Barb Caffrey's Blog

How is it possible for my beloved husband Michael to have been dead nearly twenty-two years?

Tomorrow, 9/21/26, is the twenty-second anniversary of the best person I’ve ever known’s death. Michael was funny, intelligent, witty, and we shared a soul-deep connection unlike any others I’ve ever had in my entire life. We wrote together, lived together, and worked together…and we never got tired of each other.

I still wake up, even now, and expect to see my husband’s dear face…and am crushed, yet again, when I realize that not only is Michael still dead, that I’ve somehow managed all this time…and for what purpose?

Yes, I am creative. Yes, he was creative. Yes, I want to keep our work alive. Yes, I certainly want to keep Michael’s memory alive.

Michael made me believe anything, absolutely anything, was possible, providing we kept hope and faith alive. It’s at least in part because of him that I continue to blunder onward, stumbling and fumbling though it sometimes is, and try to do whatever I can to leave this world at least a little bit better than I found it.

I know Michael would be proud of me, that I finished up my fourth novel a bit ago. I can give you that information, at least a little bit of it, now: It’s in Chris Nuttall’s Schooled in Magic universe, and it’s called JASPER’S PROMISE.

Jasper was introduced in Chris’s trilogy starting with THE CUNNING MAN, as an antagonist/bully for the hero of that series, Adam. Yet, as I edited all three of those books, I realized that Jasper has a lot more to him than what he was showing.

Why? Well, in the SIM universe, Heart’s Eye University is the first-ever university there, admitting both magicians and nonmagicians. How did a bully get admitted? When tuition is free, sure, he’d not be kept out because of that. But Administrator Irene, a very formidable woman with a ton of strong magic, runs the new university, and she’d just not deal with a guy who supposedly did a bunch of bad stuff.

Adam did not like Jasper because Jasper was a handsome guy, because Adam was insecure about his own relationship with the young and formidable magician Lilith, and because a rival magician (pretending to be a nonmagician), Arnold, stirred up the water and caused a lot of problems for everyone before he finally declared himself the enemy Arnold was.

My take is, for those of you who’ve read Chris’s trilogy, Jasper was not the one who cursed Adam. He couldn’t have been. Something like that would be beyond just about anyone going to that university, as the folks there are trying for apprenticeships, independent study curriculums, and new joint curricula such as the Healer-chirurgeon curriculum (chirurgeon is the old word for doctor, and they’re the nonmagical healers, while Healers have magic and can aid healing that way). Anyone who had that sort of power would already be in an apprenticeship elsewhere. Plus, it wouldn’t have been the first time someone came up with a terrible curse, either…yet this curse appeared to be a one-off.

Bullies don’t do that, you see. They don’t just curse someone once and be done with it. They keep doing it, because they’re getting away with it, and because they get high on the thought that they’re putting someone down.

So, we know that Arnold was a very big bad guy, later on in THE CUNNING MAN. (That’s not his real name, but it’s the only one we learn.) He was awful. He was working for something called The Hierarchy, a bunch of evil magicians, and wanted to stop something positive and new just because he could. He was as powerful as a combat sorcerer, which means he was at the top of the magic scale, like Administrator Irene (has the skills but never went into combat sorcery as she liked teaching too much). It would be easy for Arnold to take Jasper’s guise, pretend to be him, and do this horrible thing…as Adam had no magic, how could Adam know who it was, especially as Adam hadn’t yet met the real Jasper?

That means the flashes of Jasper we get later, such as in the third book THE CONJURING MAN when Jasper at one glance assesses Adam’s energy and tells him to get some rest and eat something, are the true ones.

My conjecture is that Jasper is a lot younger than Adam. Seems the same age, but isn’t. That Jasper not only would not curse someone the way Adam was cursed, but could not…and as Jasper is first accepted by Mistress Irene, then being taught independently by the Gorgon (a young, demihuman woman with snakes on her head), the Gorgon would’ve known immediately if the real Jasper had done something like that as she was fully cognizant of Jasper’s magical signature.

Adam, though, doesn’t say who did it. And if he had, the Gorgon would’ve quickly disproven it, as Jasper was not capable of that. Plus, we learn along the way that the Gorgon saw what the magical signature was, and doesn’t recognize it, which is just very odd.

So, none of the students, including Jasper, did that horrible thing. And Arnold was certainly capable of it. In fact, he enjoyed doing stuff like that, just because he could.

Anyway, three years ago or thereabouts, I wrote a bit about Jasper and showed it to Chris. He then asked me to send it to another of our writer-friends, Leo Champion. They both read it. (It is a prologue that starts with “I was an ass.”) They both told me to keep going. (Chris also told me he didn’t have plans for Jasper, so “have at.”) And I’ve let them know how things have happened since…they were keen on me telling this story.

I hope I’ve done it justice.

So, in two days, I’m going to start giving snippets from my forthcoming novel JASPER’S PROMISE. I hope you will enjoy it.

Getting back to what I started with…I wish Michael were here so we could both celebrate a little bit. (You have to celebrate the small things in life. And finishing a novel isn’t exactly a small thing.) I wish he were alive for a hundred thousand reasons, not just that…he was a wonderful, amazing person, the best I’ve ever known, and I miss him every single day.