Shelly Mazzanoble

From her website:

A million years ago, Shelly Mazzanoble had a short story published in a literary magazine called Whetstone. She was paid $50 which she spent on a keg of beer and threw a great, big party.

Motivated by her strong desire to curate menus for cocktail parties and her friends’ penchant for drinking free beer, Shelly has gone on to publish short stories and essays in Sweatpants and Coffee, Sammiches and Psych Meds, Scary Mommy, In the Powder Room, Pregnant Chicken, Blunt Moms, Tribe Magazine, and The Seattle Times, and has been syndicated on popular websites such as TODAY Parents and BlogHer, where she has been named a featured writer. She writes a regular column called Mom in the Middle for the Seattle-based parenting network, PEPs (Program for Early Parent Support) where she seeks to scare daunt forewarn enlighten new parents about the terrors joys of parenthood.

Not wanting to completely waste the theater degree procured from lovely Ithaca College, she removed all the narrative from that first published short story and turned it into a one-act play. Blue Malls, starring Shelly herself, was produced in Seattle’s Mae West Fest XIII. Due to the anxiety dreams still plaguing her, she did not star, support or even understudy in her play, The Chicken & the Egg (also originally a short-story), which was produced in Mae West Fest IV and later Manhattan Theatre Source’s Estrogenius Festival.

In 2006, Shelly was introduced to the roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons, while working for Wizards of the Coast. She’s still bitter that no one introduced her to this game earlier as her imaginary friends and innate desire to lie tell stories would have been put to good use. Her book, Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girls Guide to the Dungeons and Dragons Game published by Wizards of the Coast, was nominated for an Origins Award and won the gold ENnies Award— the annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. Confessions has been translated into Japanese with the far superior title of, On Mondays I’m a Wizard (even though her game was on Wednesdays) and has been required reading in college classes focusing on game design and theory. Her second book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Dungeons & Dragons: One Woman’s Quest to Trade Self-Help for Elf-Help was nominated for an Origins Award and has the distinct honor of being read by at least six of her non-D&D playing friends. Shelly is the co-host of Dragon Talk, the official Dungeons & Dragons podcast where she frequently practices her impression of Bert from Sesame Street. (“Ernie! My pige-unnns!”) Uncanny, right?

When not slandering the reputations of newborns and eschewing the very notion that having “just one baby” is indeed easy (WTH, Mom?!) she enjoys eating raw cookie dough, pretty much anything on Bravo, pretending to be asleep so her husband gets up to fix the child breakfast, going down a Pinterest rabbit hole, painting things gray, ankle booties, coming home and taking off her bra, quoting Mommie Dearest, the idea of a garden, being the oldest mom at daycare, and writing books with very long titles. In fact, she is at work on another book with a very long title. Sadly it does not include a dungeon or a dragon but it does include a toddler and several euphemisms for “lady parts.” (TMI? Just wait.)

She lives in Seattle with an alpha cat named Zelda, a smelly dog named Puppy, a very patient man who either doesn’t read her blog or has a really good sense of humor, and a genius* child who loves big butts and cannot lie. He continues to provide his proud mother with endless fodder. At least until he gets a lawyer.

She should probably be properly fitted for a bra.

Shelly encourages you to check out her blog, especially Mother Rose Best and the older entries because she had a lot more time to think and edit back then. If you like reality TV, Shelly wants to be your friend.