mentor.

Career
Angel's writing career spans genres, forums and styles. She has written Southern Gothic tales, the most notable of which,Flying the Kestrel, appeared in the Sentinel Literary Anthology. Her erotica has been accepted into dozens of anthologies and she has written nearly four dozen erotica novels and series as a freelance writer and under her many pen names.

Her upcoming romance novellas Making Your Own Satisfaction, Going The Greatest Distance and In The Gardens of Eve are all slated for release by Less Than Three Press. Angel has written for LT3 in the past and has an author's page up there(6) as well as on Goodreads(7). It is on Goodreads that most of her works can be found.

She worked as a correspondent for Leatherati and was co-owner of the highly successful adult- oriented business Owhips, until just recently when the business was sold in order to facilitate what she and her partner refer to as working retirement.

Angel has taught at conferences across the country(8)(9) on the subjects of gender,BDSM and relationship dynamics.

Personal Life
Angel gave birth to her daughter Autumn in 1989. After a string of failed relationships that she entered into mainly to hide her true sexuality she began dating women openly. In 2010 she met her life partner OB at a conference and the two have been together since. They are waiting for the day that same-sex marriage is legal in Florida to marry but consider themselves already married as they share homes and lives, and have a domestic partnership arrangement.

Angel and OB have taught classes together and both of them have stories in the anthology If You're Reading This by Less Than Three Press as well as the Summer Fling anthology by Ravenous Romance.

Currently Angel and OB split their time between a small property near Pensacola, Florida and a ten acre camp that they own near Cape Tormentine, New Brunswick, Canada.