She wore a black turtlenecked bodysuit, not unlike the one he wore, hugging a slim, lithe frame. A silver pendant dangled from her neck, bright against her suit, bearing a tiny curled-dragon charm.
Ah, here is the first appearance of Seichan into the Sigma universe, a deadly assassin who...well, keep reading. But to be honest, this is NOT Seichan's first true appearance in my books. During book talks, I've told how difficult it was to get my first novel published. It was rejected by 49 different agents, until that 50th agent saw something worthy of standing behind. And she eventually found a home for it at Avon Books. That novel was Subterranean, a deep-earth adventure involving a group of characters thrust two miles under the ice of Antarctica into a newly discovered cavern system. My editor (who is still my editor today) told me that the front of the book was too long. She wanted those characters down that hole by page 50. In my first draft, they didn't get down there until page 150. So I had to find 100 pages to cut away. Determined to do so, I kept trimming and hacking. I cut out 10 pages easily enough. Then the next 50 were pretty painstaking. I tried to cajole my editor into letting my characters get down that hole on page 70. She insisted on that 50 page mark. So I got out my axe and continued to cut--as painful as it was. One of the last scenes I cut (though it killed me to do so) was the appearance of a Eurasian terrorist who supplied the villain of the story with some C4 explosives. Here is her description that never appeared in the published novel: "He had been told to look for a woman wearing a silver pendant of a Chinese dragon. She was small of frame but generous of physique, black hair, shorn in a severe crop, almond eyes, wearing jeans and a black sweater." Sound familiar? Yes, that was Seichan in her earliest incarnation. While she ended up on the cutting room floor of that first book, I ressurected her for the Sigma series.
