What Are You Geeky About?

Gilbert Garfinkle, the hero of my latest novel, Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one), is the ultimate geek. He has vintage Star Wars sheets on his bed, and posters of dragons, sci-fi movies, and Albert Einstein on the walls of his tiny room in the basement. He takes apart video game systems because he so desperately wants to see what he can do to improve them.

Character sketch of super geek Gilbert Garfinkle, the hero of Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one) by Shevi Arnold

Some people see being a geek as a bad thing, but I don’t, and neither does Gilbert.

In one scene he explains to Amber--the gorgeous, mixed-up vampire who wants to turn him into her platonic BFF literally forever--what it means to be a geek: ““Geeks are awesome. If other people can’t see that, it’s their problem. The very definition of being a geek is that you love something just because you love it, not because someone is telling you you should, but in spite of them telling you you shouldn’t. There’s no greater love than geek love. If you’re lucky, maybe someday you’ll find it too.”

I’ve always been super geeky about comedy, fantasy, and science fiction.

When I was little, I'd take them apart and analyze them, kind of like what Gilbert Garfinkle does with video game systems. If I didn’t like what I found, I would try to fix it. And sometimes I would take parts of a story and use them to create something new. This continued into my college years, when I majored in English Literature and Theater Studies. Actually, it continued through my time as an editorial cartoonist, illustrator, editor, consumer columnist, and arts-and-entertainment writer specializing in children's entertainment and, of course, comedy--and it continues to this day.

Nothing makes me as happy as tinkering with a funny, fantastic, incredible story.

So I ask you, “What are you geeky about?”

What is it that makes you so happy you don’t care what anyone else thinks?

Maybe you’ve found it, and maybe you’re not as ready to tell the world as I am and Gilbert is. Maybe you’re still afraid of what others might think. Well, don’t be. Others only judge because they don’t feel the joy that being truly geeky about something brings. Don’t let them steal that joy from you.

I’m geeky about writing stories that make people laugh, cry, and think, and that transport them to worlds only reachable through the imagination. I’m geeky about books. I’m geeky about Gilbert, and Why My Love Life Sucks. And I’m geeky about my fellow geeks who love books just as much as I do.

What are you geeky about? What do you love so much that you don’t care what anyone else thinks?