Happy New Years and What's Next For Us

Jan 01, 2024

Hey,

Happy New Year! May your year be epic and full of books! (Preferably ours)

This is Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker series back to welcome you to our holiday issue! Let’s start with some well wishes for the new year!

You can also listen to this newsletter on our podcast, and Melinda comments on it. Listen on YouTube. Listen on Spotify.

Last week, you wrangled a 30% off discount from me, so that’s still happening.

At checkout, use code CBS30 for 30% off ebooks and audiobooks that are 2.99 and up, excluding Stars & Angels Sing.

Since it’s the first day of a new year, we should look back at the year that just ended and see how we did. Yes, it’s time for that age-old tradition where fictional characters review their scribe!

(I’m not sure if other characters do this, but we’ve been reviewing our Scribe for years. We also reserve the right to complain about her on other days because I never know when I’ll need to indulge in a good rant, but I digress as I do at least once in every email.)

Will we give her five stars or a noble effort? Let’s find out!

Let’s start with what we published:

Melinda also recorded 73 episodes for our podcast!

In 57 of the episodes, she interviewed her fellow fantasy authors. (Technically there are 58 author interviews and 74 episodes for the year because we’re waiting for some things from the author who joined us on Dec. 30 for an interview. Once we have those things, we’ll publish the episode.)

What did the Scribe write in 2023 that isn’t published yet:

Rogue Gods 1: Gateway to Hell completed
Rogue Gods 2: Summon the Gods - 90% complete
Rogue Rescue (Robin of Larkspur #4) - 75% complete
Chasing Dragons (Curse Breaker #11) - 50% complete
Rogue Gods 3: Storm the Gates - 0% complete because someone burned the outline. (It wasn’t me! I was barely involved.)

Not bad, not bad at all! How much of that featured me, Ran?

This is important because I have goals to meet! I’m trying to be the character with the most scenes. Did I accomplish that goal?

Kind of? I’m in every book, but I’m not the main character. I get to say my piece though, and I work some really cool magic in the Rogue Gods trilogy. So I can’t really complain.

What else did we do in 2023?

All our digitally narrated audiobooks will be available on Barnes & Noble, Kobo & KoboPlus, Spotify, audiobooks.com, iTunes, and Overdrive. We’ll have links for all the places soon.

We still want human-narrated versions, but we didn’t earn enough in 2023 from books sales to make that a reality.

Melinda narrated the audiobook for Stars & Angels Sing, but it was too much on top of working a fulltime job and writing. I don’t know if she’ll try again with a different book.

But 2024 is a new year, and anything is possible. You can help by sharing our books on social media, recommending them, requesting your local library, and of course, buying our books.

What’s coming in 2024?

Melinda plans to release all five books listed above. Depending on how long editing takes and how much she’s able to write by the time those 5 books are out, there could be more books published in 2024!

What is Melinda writing in 2024?

She’ll finish the books mentioned above, so I won’t relist them. Instead, I’ll list the books she wants to write after she finishes the 5 books listed above:

Rogue Gift (Robin of Larkspur #5) ← this book includes those flashback scenes that feature Robin from Curse Breaker Hidden, so we’ll finally get some context for them.
Curse Breaker Jousts (Curse Breaker #12) ← we attend a fantasy version of a Renaissance fair, and it’s all fun and games until monsters crash the fair led by a corrupted version of our queen, so we obviously need to save her. Somehow.
Chaos Reigns (His Angelic Keeper #5) ← Sovvan gets her first assignment as the new Angel of Death, but a death goddess wants to permanently destroy her and steal her mantle of power.
Mage Hunter (long awaited sequel to Relic Hunter)
Storm Spells (Curse Breaker’s Companion #3) ← will we rescue our scribe? I guess that depends on whether we like what she’s written for us. Just kidding! Or am I kidding?

Not too bad. What are the odds of all these books getting written next year?

Well, if you don’t mind a little math, I can actually figure that out.

So we have a Patreon for fans who want to read books before anyone else and vote on things. It’s also where Melinda shares things she can’t share publicly.

Where does the math come in?

I’m just getting to that! Hold your dragons.

So Melinda publishes 4 chapters a week on our Patreon, every week no matter what we, characters, are doing.

There are 52 weeks in a year. If you times that by 4 chapters per week, you get 208 chapters. Our books range in length, but most of our books have around 45 chapters.

So if we divide 208 by 45, we get 4.6 books!

We have to minus 1 book from that because Melinda still needs to write Rogue Gods #3.

And we need to minus one more book from that because Melinda will need at least 45 chapters to finish Rogue Rescue, Rogue Gods #2, and Chasing Dragons.

So that leaves 2.6 more books she could write next year!

I hope I didn’t lose you with my little math excursion. We never get to do any book math in here, so I got a little carried away.

What do the characters think about this?

This is Ran, and I have a lot of thoughts about this as you expect. But my opinion might surprise you.

Okay, now that I have your attention, I need to point out something that might have gotten lost in the math. 2024, 2025, and 2026 will be epic.

Why will they be epic?

Because the biggest and most ambitious stories are coming your way starting in 2024.

We’re holding no bars, pulling no punches, and putting it all on the line as we fight for our family and friends. I hope you’ll adventure with us in the coming year!