No proper princess would come out looking for dragons," Woraug objected. "Well I'm not a proper princess then!" Cimorene snapped. "I make cherries jubillee and I volunteer for dragons, and I conjugate Latin verbs-- or at least I would if anyone would let me. So there!

I most certainly can deny it. Of course, if I did, I'd be lying." Mairelon

In short, if we wish to see anything sensible done about the situation, we will clearly have to do it ourselves.

He pushed his glasses up on his nose and gave me a sidelong look, the one that meant he was so sure you were wrong that he could just wait and let you find out for yourself the hard way.

You mean I'm going to have to do a spell in front of a bunch of toffs?" Kim said, outraged that no one had mentioned this before she had agreed to this come-out. "Yes, exactly", Lady Wendall said serenely. "You and Richard have plenty of time to design something that will reflect your unique background, as well as demonstrating your abilities as a wizard. I am looking forward to seeing what you decide upon." "I could pick everyone's pockets at once with magic, "Kim said, still disgruntled. "That'd 'reflect my unique background', all right".

Kim was more than a little inclined to snarl at him, but in the past few days she had learned that snarling at Mairelon did little good. He simply smiled and corrected her grammar.

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down."