Name?
Zed "Merciless" Leppelin. This makes answering "What's your name?" in nightclubs highly difficult, I can tell you.

Why 'Zed'?
Yes, those are the last two letters of the alphabet. Well done. Now you just need to learn the other twenty four.

Date Of Birth?
11 August 1981. I share a birthday with Enid Blyton and aspire to be equally prolific.

Family?
Two parents (still together, run a shop that sells musical instruments), brother (Noj [though Jon, really], 20, studying Broadcast And Multimedia at Sunderland University), half brother (Alex, 34, runs recording studio and does other creative and technical odd jobs).

Places Of Residence Thus Far?
August 1981 - February 1994: The former servant's quarters of Naworth Castle (an April 1995 National Lottery draw, "The Black Candle" and the TV version of "Jane Eyre" were filmed there), near the totally bangin' wicked sorted happenin' town of Brampton (population 3500), in "sunny" Cumbria, in England, near the Scottish border.
February 1994 - present day: A comparatively uninteresting house in Brampton.
October 1999: Churchill College, Cambridge, England.
September 2000 - July 2003: Halls of residence and a couple of student houses in Canterbury, England.

Education Thus Far?
September 1985 - July 1992: Lanercost School, near Brampton, a two-teacher forty-pupil establishment.
September 1992 - June 1999: Austin Friars School, Carlisle, a private Catholic part-boarding school in the nearest city of Carlisle, though I was neither a boarder, a Catholic nor private. It was (and presumably still is) the sort of place where the pupils' parents got them a car for their seventeenth birthday, then a new one for their eighteenth.
October 1999: Cambridge University, but I left prematurely due to illness and being fed up with having nine o'clock lectures on the other side of town *six* days of a week and trying to do a Computer Science degree with a broken computer.
September 2000 - May 2003: University Of Kent At Canterbury, to do Maths degree (after brief flirtation with Film Studies).
September 2003 - August 2004: York University, to become Mistress Of Research in Mathematics In The Living Environment. (No, I'm not a raging feminist, I just think it sounds funnier than 'Master Of Research'.)

Qualifications Obtained Thus Far?
Cursed with sickening academic ability:
Grade 5 Music Theory (distinction)
10 GCSEs (9 'A*'s, 1 'A')
1 AO Level ('A')
Young Enterprise GNVQ
5 A Levels (5 'A's)
Grade 8 clarinet (merit)
European Computer Driving Licence
Spinster Of Science (1st class honours)

Employment Thus Far?
July 1989 - present day (part time): The aforementioned Omega Music, doing secretarial work.
November 1999 - June 2000: A now-defunct computer company in Carlisle, making animated worms. Among other things.
October 2001 - March 2003: University Of Kent, helping first years with their Computing and Sadistics classes.

Number Of Words Of Fiction Written Thus Far?
Over 2500000.

Publication Thus Far?
Various bumph in old school magazine.
A poem in "The National Anthology Of Poetry 2003", which sounds really impressive, but can you even get it at Amazon? Noooo. And another poem in a book by the same publisher.
Various CD and gig reviews in Kaleidoscope Magazine. (By the way: sorry if I gave your band a bad review! I feel really bad about it! But alas, I don't get any choice in which CDs I review - I just get the ones none of the other reviewers wanted! - and usually, through no fault of my own, I end up with about two days to review ten CDs and in such conditions my normal boundless enthusiasm fails me, alas.)

More Impressive Creations Made During Foolish Youth?
A magazine in which people could advertise for penpals.
An online Young Writers Club.
An online club for graph haters across the world.

Love Life Thus Far?
This picture shows who I've slept with. There've been a few others too, but I fear for the safety of my lens.

Future Plans?
Become cult novelist. Have biography written. Run youth hostel avec goth nightclub in southern Ireland avec Sae, Ibid and anyone else who's willing. Drive whole way across Scandanavia and Russia avec Ibid. Become Big Rock Star. Become most helpful DJ assistant in world ever. Own computer that will let me play games released after 1998. Take over the world avec Twi and Ibid and banish all geens (except sexxay ones, who we will enslave). Acquire world's largest collection of stripy tights, socks and stockings. At any rate, ensure becoming corporate slave is avoided for as long as possible by doing Ph.D.

Main Interests?
Writing stories, going to goth and rock clubs, reading, watching fillums, talking in an Oirish accent, Anime, point-and-click computer games, making clothes and making evil noises my synthesizer, wishing I knew how to write music.

Preferred Music Styles?
Above all, interesting metaaal of the industrial-, black-, classic- and the-industrialier-half-of-nu- varieties, and downstairs-at-Slimelight music. I also like rock (of most forms), mid-90s indie, first wave punk, 80s and down-to-earth pop.

Hated Musical Styles?
Commercial dance, R'n'B, most soul, rap, boring or just plain bad recent metal (i.e. 99% of the tracks on free Kerrap and Well, Really, What Else Would You Make A Hammer Out Of? CDs - give me Shampoo any day), garage, sappy pop, garage rock and improvisational jazz.

Preferred Reading Material?
Online journals, young adult literature (especially the historical sort), cult fiction, biography, European history and true crime.

Preferred Viewing Material?
Arthouse films, indie films, funny British films, martial arts films, rockumentaries, biographies, BBC mini-series, Buffy/Angel and Anime.

Preferred Computer Game Styles?
Point-and-click adventures, killing monsters in 2D dungeons, football management, tetris variants and bat&ball (which is the name of a railway station in Kent).

Manner Of Dress?
Typically: leather jacket or trench coat, a band shirt, mini-skirt, garish tights (both on arms and legs) and New Rock boots, although I also go a bit more undercover when entering a chav-zone on my own and sometimes indulge in looks such as "goth business person" and "glamorous but spiky".

Gender
Female, though never girly.

Religion
Atheist / Sushi / Banana Cult.

Status
Single.

Sexuality
Have always favoured chocolate men thus far.

Appearance
Consult these pictures of me. Or if you're too scared to look at them, for which I wouldn't blame you, I'm humanoid, Caucasian, 5'6" (while wearing Neptuna-soled New Rock boots anyway), 110lbs-ish, and have a figure best summed up by this song, long dyed-black hair (with massive root- / sun-bleaching-problems), blue eyes and glasses.