Authors rarely introduce characters in visual form. After all their characters derive from the author's imagination and do not exist in real life, and thus are not easily represented as portraits. But this hasn't always been the case. Think of the stories of Enid Blyton, Winnie the Poo, Rupert Bear and many others. I have made no secret of the fact that I love art and find the greatest possible stimulation in pictorial representations (as well as music and literature, of course).

My epic fantasy adventure, The Three Powers, takes place over four books, The Snowmelt River, The Tower of Bones, The Sword of Feimhim and The Return of the Arinn. In effect the actual narrative of this quartet breaks down into two closeley intertwined pairs, Snowmelt River and Tower of Bones, which features the interacting characters Alan, Kate, Mark and Mo; and then a second pair, The Sword of Feimhin and The Return of the Arinn, which retains the original four characters but also introduces two new characters, Penny Postlethwaite and Gully Doughty.

Alan, Kate, Mark and Mo were introduced on my website, frankpryan.com, with portraits by the Australian based artist, Mark Salwowski. Mark, you may recall, drew up those fabulous covers for the great Iain M Banks science fiction novels, back in the 1990s. I have recently commissioned Mark to draw up portraits of Penny and Gully from the final two books.

And now . . . I'm delighted to introduce you for the very first time to the portrait of the redoubtable Penny, drawn by Mark from the character in the last two books, and approved by me as an accurate depiction. You will find her on the index page of my website www.frankpryan.com.

Cheers!