Dera, the salty-tongued army harlot, was my favorite secondary character in Twilight of Avalon, and she tugged on my conscience all the time I was writing the next two books of the trilogy. I couldn’t find a way to fit her into the story arc of either Dark Moon of Avalon or Sunrise of Avalon—and yet I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about her, wondering what happened to her and her little boy Jory after we left them at the end of Book 1. The story I imagined for her grew more and more real in my head, until I just had to write it down. So here is Dera’s story. Chronologically, it takes place between Twilight of Avalon and Dark Moon of Avalon. But it is self-contained; you don’t have to have read any of the Trystan and Isolde books to understand The Witch Queen’s Secret. Whether you know Dera already from Twilight of Avalon or are completely new to the trilogy, I hope you’ll come to care about her as much as I do, and I hope you’ll enjoy watching Dera win the ending I always knew she deserved.
