Hello lovely readers! If you’ll let me, I’d love to tell you a story. It’s about a young bard searching for purpose, and a princess desperately trying to live up to her parent’s legacy. It’s also about ruthless barbarians, a runaway bride, political coups, and the obligatory royal bastard.

This all started with my college roommate, truth be told. We were telling jokes, as 20-year-olds stumbling through higher education often do, and I called her ’princess.’ She shot back that if she was a princess, then I was a bard, and a story was born.

This is the first book in what I’d like to be a trilogy, chronicling the adventures of Princess Alys and Mel the Bard. As you saw in the prologue/first chapter, we’ll meet a charming cast of characters, including: an island native walking the mainland on a quest for justice; a wealthy merchant’s son who moonlights as a thief; and a scholarly young man, wildly out of his depth, who quite frankly just wants to go home and read.

In addition to all of this, there is a component to this story that is close to my heart; our protagonist, Mel, is disabled. She has a chronic illness, and the limitations she faces in this fantastical world inform much of the plot. She will by no means be the only disabled character in the story, but her story will in many ways mirror the journey young disabled individuals face in today’s fast-paced world.

At its heart, though, this is a story of change. It is a tale of love and loss, of friendship and family, of the things we’ll do for power, and of the people we carry with us wherever we go.