Author's Note: ALMENDRA'S QUEST

It’s strange to call “Almendra’s Quest” a new book. Well, it’s certainly new for future readers, but far from new for me or my family or friends. I’ve been dabbling in the magic world Almendra belongs to (on and off) for many years. I think I was still at school when I got the idea. Looking around, I see countless notebooks packed with ideas and notes and sketches, bulging card-board folders with completed but discarded drafts, shoe boxes jammed with post-it notes and even napkins, bearing bits and pieces of information like names and their origins, character descriptions and introductions, scenes, dialogues, backstories, etc. I can’t get rid of my old desktop computer because I use it as a storage for more of the same but in electronic form. Just yesterday I opened an old 80-page-long file containing different notes and plot ideas and was once again amazed by the sheer number of transformations this particular story had undergone (not counting all those stories that haven’t been written yet), while the world I created expanded so much that now it can hardly be contained on the pages of one book alone. If you ask me any question, any at all, about this world and how it works, I’m certain I’ll be able to answer it without a second thought. However, there’s one question that I don’t seem to know the answer to: Where did Almendra come from? A friend wondered about that yesterday during our morning walk with my dog and I realised that I don’t remember this crucial piece of information. At all. But then is it any wonder, I ask myself, considering how many names she had lived under and how many personalities she had had until she became Almendra Ravenlock? I know that my book is just a drop in the ocean. I don’t have a literary agent to cheer me on or a publisher to promote me, but I have a book full of lovable characters and their adventures and I’d like to share it with you. Tomorrow Highland Court will open its gates to the world and I welcome you to join Almendra and her friends on her quest.