Wow, it's been an amazing time! Fifteen months, an award, and a hundred ten thousand words later, I can honestly say it's been a wonderful time writing the 'Falcon' duo of fanfiction; it's all become far, far beyond anything I imagined when I first wrote Chapter One of "Taking Flight" as a challenge ficlet. To every single one of you who read and reviewed, my profound thanks.

I want to give special thanks to everyone who kept encouraging me to write this past year when times were bad and my Muse seemingly far away; your eagerness to see more of my humble story is what kept me going, so I owe a good deal of "On the Wing" to you fans.

I need again to single out my beta reader, Karen Shepherd, for being a great writer, a wonderful editor/beta, and an awesome friend. Her first Harry Potter fic, which I've beta'd is wonderful and now just about completed! Please, take some time to go read a very good piece of Snape/OC fic: her pen name here at ff.net is "Potions Student". Its sequel will be forthcoming, and I greatly look forward to it.

Some of you have asked if I'll write a sequel to "Falcon". The straightforward answer to that is that I've got no plans to write a straight SS/HG fic sequel; I'm content to leave them with their hard-earned happiness and not subject them to further drama. However, I do have plans for another Hogwarts pair to have their own story, and Severus, Hermione, and little Alexander Florian will most definitely make appearances and possibly play some important roles. I hope to have some of that written this year still!

In the meanwhile, though, I've begun my first actual original work of fiction, tentatively entitled "Where Lights in Darkness Lies". It's another fic regarding love and war, though this time historical rather than magical. I seem to have a penchant for characters not conventionally seen as heroes, so maybe it's not a surprise that I've got a story going about a young German naval officer and a British girl! If you want to try a different piece of fic that I wrote, it's posted at ff.net's original-fic sister site, fictionpress.net, under my pen name of HyacinthMacaw. I've just gotten up to the beginning of the war, where things really start to get interesting.

I'm on holiday from posting fanfic as of this Saturday (5/10/03) until mid-August, as I'll be doing a marine research internship and will be without Internet access. However, rest assured, I'll work on both my original fic and hopefully start the aforementioned new HP fic during that time, as I will have my computer. So I hope to have a good deal sent to Karen and then posted by the end of August. Hope you'll find it worth the wait!

Again, many, many thanks to all of you!