Leicester stared fixedly at the image before him, the color bleached from his face by its brilliance. Seph sensed the headmaster's mind questing out, trying to discover and destroy the wizard behind the image, but finding nothing, no trail of magic, no stone, no flesh and blood to focus on. Jason Haley, the puppeteer, was safely ensconced in the gallery above.

A fiction writer is never entirely alone. Her characters are constantly whispering in her ear.

Leicester stared fixedly at the image before him, the color bleached from his face by its brilliance. Seph sensed the headmaster's mind questing out, trying to discover and destroy the wizard behind the image, but finding nothing, no trail of magic, no stone, no flesh and blood to focus on. Jason Haley, the puppeteer, was safely ensconced in the gallery above.

Did the destruction of one dream leave a vacuum that required filling with another? Is a broken heart more vulnerable?

As for my family, my father was Danel; he died as a mercenary in the southern wars," Han went on. "My mother's name was Sarah, called Sali, and my sister was Mari. They died last summer. But then, you already knew that. Every time you forget, I'll remind you. That's the blood sacrifice I made to be here, and that's enough.

If you want to be a writer, you must be in love with the process of writing, whether you achieve financial success or not.

They were like two pieces of a failed star, drawn together by a shared history and a memory of illicit kisses.