I am 55, married, mother of a 20 year-old girl. I have a Bachelors in Medieval and Renaissance Studies with a minor in classical studies. What this means is that I'm a blatant history geek with grounding in all four forms of English (Modern, Shakespearean, Middle, and Old) as well as Latin, Greek and German(don't ask me to translate - it's been 30 years...). I'm also an accomplished singer, singing as a first soprano with the Indianapolis Women's Chorus - although I have a 4 1/2 octave range when I'm warmed up. You can listen to us at www . myspace . com/ indianapoliswomenschorus .(Remove the spaces) I discovered HP in 1998 when it came over the pond and have been a rabid fan ever since, finally starting to write fan-fiction again when the bug bit me. An ancient and honorable member of sci-fi and ST conventions in the 70's and 80's, I am also a very old member of the SCA, known as Mistress Elfleda Tarsella of Bethoc, OP, OL. (Although my playing days have been vastly curtailed due to parenting and work.)

I am a member of the 4 person international Beta reading team known as BeST. Authors: If you want a unique betaing experience, contact me - we are one of the best beta teams in the HP fanfiction fandom. UPDATE March 2012: Three of the four members finally met up at LeakyCon 2011 and held a panel entitled "To Beta or not to Beta..." There is loads of info we gave out to attendees on a CD. If you would like a zipped copy emailed to you, drop me a PM with your email spelled out (no . or @ signs - spell them out, please or FF will eat the email addy) and I will email you a copy.

Gertie: This is an old ST original series story I wrote back when the Original Series and the first 2 movies were all that existed. I know, ancient. It was originally published in the fanzine Quastar 4, although it had been written several years prior to that zine seeing print. It is still one of my favorite's and I've updated and polished the grammar ;-).

Owls and Musings 1 and 2: My first foray into HP fan story writing. I will admit it, I am a helpless romantic for Severus - and yes, the first story is mildly Mary-sueish. So Sue me. However, the second is not - and a lot more action occurs in OM2. Is there a third? Possibly, in the future - I still need to find a plot... I'll even take suggestions as to what you, as readers, would like to see happen in the future, besides Alisha and Derek hooking up.

The Kneazle Chronicles: So, on one of the podcasts - don't know which one - someone wondered if Crookshanks was the cat mentioned in Lily's letter to Sirius. If you know who you are, contact me - I'd love to credit you. That's all it took. I have been ruminating on this story for months and finally took the time to research every single time Crooks shows up in POA and what he did, and what the others were doing around him. Quite exhaustive. I'm just surprised no one else has come up with this idea - but I did, so I ran with it. Will there be a sequel - probably not, unless it is a oneshot. Hmmm...

When Life hands you Lemons: This was one of those bugs that hit me prior to DH's publication. I just knew Severus and Lily were friends. I'm amazed to this day how close this story got to the truth of that. I also knew Severus was that 'horrible boy' Petunia referred to in GoF, so that conversation had to be included as well. I like this story very much - it is one of my more favorite one-shots, so enjoy.

The BeST Challenge Collection: Several years ago, I wrote an author whose works I was following on FA (). I pointed out some errors in his consistency between scenes. This led to a lively discussion, which led to my inclusion in an ongoing group with two others. We formed BeST - the Beta Stealth Unit. We are an international team of betas and authors - three of us are authors as well as betas. We are more than open to helping new authors fine tune their fics.

At one point a friend requested we Beta her fic for a Challenge that FA had begun in January 2007. Les, my fellow author, and I thought it looked kinda interesting - so we signed up for the monthly challenge as well and got our first prompts for March's challenge. We discovered that we had a lot of fun writing these fic's together - our brains are very copacetic in that regard, and we are very devious together. So, this collection is the accumulated efforts of our brain-storming sessions that year with the FA Monthly Challenge prompts. I am also including two that I wrote on my own - because the prompts just caught my eye. And somehow - I'm not sure why - but we have this running gag running through a majority of the oneshots concerning Sluggie and Pineapple... BTW, these fics consistently took first or second place each month - alternating with a fellow author and friend, SwissMiss, over at FA.

Vows: I've been working on this for awhile now and Les convinced me to start posting it. I've been a long time fan of Severitus based fics and just had to take the plunge. My only deviation from the original challenge is that this starts during the summer between first and second-year. I don't know if there will be a sequel... I have some other bunnies in the oven. UPDATE June 2009: There is now a sequel for Vows entitled DUTY taking place during third year. Some of it will sound familiar, you are not hallucinating - I have lifted parts from other stories of mine to include in this one as they fit the situation and it gives it a variety of POV. However; these parts have been tweaked to fit the new story. And once again, I can blame Les D. for pushing me to post. What can I say? Les is turning into my conscience and my muse. UPDATE May 2010: There is now a third in the series entitled HONOUR, which of course follows - loosely - fourth year. NOTE: Yes, I know the Patronus changed in Chapter 17. Read the later A/Ns for what happened and what will happen. UPDATE March 2011: Honour is now completed. UPDATE March 2012: There is now a fourth in the series entitled COURAGE. Also, all of the fics in this series have been renamed with VOWS in the title of each and the Number of the Story followed by the title for that particular story. Ie: Vows IV: Courage.

Watcher in the Shadows and Apology: These two little oneshots were written as a thank you to the authors of the 100th review for Vows here on and at Potions and Snitches. The only stipulation was that it had to be a one sentence prompt from the reviewer and that I would keep it to roughly 2000 words. I think both reviewers came up with excellent prompts - don't you? Watcher in The Shadows now has two Sequels: A Christmas Guardian and A Christmas Guardian: The Reaction

The Rest of the Story. This is a plot bunny that took hold and wouldn't let go. It is an NCIS/HP crossover where Abby Sciuto and Tonks are related through Ted Tonks. It is rated M for a mature scene that will occur near the end of the story. The nice thing about this one is that it should post up quite quickly as it is finished on my PC, except for minor tweaking.

If you are interested in reading more of Les Dowich's works - he is also an author here in as well as FA - I highly recommend all his works - his AU series concerning Severus and Lupin are exquisite writing.

I also have started a C2 - Zarathustra's Reading Nook - that contains HP stories, long and short, that I deem the cream of the crop as to what is out there. The writing is top notch; Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation are not going to leave you gagging (for the most part), and the plot and character development are well constructed. If you have any stories that you like that are not included in this C2, drop me a line so that I can check it out. If you want your own in the list, drop me a line. I am sole proprietor of the C2 and I have particular tastes, if it does not make my list after you've recommended it, please don't get mad - for whatever reason, it just did not fit my criteria. If you want to know why - ask me, as long as you don't mind an honest answer.

Enjoy,

Zarathustra