I'm a spare-time writer. You'd think that in a world where staying home as much as possible is encouraged that would lead to a lot more time to write. Unfortunately, I have one of those jobs that is not only essential but is capable of being performed pretty much anywhere there's an Internet connection.

I'm a sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns kind of person, at least in regard to my writing. I like happy endings, for the most part. I remember, quite some time ago, I read Siege of Darkness by Bob Salvatore. There is a line in that book that has stuck with me more than any other quote in any other book I've ever read. It goes:

"To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important than hope."

And that's probably the root of a lot of the stories going through my head.

Writing, for me, is a form of escape. A chance to let my imagination wander and take my consciousness with it. To immerse myself in somewhere else. To be someone else. See through the eyes of another while still expressing who I am.

Brief behind the scenes of works and whatnot.

You Poked A Dragon (in progress, slow updates as of 9/4/2020): The originating premise for this story was simple; kill Ron. Amusingly enough, I killed him because I was feeling particularly cruel toward him when I started the story, finding myself in the "Fool me once . . ." school of thought with regard to Ron's relationship with Harry, particularly the physical rifts in GoF and DH. The amusing part is that, while I claim to have been feeling cruel, that story shows a connection between Harry and Ron that I don't think reflects that at all.

The Tri-Champion Wizard (in progress, slow updates as of 9/4/2020): So many people have written time travel stories, particularly by to GoF. It's been done probably to death. I wanted to give it a go anyway, just to say I had tilted at that particular windmill, but wanted it to take a bit of a different turn from most of the ones I'd read previously. This was another one where I wanted to marginalize Ron, which makes sense as it was envisioned around the same time as YPAD. And I wanted to try the whole drama/comedy thing. Mix it all up and there you go.

Impulse (in progress, last update 10/9/20): I wanted Harry away from the Dursleys. I wanted Harry in a loving home with someone his own age. I wanted Remus to be the father figure in his life; so many stories where either James doesn't die or Harry is raised by Sirius. I can't recall one where he was raised by Remus. The story actually sprung from one random scene that I'd written for a story that never materialized where instead of Petunia Lily had a sister who embraced magic. The opening line of that story was "Mr. and Mrs. Matthews of 18 Burwell Meadow were proud to say that normal was overrated, thank you very much," a play on how Book 1 starts. I'd written the opening, up through that Halloween, but it never materialized past that. So I tweaked the circumstances to allow for Remus to play a more prominent role. I actually plan to use a few of the written sections of that story (it was a scattering across a number of years) in Impulse as I get to the appropriate areas in the narrative, modified of course to reflect how the beginning is now so different from when Mr. and Mrs. Matthews played their part.

Other works:

The Paladins Part 1 - Pound of Flesh (pulled down for rewrite): The first story I ever wrote, and it showed. Start the morning after the battle and takes place entirely in the span of that day. This one started with two major themes in mind. First was returning Remus and Tonks to the narrative somehow. Second was making sure Hermione didn't end up with Ron. And that was because of what the Epilogue (which that story does not ascribe to) and other Rowling writings and mentions say about him post-Hogwarts. For some reason it stuck in my craw; a woman shown to be driven and focused with a man who hated school, dropped out of the Aurors after two years (though it's never truly explained why he did that), encouraged his 11-year-old daughter to do better than a boy just because of who his father was, cast a spell on a Muggle (which has to be illegal) to pass his drivers test, etc. It just . . . rubbed me the wrong way. And so PoF was written so that they'd not become a thing. That story's OC is a true Mary Sue/Gary Stu, but such are the way of things sometimes.

The Paladins Part 2 - Family: A continuation rather than making PoF super long.