As I have said, you have no reason to trust me, and an excellent reason not to.

I smiled. "I understand now. But It doesn't matter and you needn't apologize. They have been very kind to me too. Even if we did differ a little about suitable dresses." He considered me a moment, a mischievous light creeping into his eyes, and said: "Was THAT the dress - that night you wouldn't come out of your room?" I grinned and nodded, and we both laughed.

Tiny fists can hurt quite a lot when they hit you in the face.

But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.

When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them.

Vampire. Dangerous. Unknowable. Seriously creepy. This one's name was Constantine. We'd met before.

He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.