She worried she was dying. It was a parasite from her puppy that nearly killed her!

Giardiasis is a devastating illness that starts with digestive symptoms but can spread and can cause hormonal imbalance, fatigue, allergies, skin rashes, swollen lymph glands, leaky gut, muscle pain & arthritis. Giardia infection may also cause an overgrowth of yeast or bacteria in the

small intestine, producing symptoms.

How is it possible to love the thing that almost ends your life? Three days after the arrival of "Buddy," an adorable Golden Retriever puppy, Tracey Berkowitz's picture perfect life shatters. Almost overnight, she looks horrible, feels horrible and has no idea why.

Not My Buddy is a love story between one woman and the dog who restores her spirit while she finds her way toward health. Over the course of five years, Tracey Berkowitz and her family spend more than $80,000 on a team of 16 health care professionals and, at one point, 132 pills per day, while they seek a diagnosis and treatment for this mysterious illness.

Taken to the brink of bankruptcy and divorce and incapacitated as a mother, Tracey removes the masks that contributed to her dis-ease, leaving her vulnerable, terrified, and headed on a collision course with her soul's true purpose: to help those suffering from chronic giardiasis—ironically "the gift" from the dog who teaches her self-love.

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MARGARET FIELAND INTERVIEW (guest blogger)

When did you first know you were destined to be a writer? LOL, I never realized I was destined to be a writer -- I fell into it. I'd written poetry for years, collecting it in notebooks stacked in my attic when I wrote one I wanted to keep. This led me to several online sites and ultimately to discovering the Muse Online Writers Conference where I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson and joined her writers forums. She required everyone to write both fiction and poetry, so, with much trepidation, I started writing fiction. Then I got hooked on it, wrote a chapter book, took the ICL course and actually learned how to write it. Then in 2010, I was seized by a desire to write a sci fi novel, so I spent six weeks or so on world building, mostly, with a bit of plotting thrown in for good measure. Who would you cite as your influences? I'm a way-back sci-fi fan, and Robert A. Heinlein influenced me heavily. I took a lot away from his writing, notably the value of surpris...

On Writing Chase Scenes

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson Author of The Frugal Editor, the winning-est in her award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers This article is excerpted from some editing I did for a writer of experimental fiction when I was on a Greater Los Angeles Writers Society panel writer of any genre can apply these suggestions to the chase, getaway, or high action scene in your script or manuscript before you send it to an agent or publisher or, better still, while you are writing the first draft. Sometimes even the most fascinating, interesting and irresistible detail can slow down the forward movement of your story. So as much as writers are told that detail is important, purge as much as you can from your action scenes and put it somewhere else or dribble it into narrative in other places in your manuscript. In the process, ask yourself if your reader really needs to know the color of the protagonist’s eyes. As important as detail is, ...

Character Sketches

How to bring your characters to life. Assuming you've chosen your POV, you will already be thinking about your characters. True, too, you may have been thinking about your characters before choosing your POV. The two go hand in hand, or word-for-word. In order to flesh out your characters and give them ample zing, it's a good idea to make lists of attributes for each player in the plot. However thorough, you must then write your scenes to fit each character. That is, each scene that you write when a character appears in the story should reveal what you planned for him or her when you made your list, and how you planned for them to act. Of course, as the story develops, any character may take on a different persona than you first imagined. That's not a problem. Amending the original sketch will suffice, keeping in mind how the new character image affects all the other characters and the plot overall. I've always been interes...

Linda Barnett-Johnson

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