Dear Hero-to-be,

Thank you for waiting until office hours to announce yourself and for understanding that you will have to take a seat and wait until I move at least one current project off the active burners. Which means finishing and submitting. I do appreciate your promptness in responding to the item on my goals list for ideas for upcoming projects. I need a certain number of balls in the air for my juggling act to work right. From the way I want to grab at the clock hands and push them back so I don't have to change gears and can keep working, I do believe we are going to work well together.

I must channel Skye kitty's skeptical look and cast it your way, as your arrival in my head now requires me to research not only the Dutch East India Company (not the first time I've looked into that) but Dutch and Afrikaner history. This is going to be a lot of work. this is not a complaint. Merely stating this is uncharted territory for me, so I hope your spirit of adventure is up to dealing with that. I like my historicals unusual, and this will certainly fit the bill.

What I'm going to need from you before we can go any farther (further?) is the following: your name; the era in which you live (narrowing it down to sometime between 1707 and the Second Boer War is not quite enough for my purposes, but it's a start); where you came from (again, narrowing it down to The Netherlands is a start but I need more) and how you got to Africa (I do appreciate your informing me that you sought out the end of the world because you felt like you'd reached the end of your world; this is more than some heroes have given me in the past.) Also I need to know what your problem is. Can't fix things if I don't know how they're broken. If this is difficult, how about the last time you felt whole. I can work from there.

Needless to say, we'll need to wait for your heroine to announce herself. She's going to have to come to me. I can't force these things, and as I've already told you, I have a few other pots on the stove as we speak, so take your time working on that intake paperwork. I'm sure some of the current guys (Angus, John and Slate, I'm looking at you) can help you fill out the tricky parts.

I'll be looking through TVTropes.org over lunch, so if you can meet me there to point out some useful tools, that would be very helpful. That's about it for now, so time for me to close up shop for the morning and transition to the next part of the day. I look forward to working with you, whoever you are, and while I can't promise not to put you through some really tough times during the course of the story, I can promise you a happily ever after.

Sincerely yours,

your author