I live in a small town.
The HP universe is grand fun and I love to play with it.
I'm fascinated with quantum physics.
I adore dachshunds
I'm a hypnotist (hobby).
And I'm a paranormal investigator (hobby).
If it's weird, I'm interested in it.
I'll own to being to being eccentric.

Personal Stuff

January, 2013

It's been a long time since I've written anything. My sister's death really took the heart out of me when it came to writing. Truly a dry spell. I've just posted "A Few Thoughts on Turning Fifty", which is a companion piece to "A Few Thoughts on Turning Thirty". Maybe the writing gene, which switched off for a while, is starting to switch back on.

April, 2009

I want to thank all of my readers for their patience and support. As most of you are quite aware, I got within four chapters of the end of Looking for Magic and then stopped posting in January without warning. I had some messages posted here, explaining why. We've come to the end of another story, so I thought I would erase those and do a summary.

My sister had leukemia. She'd had it for several years and a wonder drug kept it in remission for a long time. In November 2008, we learned that the wonder drug had stopped working and that the leukemia had returned with a vengeance in a far more advanced stage. Her only hope of survival was to try for a bone marrow transplant to cure the leukemia. She made the decision to try for a long shot and go for the cure. None of us in the family matched her, but somewhere out there is a thirty year old woman who did. She made the donation and my sister received the transplant in January.

The transplant worked! My sister started growing new bone marrow and producing healthy blood cells. In the middle of February, she was able to return home for two weeks. Then the complications started and she returned to the hospital.

Long story short, my sister went into serious graft versus host disease. That's the fancy term for rejection. They tried literally everything they could think of to get it under control. By the beginning of April, her body was at war with itself.

Betty died on April 13th, 2009. She fought the good fight, but it was one she couldn't win and so she slipped away.

The rest of Looking for Magic is funny and fluffy. Except that since January, I haven't been able to write funny and fluffy. I can write angsty stuff really well, however. Obsession came out of that. I've been working on Memories of War, which is chock full of angst. I'll be posting chapters soon.

When my fun and fluffy muse comes back, I will return to Looking for Magic.

We'll be okay. Losing someone you love is never easy, but it helps if you have faith. There's a line in a Josh Groban song:

Isn't faith believing that all power can't be seen?

I believe in the power that can't be seen. I believe in the magic. Only time separates us from the ones we love.

Hypnobarb