The first of the year found me sitting with my best friend Angel making our plans for the New Year. This was going to be her year, she just had that feeling. I thought this would be a year of change for me too, little did I know how much of a change my life would have. Her dream was to put out twelve stories; it is bittersweet that it looks as if I will be the one that accomplishes that goal for her. On January 17^th my best friend passed away after a very short battle with pneumonia. In February I had the story Everything Changes published by MLR press. It was the last story that Angel read and told me how much she loved it. She agreed with several people that read it, it was a story that brought a tear to her eye. Everything Changes is about romance writer Colton who refuses to move forward in life after his lover dies on Valentine’s Day. He is so wrapped up in his grief that seven years later he still refuses to neither love again nor see the love that is right in front of him. I didn’t know when I wrote it how much that story was going to echo my own life. I still find myself with a tear in my eye, I still find it hard to move past the loss of my best friend. My second story came out in March. It was a novel titled Forgotten. It is the story I’m the most proud of and I believe some of my best work to date. Forgotten is the story of two married men that buy a rather large country house that has more land than they know what to do with. It is more house then Peter wants but he could never tell Rhys no when the man had his heart set on something. It isn’t long before Peter starts to hear crying, doors slam and water that turns on. When he finds out that Rhys sees and hears nothing Peter begins to feel that the stress of the move and his career as a writer has finally pushed him toward a mental break. Then the dreams start, dreams of a dark haired man that tells Peter he loves him. Soon Peter realizes that the house his haunted by a man who wants Peter and will do anything to get him even committing murder. My mother instilled a love for ghost stories in me as a child. The first song I can remember her teaching me is Ding Dong the Witch is dead as we swung back and forth. The books I checked out of the library were ghost stories, the first stories I wrote in school where ghost stories. It really came as no surprise to anyone when I published my first story, after all telling stories is something I loved to do all my life. Do I have a degree in English, creative writing or anything else along that line? No, my college days found me bouncing from one career choice to the other, a year of premed, a year of pre law before I settled into History and psychology. Wednesday and Friday nights would find my best friend Angel and I sitting in front of the TV watching Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. The adventures of the paranormal investigators often sent us in search of more information, plot bunnies hopping around. Angel would always laugh and say someone could hand me a stick of butter and I would start thinking of a story. During the time of my Angel friend’s illness I focused on my writing. Three months into the year and I have four stories out. The short story The Right Combination can be found in the Red Hot Valentine anthology and the short Snow and Red can be found in the Hot, Strong and Irish anthology. My newest story, Loving a Marine will be in the upcoming Hot Shots military anthology. On January 17^th my beloved Angel was gone. She was 39 years old. She died from something the doctors should have been able to cure. I put all my writing aside. Writing was something we did together and without my best friend to brainstorm with it held no interest. My releases started to come out but I couldn’t be happy about it. How can you celebrate without your best friend? I was barely functioning. Then a friend gave me a piece of advice, he said “tears can destroy a country but rage can build an empire.” Of course I stared at him like he had two heads. He smiled and said that crying will do nothing more than destroy everything we had created. I could take the anger that she was taken from me and use that anger to build upon what we started. I have started to write again. I sat down and made my beloved Angel a promise, I would take everything we started and I would continue on. I would take her dreams and turn them into reality. It is that promise that keeps me writing, that keeps me moving through the day. Now I find myself facing the year without my Angel. I miss hearing her voice, her bouncing up and down saying “Kitten friend Kitten friend guess what!” Everyone who met Angel remembered her infectious smile, her enthusiasm while I tended to stay in her shadow. I was content to let her shine. I looked at the dreams we had for the upcoming year and found they were still our dreams, the only difference is one of use wasn’t here in physical form but she was still with me in heart and spirit. Someday I would see her again and I refused to tell her that I let everything disappear, I took what we started and made something great. I am moving forward with my life, still talking to her in my own way. Now though instead of living for just me I am living for us both. Someday when I see her again I will tell her about my adventures but I have a feeling she will smile at me and say “Yes I know Kitten, I was with you every step of the way.”