Trust is a thing you know without words.

This had been real: real in its flaws and uncertainties, real in its small triumphs, real in its compromises and understanding.

My advice to aspiring writers of fantasy trilogies or series is that each book needs two main plots. There's the 'big story', the over-arching grand plot of the entire series, and there is the complete-in-itself, one-book plot.

Death, of course, should not be feared, but awaited with certain wonder. To die was to step across a threshold into a new world, unknown, unimaginable.

I thought of betrayal and how it came so easily - in a word, a glance, a gesture.

But I believe we all have an inner goodness; a little flame that stays alight through the worst of trials.

Every man or woman who makes a stand helps keep the flame of freedom burning.