Richard

Meet Richard. Yeah. Mmm. I'll be spending the next couple of months with him. Very intensely during November. Three or four hours a night, longer on the weekend. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Richard is King of Aribisala, one of four kingdoms on a large island of the same name. Kind of like Iceland, but further south, which is moot, as the story takes place in late fall and winter, but to give you an idea of its size and topography (flat lands, mountains, waterfalls, volcanoes, geothermal heat.) Richard has been married before, but tragically lost his wife and child in an unknown (to me) incident. His family is pushing for him to remarry because, he is, after all, king. Then he meets Lissa, who has extraordinary powers that will save his kingdom. She just doesn't know how to use them. She's a little pissed at the moment from being summoned from Earth, the only life she's ever known, to his Godforsaken, cold world. She'll get over it. He'll help her. She won't have to worry about cold when he's around. I'm sure you know what I mean. In the meantime, she has to think about harnessing these strange powers, staying away from the evil henchman and his Ice Queen boss. Plus, there's a kingdom full of people whose thoughts/emotions she can suddenly hear/feel, not to mention a dying wizard and a couple of other surprises, only one of which she'll like.

I'll leave you with that for now. I'd post a picture of Lissa, but the ones I have aren't clear - profile obscured by hair, double exposure of a hysterical laugh, sobbing on a bed, trying to drown herself in the bathtub. Lissa is a tortured individual. Richard will make it all better. But not for about three hundred and fifty pages or so.

To all my friends who will participate in NaNo - I salute you. May the words fly from your fingertips and the ideas streak through your brain like the Aurora Borealis (oops, another Icelandic reference.)