Catch the sun before it falls
Book news, birthday wishes, a presale, and more spoilers of course!
Hey, since I drop into your inbox every Monday and it’s Monday again, I’m back.
This is Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker Series. He’s the curse breaker, not me. Sometimes, I help, but I leave him to do all the heavy magical stuff at least until I get some useful magic that I can use.
Before we talk about books, I just have to ask. Is the weather swinging wildly from warm to cold for you too? Or is it just my scribe’s corner of NY that’s experiencing that?
For example, last weekend was like in the 50s and then the temps rose into the 70s for Monday, Tuesday (my scribe, Melinda’s, birthday), and Wednesday and then the temps dropped into the high 30s and low 40s. Not only did it get cold, but this rain/snow/ice mix passed through on Thursday and kicked out the nice sunny weather. Thankfully, it didn’t leave anything behind that needed to be shoveled.
That cleared out and the sun came back, but it’s cold still!
That hasn’t stopped the snow from melting, so most of the snow that fell two weeks ago is disappearing. So that’s good. Of course the biggest snow banks are still hanging around and taking their sweet time to melt.
Melinda’s birthday was on March 10th, and I was a nice character. I let her leave her desk so she could spend time with family, friends, and even some of her former coworkers. I was a bit worried because I want her to finish Curse Breaker Joust but she got some writing in, and I have an epic scene.
I’d tell you about it, but that would be a huge spoiler. So you’ll have to wait until you read the book to find out what my big moment was.
Need an Escape?
One month ago, all our backers received their ebooks. If you missed the kickstarter or weren’t comfortable using that platform, you can now get your hands on the new Tales of the Curse Breaker in NY trilogy AND the last two books in the Curse Breaker’s Companion Series in our shop.
Don’t worry. All 5 books will be coming to retailers on May 11 except Amazon. We’re still in limbo there unfortunately with no idea when or if that will change.
The Alliance of Independent Authors claims their reps spoke to Amazon reps at the London Book Fair last week and they are waiting for an update from their team. I hope they did talk to them and that they aren’t just gaslighting us again. Next week will be 3 months since Amazon removed our ebooks from its platform. I hope we have a resolution soon, one way or the other.
If you missed the Kickstarter, you don’t have to wait until the retail launch in May to secure your copies. The presale is officially live on our shop today! You can grab:
The Tales of the Curse Breaker in NY Trilogy (3 new books):
The Curse Breaker’s Companion Series (the final 2 books are new):
Buying directly from our shop is the best way to support the series. All ebooks are delivered immediately by BookFunnel, so you can read them right away.
The Final Battle?
I mentioned earlier that Melinda did some writing. She wrote Chapters 45-48 of Curse Breaker Jousts and published them to Patreon and Substack this past week, and they include the final magical battle of the book!
Papa still has some verbal battles to go though because you know the commander is not letting him off without a lecture on something. I’m not saying the commander is wrong but I’m also not saying he’s right either. Can my dad dodge that lecture?
He’ll try, but will he succeed? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
Do you know what’s even more exciting? Melinda thinks she’ll write the last chapters for Curse Breaker Jousts this coming week.
Why isn’t she sure about that?
Melinda thinks she may have under written some of the story because she was trying to get the story out. For most of the book, we didn’t know how we’d defeat the baddies in this one since there were a lot of them, and they had a large numerical advantage.
In fact, at one point, my scribe feared this story might become a two parter. She didn’t want that to happen since she wants a certain event to happen in Curse Breaker Unleashed, the 13th book in the Curse Breaker series. But we wouldn’t be able to do that event if the joust story was still happening.
Did I want a two-parter? Not particularly since we just did that with Shards for his Gift and Chasing Dragons, books 10 and 11. So I was okay with skipping that and getting this conflict handled in one book.
I might have had a different opinion if the next book in the writing queue after we finish the Riders of the Apocalypse story arc is a brand new story arc for my dad. I’ll get lots of page time in those future books. Melinda knows that so she planned that and now I feel like she tricked me.
Oh well. Melinda still needs to read through the book and edit it and then we’ll see if she’s right about it being under written and if that means we need to split the book. She’ll fight hard against splitting it so I don’t give that good odds of happening.
Read the Finale First
If you want to see how we handle the Necromancer and the dead she raised before anyone else, you can catch up on all 48 chapters right now on:
That’s all for this week! I’m off to read Curse Breaker Jousts just to make sure there aren’t more places where I should have had more page time.
— Ran, son of Sarn and chief book examiner, writing on behalf of his scribe, Melinda
(Melinda approved this for sending, so she knows what I said.)
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I'm glad your birthday was good and Ran behaved. Yes, we've had the same flip-flopping temperatures here. Last week was in the eighties one day, forties the next. Today was warm, and tomorrow is supposed to be cold. Then it might be technically seasonal for a while. Maybe. I'm pleased that through it all, through your all, you can keep storytelling.