How to be in two places at once

Full instructions inside! (Portals are not included but book news and life updates are so read on!)

Hey, it's been a tough week. So I thought I would drop by to entertain you and give you a little bit of humor and heart and maybe a few laughs.

This is Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker series writing to you from my fantasy world because I might have promised not to leave home since neither Papa nor Uncle Miren are home right now. I’m not alone though.

Papa’s a bit overprotective. With things being what they are and our situation being kind of precarious, his fears might be justified.

If you’ve read the last 3 Curse Breaker books, (Curse Breaker Revealed, Shards For Our Gift, and Chasing Dragons), then you know all about the drama and danger that we dealt with recently which is weighing on Papa’s mind a lot lately.

Since I’m a good son, I am obeying the letter of my promise but not the spirit of it. How am I doing that?

I could tell you but then you might tell Papa, and then he might be more specific next time. I really want to tell you how I’m writing to you without disobeying Papa because I came up with such a clever idea!

What did I do?

Okay, you twisted my arm. I’ll tell you.

I might have laid down inside the portal, so my head and shoulders and also my arms are inside my scribe’s apartment where there are important things like the internet since the smartphone in my hands needs it. But my legs might be sticking out of the other end of the portal.

So technically, I have NOT left the Inari and Nolo’s apartment. I keep digging my feet into the carpet there just to make sure. So that’s how I’m writing to you and obeying my overprotective by beloved Papa at the same time. Isn’t that so clever?

Now if the portal would stop moving that would make writing to you easier. It keeps bumping my arms. So if you find any typos, it’s the portal’s fault. It keeps tipping forward and back or leaning side to side like it’s trying to shake something loose. But that can’t be what it’s doing, so something else must be wrong with it.

But Ran, what about the books!

Sorry! I might have digressed. I’ll do some book news in a minute.

First, are you okay?

With everything going on in the world right now, I hope you take some time this week:

• to watch a beloved movie,

• reread your favorite book (bonus points if I star in it), or

• just marvel at the blue sky and the puffy white clouds drifting slowly by.

Remember that the world is still full of wonder and beauty, and things can always get better.

(They can go the other way too, but I'd rather be golden, wouldn't you? So let's hope we'll all be glowing when our jagged edges meet the light.) But I digress.

So how about some book news now?

Sure! But first, I need to give an update on the scribe’s situation since it affects our books. We wish it didn’t, but she only makes about $5 from books sales a month outside of Kickstarters and no one in your world accepts lumir crystals. So Melinda has to work for a living but not for us.

For that reason, her day job is really important. When things threaten it, we get a little edgy and I start wondering if magic might fix the situation. Luckily, that situation is working out so Melinda have a roof over her head and still write books about me!

If you missed last week's newsletter, Melinda got some positive news on the job front. It came around the one year anniversary of the passing of her father, which made it bittersweet.

I can’t help wondering if her dad got some angels to work some magic because Melinda’s brother also got a job offer around the same time.

That could be a coincidence. Or their dad could be taking a page from our book and using his time in Heaven to influence hiring managers. After all, her dad was a salesman for the last bunch of years of his corporate career. So anything’s possible.

What do you think? Can our dearly departed still influence things in the living world?

My aunt does it all the time so I believe that’s what happened. It might just have taken a tiny nudge since our scribe is really good at her job. If you backed any of our Kickstarters, then you saw firsthand how good she is at managing complex projects and fictional characters.

Speaking of Kickstarters, we have one coming up before the end of the year. You should follow it!

We still hope to run it in November, but Melinda still can’t commit to a date yet since she’s still writing the last book (Storm Spells), and we might have run away with the plot. But we do that in every book. So she needs to finish that.

This week, Melinda found out more about the new job and filled out some paperwork to get hired. So that was good because she’s one step closer to starting the new permanent position at the company that acquired the one she currently works for.

Melinda believes she can handle the Kickstarter and her job for the few weeks they overlap, so as long as she finishes Storm Spells soonish, November is still possible. But she needs to stop watching Kpop Demon Hunters on repeat, or I'll lock her out of Netflix.

This is your only warning, scribe. Give me more page time!

Sorry about that. I try not scold my scribe in public, but sometimes I have to when she doesn't listen. I know it's been a tough week, but I still showed up ready for an adventure. The least she could do was sit in front of her PC and write about me. Am I right?

I might be exaggerating just a little. She did wrestle with a fight scene and a chase scene. But I'm not IN either scene, so they don't count. They are cool scenes and maybe I'm a little jealous.

Yes, I have some really cool scenes too. But I want all the cool scenes! Is that too much to ask for?

I don't think it is.

Who's in the fight scene and the chase scene?

I could tell you but that would be a spoiler. Do you want more spoilers? Maybe I’ll give you some next week. If you want to read Storm Spells before anyone else, you can do that on Patreon and Substack. Melinda is posting 4 chapters a week every week and giving everyone who is a paid subscriber for a least one month, a copy of the finished ebook when it’s finish.

📬 Want Early Access?

Paid subscribers get:

• 4 chapters per week of Melinda’s current WIP (Rogue Characters, book #3 of the Tales of the Curse Breaker in NY series)

• New ebooks months before the public release

• Behind-the-scenes updates just like this

🔓 Subscribe here:

• 💫 Patreon (10% off annually with code BCD9D)

• 📰 Substack (10% off, no code needed)

That’s it for this week. See you next Monday!

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