In Case You Wondered: The Ice Queen

I spend about 50% of my days living in a fantasy world, although I don't necessarily mean Ærenden. When I'm in the middle of writing a book, characters visit me---they sit shotgun in the car, they run alongside me on the treadmill, they prattle on while I'm sweeping the floor. But they don't hang around to fracture my already fragile sanity. They disrupt my life to tell me their stories in the hope I'll deem them worthy enough to include in a book.

Sometimes those characters become an integral part of my writing, like Cal. Others fade from memory as soon as they're done talking. And a third set falls in between. I want to include them, but for one reason or another, they wind up edited from print. One such character is the Ice Queen. She haunted me enough that I wrote a brief description of her, just to get her out of my head. 

Ice shapes her fingernails. Snowflakes form her lashes. And though her cheeks hint of frozen blood beneath frost-white skin, her eyes glimmer the truth of her life. They brighten with the glow of a thousand night stars while she crooks her finger, beckoning winter to become slave to her magic.

The initial outline of The Zeiihbu Master included her, instead of Anissa (the character depicted on my cover), but when it came time to write the scene, it morphed into something entirely different and Anissa sidled in from the corners of my mind. She's a sneaky one, a woman I would not want to try outmaneuvering.

So the Ice Queen lost, but she still visits sometimes. Maybe she'll appear in one of the last two books. Or maybe she'll have a short story of her own, like the original Spellmaster will soon. Who knows, but I do know she won't go away until her story is told. I think it'll be an interesting one. Don't you?

(p.s. this is one of those moments when I wish I could draw; I have such a clear image of her in my mind, but my stick figures just aren't doing her justice! If anyone can draw, feel free to give her a face :))