6-Jan-2016

It's been about 12 years (!) since I started writing The Awakening Power at the height of my Harry Potter obsession (and 10 years since I last updated this profile). My primary motivation was to do Harry/Ginny "right" and also have fun with some plot theories and play around with different styles of writing. I didn't expect it to grow to the length it did, but maintaining all the subplots had a way of filling out the word count.

And what I certainly didn't expect was that people would still be reading it, 12 years later. Much less that at least hundreds (!!) of people read it last month on this site.

So -- thanks for reading! And I do still enjoy reviews, by the way, if you're so inclined. :) I'm kind of amazed that the story has held up for so long.

Once I finished the story, my obsession was pretty close to over, though I did write a few more HP stories. I never planned a sequel to TAP; I left a few hooks in there "just in case", but really the story had everything I wanted to accomplish in the HP universe. I didn't leave any plot bullets in the chamber.

I retired my writing and pretty much haven't written anything in about a decade. Which is a little funny to me, but I'm not a very motivated writer. I've long had in the back of my mind that I might dabble in being a novelist someday. Who knows? But it's hard to find the time among everything else going on.

So why am I back, updating this after 10 years? I actually got motivated to write something.

I'm now writing under the name T.K. Brent, though I kept it as "sib-ff" for historical sake. Way back when, it was supposed to be just "Sib", but I think it was taken, so I did "sib-ff" (It's 'Sib' at all the other sites I posted at). I really regretted that name ever since, it was too short and weird. It was actually short for 'Siberian', because I had a Siberian Husky.

Anyway, I saw the movie Tomorrowland last summer, which had a lot of annoying flaws. In fact, I was so annoyed and irritated with the flaws that I wanted to fix it. You might recall that I wrote TAP because I was annoyed that no one had written Harry/Ginny the way I wanted it done. :) Same concept.

Tomorrowland's plot had a lot of flaws, but what I was really intrigued by was the backstory for Frank and Athena. It had all these intriguing hints about what happened, and I found that by far the most interesting part of the movie. It was also incredibly frustrating that they did a lot of interesting world building, but then did nothing with it -- it was just such a waste.

So I dusted off my writing skills and wrote a new story. I actually wrote this story all out before I posted it (vs TAP, which I wrote as I posted). The -- well, little bit depressing aspect of writing this story is that there's no doubt the Frank/Athena fandom is tiny compared to the HP fandom, so my F/A story is never going to match the popularity of TAP, even if it managed to be as good as TAP. The Tomorrowland movie was poorly received, so few saw it. Of those that saw it, many didn't latch on to the Frank/Athena plot. So to a great extent, this story is a labor of love much more than TAP. Of course, TAP was also primarily a labor of love, but it's easier to labor when you're getting lots of encouraging feedback. :)

But you know what? It's okay that it will never be as popular, because just like TAP, I wrote it for myself because I wanted to read about Frank/Athena. And I know there will be someone out in the world that will like the story as much as I do, and will be happy that I wrote it, and that I put a lot of effort into making it a quality story. So even if it's only a handful of people compared to TAP, it was still worth putting it out there. And who knows, maybe Brad Bird will read it someday. I actually think he would really like it.

I created an official web story site at frankandathena dot com. If you're part of my little fandom, come on by and let's talk Frank/Athena!

Anyway, so that's what's going on with me. How are you all doing? :)

T.K. Brent aka Sib