Saturday I was thrilled to be guest host on Alohomora, a podcast devoted to dissecting episodes of the Harry Potter Series.
You can listen to my commentary here:
http://alohomora.mugglenet.com/episode-175-dh-24-the-carrot-on-the-string/
So, how did I get involved in this?
Years ago, my friend, Sandi Gray, fellow school teacher, Harry Potter fan and fellow writer from my critique group, told me about Mugglenet and Mugglecast, J. K. Rowling inspired podcasts. The most memorable episode for me was called “Several Minutes with Severus” in which a voice actor imitated Professor Snape. Every once in a while Sandi reminded me about Mugglenet, now called Alohomora.
I have been a school teacher for 14 years now, teaching English in South Korea, Japan, art at a Catholic school in Portland, at after school programs, as substitute teachers, in Springfield. The majority of that time I was teaching art. When I was teaching at the after school Sun School Program in Portland, I proposed a class called Myth, Magic and Muggles. The point of these lessons was to make learning fun for kids and sneak in a little bit of science, math or literature.
Every Monday I got to put on my black hat, cape and one of many black dresses in my closet and sported a British accent when I picked up the elementary age kids from their classroom and walked them upstairs to the art room. I taught them transfiguration (science), palm reading, herbology, Quidditch (physical education, although that digressed into children hitting each other with brooms), and other Hogwarts related lessons. I have so many fond memories of those lessons.
People talk about how every child wants to be a student at Hogwarts. Part of that has to do with the age a child started reading the Harry Potter books. For me though, I wasn’t ten when I read the first book. I was twenty-two. I was already a teacher. For me, the true yearning was to be a teacher at Hogwarts.
In addition to my teaching Harry Potter, and fantasizing that I worked at Hogwarts as the Defense Against the Dark Arts, I brought in my background as being a fantasy author.
This coincided perfectly with the coming out of my book:
Ghosts, Werewolves and Zombies—Oh My!
A Collection of Funny Short Stories
This book is now available on Amazon, Smashwords and other online retailers in print and ebook formats.