About Me

Two Truths and a Lie:

After ingesting a drugged drink one night in Rome, I woke up in an ambulance and fought my way out.
I had surgery that inserted a cadaver bone and a screw to plug up the small hole that had been growing between the carpel bones in my wrist. For the next six months after the surgery, I had to strap on an experimental bone-growing device and sit still for 30 minutes every day while it hummed.
My ex-fiancé self-published a book three years after Homeland Security raided our apartment with a search warrant. They were looking for child pornography.

This is the bio I use when I submit my writing to publications on Submittable:

Carly Hood is a writer based in Seattle, Washington. She received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 2015. Her work has been published in Bricolage, Mare Nostrum, and The Stillwater Review. When not tinkering with lyric essays, poems, and other creative projects, she sells her soul as a Digital Marketing Specialist to pay her rent.

This is the ‘About Me’ summary I use on my resume when I apply to marketing jobs after I’ve had a bad day at work:

Marketing professional with 6+ years of experience in social media strategy, influencer marketing, content marketing, earned/owned media strategy, and copywriting. Passionate about project management and crafting compelling brand narratives. Enjoys reading memoirs, playwriting, and going out to eat.

The bio I would like on the back flap of my first hard-cover book:

Carly Hood is a therapist, playwright, and author of several books. Her cultural criticism and lyric essays have been published in n+1, Polyester Zine, Seneca Review, [PANK], and New York Tyrant. She lives on San Juan Island with her cat, dog, and partner.

An honest bio:

Carly Hood is an angry thirtysomething, doing her best to brush the chip off her shoulder. She can’t put that she is a writer in her bio because she doesn’t feel like she has earned the title, even though she has a creative writing degree and writes daily for her job. When she is not avoiding her personal writing, she either drinks too much, spends too much money eating out, or rots in her bed at any hour of the day. After tripping and falling into a moderately successful digital marketing career, she is currently contemplating a complete change and going to grad school to be a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, which she is fully aware sounds insane given the self-admitted binge drinking, compulsive spending, and commonplace depression.

A more honest bio:

Carly Hood is a self-deprecating, semi-depressive writer, marketer, and human.

Ledger as bio:

The flat surface of the tombstone where we add an inscription is called a ledger. The ledgers I am familiar with are the stuff of mob movies, leather-bound, capricious journals that bespectacled accountants clutch to their chests like teddy bears before being taken out by a hired gun. These ledgers denote ongoing debts and credits, primarily financial, but sometimes trade-worthy secrets figure into these noir classics too. So, why would we call it a ledger if it is on a gravestone? Instead of a running tally of our life’s sins and regrets, we put tasteful cliches as our epitaphs – Forever in our hearts, In God’s Care, A Long Life Well Lived. Bleh, boring.

Here are a few of my ledgers in Lake View Cemetery:

Oscar Bloomquist, 1889-1920, Here Rests a Woodman of the World
- Doesn’t he sound like a character in a Wes Anderson film?
Our Father: Physicist, Golfer, Pilot, Card Master, Storyteller, and Crafty Old Rabbit
Christopher Mark Appleford, Robin Anne Appleford, Betty Evelyn Appleford
- Reading these names gave me my closest experience of synesthesia: smelling Red Apple Wreath by Yankee Candle and feeling the flat scratch of blue gingham cotton.
Michael Severance, Oct. 28th, 1946, I’ve Moved to a Higher Class Neighborhood.
- Included was his smug headshot and the Seattle Police Logo
Beloved Mother, Dyed-in-the-Wool Democrat, Dedicated Seattle Sports Fan, and a Lover of Jazz
- Does this read like a dating profile to anyone else?

On my tombstone, I would like you to add this entire About Me section, but if that is too expensive, under my name, you can just add a chalkboard so that people can keep that ledger alive with all of my financial and spiritual debts.

Two Lies and a Truth:

For two years I had pica, an eating disorder in which a person eats things that are not consider food or even edible.
I’m a liar. I am a cheater. I am a thief. I am an atheist. I’ve had an abortion. I am indifferent. I am guilty of envy. I am guilty of avarice. I am guilty of despair in hope.
None of what I have written on this page is a lie.