In Her Honor - A Tribute To My Sister
We interrupt our regular newsletter to bring you a special message from our Scribe.
Hey, this is Melinda, your Scribe.
I don’t often jump in here. Usually, I let Ran run things, but once a year, I want to honor my sister. It helps to air out the grief and make space for new memories and yes, Ran, new books.
(He’s reading this as I write it as usual. He doesn’t like anyone else to control the newsletter.)
In honor of the 10th anniversary of my sister's passing, Stars & Angels Sing published today in a special expanded edition.
10 years ago today, my younger sister passed away suddenly while on vacation. Her death wrecked me. Nothing prepares you for such a loss.
For a long time, there was a hole in my family and in my heart. But I had fictional characters who needed me to write their stories (ahem, Ran) so I could keep the promise I made to my sister to publish their stories.
And they reminded me every day of that promise. (Ran is still reminding me even as I type this. The reminders never cease. That’s also why there are more Curse Breaker books than anything else.)
The first stories I published about Sarn and Ran were the Thanksgiving and Christmas stories collected in Stars & Angels Sing. It's now much longer than the original version that published briefly in 2016.
The 2023 version includes all the other holiday stories that were published on my website over the years and in my newsletter because Ran (Sarn's son from the Curse Breaker series) thought should be included. He also runs my newsletter and begs me daily for more page time. But I digress.
I hope you get a chance to read this book. My sister would definitely have an opinion about it.
A lot of arguments went into that book, but Ran told you all about them already, so I won’t rehash them here.
There are more Curse Breaker books coming very soon plus a new trilogy (Rogue Gods) where I finally use that idea my sister gave me ~13 years ago. You’ll see why it took me that long to find a place to put it in my books when you read it.
Like a good sister, I credited her at the end and related as much of her theory as I could remember. So that proves I paid attention to all her lectures over the years.
My mom just reminded me about a few things I forgot about that theory, so maybe I didn’t pay as much attention as I thought. Or maybe time doesn’t just heal, it also loses things.
I hope Heaven has dragons and purple spires and books to read, not just for my sister, but for all the readers who are chilling with the angels.
I miss my sister so much! I even miss arguing with her. But now I have fictional characters to argue with, so maybe I don’t miss the arguments as much anymore since I am having them daily about my books.
Rest in peace, sis.
None of this would be possible without you, dear reader. Thank you for reading my books. I couldn’t keep the promise I made to my sister without you and your support over the years.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with me. I hope you’ll come on many quests to come because there are more epic fantasy adventures coming soon. Rogue Rescue publishes on March 10.
Ran says the next book after that will come out in April. I asked if he will follow instructions (aka the outline) to make that happen. But he didn’t answer at the time of writing this email, so I guess we’ll see.
I hope you have a great day full of great books. Ran will be back in your inbox on Monday with our regularly scheduled newsletter. See you then.
— Melinda Kucsera
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