Bio

The idea for the dangerously broken hearted jinn, XANZEER, probably took root at age 15. That's when my first boyfriend broke up with me for a girl who did drugs. Dying promptly from a heroin overdose, I never got to say goodbye to him. Never saw a body. Never went to his wake. And because of this, I never believed he'd actually died either. The grief unbearable, I'd wished he'd have either entered the Witness Protection Program, the CIA, or went up in a puff of smoke...a jinn.

Girl genie impersonator CHARLIZE SWEET, who ends up owning Xanzeer's heart, came into existence when I did stand-up comedy at the IMPROV for USO shows, my sailor audiences bound for the Gulf of Oman.

Giving up the $50 to work for the big bucks, I ended up doing look-alike work for corporate shows in Chicago for Enronesque types who owned Champion Sportswear, Sears, National Enquirer, etc. I worked with supermodel wannabees like back stabbing model SINBOD and Elvis mimics who'd inspired mobbed-up genie impersonator ALADDIN.

After appearing on Jenny Jones and America's Funniest People I started doing impersonations for casinos. There, I'd hobnobbed with gamblers, gangstas, and robbers. Well, lawyers. I met many BOCELLI LORENZO types with ratted, sprayed mob hair, the same color as their silk Gianfranco Ferre suits.

DETECTIVE JESSE PECK arrived after DePaul U. when I was a ride-along with Chicago's West-Side vice detectives. These hard-drinking, true-blue cops would risk walking into a poisonous meth lab to save a single teen's life. And many a street person, like wise sage GENIE, are their helpful informants.

Gun confiscating nun, SISTER ALAWICIOUS, is based on the bad-ass Servite who lived at the convent where my mother cooked. Odd, how after learning all the nun's secrets, Mom got Alzheimer's. Ten bucks says the nun was in the other CIA, the Catholic Intelligence Agency, and did some sort of Men In Black mind erasing thing to her.

I could've used G.I. Nun the night I got carjacked by a machete wielding gangbanger on Madison Street. Surrendering my rusted out Gremlin’s keys, I figured I'd exit on a laugh. "The Porsche is yours." When my assailant nearly dropped the knife being a great audience, STONER JONES was born.

After hanging up my look-alike costumes, or Altered Identity Engineer work as it's called in the clandestine world, I moved with my husband to the serenity of the country. Promptly finding a baby skunk I'd named STINKERBELL, she became the story's CBW, or chemical-biological weapon.

And as for all the neer do wells I'd met performing in casinos, comedy clubs, bars and corporate boardrooms, this much I know.

Skunks got a bad rap.

...Marja

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