In Memory
Monday night the 13th of December, 2021, Teri Lee Akar had a major heart attack. She did not make it. I was informed of her death on Tuesday, by her husband Frank Hayes.
Few of you know what Teri was in my life. She preferred to be out of the limelight, a quiet contributor. She didn’t talk about her life online, or share her accomplishments there. She was a very private person.
And yet …
As I sit here, quietly stunned and empty, I see the huge voids that Teri once filled in my life. I will never be able to fill all the empty spaces where Teri used to reside, work, share her talents and time, and support my creative endeavors. She was one of the cornerstones of my professional life for over ten years. More importantly, I have lost a valuable and vibrant and creative and delightful friend. I am utterly devastated.
Teri had been in poor health off and on for the last year and a half, but even when sick, Teri was my:
personal assistant for several years,
timeline editor for many years,
personal editor for many years,
database maker and keeper for many years ,
creative consultant for years,
ear for editorial / publishing problems,
and so, so, so much more.
Teri was a long-time Beast Claw street team member and fan. She helped with the social media pages, and, before she started having health problems in 2020, was a strong presence on the FaceBook discussion page.
Teri knew my words, my authorial voice, my timelines, and my work, backward and forward. She knew all the loose threads in all of my series. She knew the color of each character’s eyes, their histories, their hopes and dreams. If you loved the characters in any of my fantasy and sifi and UF worlds, if you loved the continuity of timelines, if you loved the steadfast internal voices and the emotions of the characters, then you were loving Teri’s unstinting work. She caught my mistakes and sent me cogent and detailed explanations of my errors. 99.9% of the time, she caught those mistakes in time for me to fix the current work in progress before you, my readers and fans, saw it.
Teri wasn’t fond of phone calls, but she was there when I needed to gripe about my writing or the publishing world’s changes, or social media platforms, or really most anything. If I didn’t understand one of her comments, or disagreed with it, she would defend it logically and with examples of proof. She would have made a great lawyer! If I disagreed with her arguments, she knew when to back off, but I always knew there were other paths forward in the timelines, plot holes, character growth, relationships. We’d start talking about work and, when the problems were fixed or discussed enough to move forward, we’d end up hashing politics, religion, current events, most anything. We disagreed about part of almost everything and so our discussion were robust! Teri had my back. I had hers.
Teri was designing a virtual interactive CAD version of Jane Yellowrock’s home and a virtual travelogue of Jane’s New Orleans, teaching herself several platforms and formats and programs. Now, midway done, they will never be seen. You will all never see the wonderful work she was doing. And no, no one will take her place and finish the work. It was her creative process, her gift to the fans, and she owns it.
Back in the 80s and 90s, Teri was a producer of blues, soul, some jazz, and R&B recordings. She loved the arts and music of all kinds. She was a businesswoman and a dog lover. She was a wife to a creative man, who must surely miss her like the earth under his feet. She was full of purpose and life
I adored her. She was like the stones in a wall, holding everything in my creative worlds in place, so that my creative words could rush through like a flood and become coherent and cogent and linear and not dry and dull.
The world is a darker and tear-filled place without her.
Teri Lee, you are missed.
Faith