The story of us, our books, and where we're going in 2024

Jul 31, 2023

Hey!

Welcome back. Last week, we ended our preview of Shards For His Gift with a look at what my dad’s up to.

(This is Ran, as always, the son and sidekick of the man who is supposed to be putting the curse breaker in the Curse Breaker series. But more on that soon.)

Instead of talking about our newest release, perhaps we could do something a little different and look back at where we came from.

I’ll be your tour guide. Since it was a bumpy ride to get to Shards For His Gift, please buckle up and keep your hands and feet inside at all times.

If you have any eye protection like sunglasses, keep them handy in case an eye-searing sky beam appears. They tend to shoot into the sky randomly. I’m not sure why, but I’ll ask Papa when he’s better in case we need to go on an adventure to figure this out.

When I find out, I’ll report back as I always do! Don’t worry about that. I take my job as answerer of questions very seriously.

Okay. All set? Then let’s start our tour with why the Curse Breaker series exists.

One day, this portal appeared in our cave home, and Uncle Miren and I were just hanging around doing nothing. So we had to investigate it. How could not? It was right there and and it was all purple and glowy.

Papa was at work like he always is, so he wasn’t around to throw a shield between us and the portal or to do that overprotective thing he does when something interesting happens. Uncle Miren just so happened to be on the other side of the cave, so he couldn’t grab me before I charged through the portal.

And what did I find on the other side? I mean aside from a glowing purple tunnel because that was there too.

My soon-to-be Scribe’s apartment!

Melinda was writing other stories before I ran into her apartment and shouted, hello!

I startled her really badly, and she almost fell out of her chair. Then Uncle Miren arrived, he might have scolded me for running off. I don’t remember for sure. But that’s a thing he’d do, and I did run off, so it’s possible he said that.

It’s also possible I ignored him. Who can say?

(If you’re reading this, Uncle Miren, I only ignore you when you say things I don’t want to hear. But I learned that from watching you do the same thing when Papa says things you don’t want to hear. And this is probably a good time to remind you that I love you very much.)

And now back to my story. So Melinda (our soon-to-be Scribe) had a lot of questions, obviously. And we did too!

Some of those questions did get answered like where did the portal come from? Who made it? We still don’t know.

But that just means we need to go on adventure to find the answers! And we will as soon as I can convince my minders that we should do that. Since you met my dad in the previous email, you know convincing him will be a big job. But I’m up for it!

So this portal business all happened around 2012 I think in your world. That’s when Melinda wrote the original version of Curse Breaker Jousts, and she’s mad that we won’t let her revise that story to fit in the series since it’s change a lot since she wrote that story. But we will soon.

We’re just need to chase some dragons first because that sounds like more fun to me. Maybe you disagree and that’s okay. I’m a kid from a fantasy world, and I have dragons on the brain.

But let me get back to my story. Somewhere in 2013, Melinda asked her younger sister to read Curse Breaker Jousts. At that time, Melinda thought that book would make a great book one.

Her sister diagreed. So Melinda started writing another story that became Curse Breaker Enchanted.

In February 2014, Melinda’s sister passed away.

The original version of Curse Breaker Enchanted wasn’t published until 2016 because grief is a many-headed monster, and we fought hard to save our Scribe from it so she could write our stories.

Someday, we’ll tell that story. It was quite an adventure, and we didn’t know how it would end. But we won since Melinda went on to write and publish 21 books about our world.

Not all of them star me and my dad, but I’m working on fixing that. Don’t you worry. After all, she’s my Scribe. I saw her first. More on those plans coming soon. So stay tuned.

So that’s where the Curse Breaker series started. We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have without you sharing our books on social media, reading our books, recommending our books, requesting your local library stock our books, and leaving reviews to encourage us (I mean me) to new levels of magical mayhem!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

In 2014, Melinda’s sister asked her to finish Curse Breaker Enchanted and to publish not just it but all the stories she’d written up until then.

Because let’s face it. Melinda is an introvert. She likes writing stories and daydreaming about them. Before her sister asked her to publish them, Melinda had never thought about doing that. I’m not kidding.

So that promise is really important to us, characters, and we want to celebrate it and also the life of person who wrangled that promise out of our Scribe. Melinda was pretty dumbstruck when her sister asked her to finish and publish her books. Though that might have been the timing of the request.

Her sister was about to leave on vacation and Melinda helped her pack the car even though she wasn’t going because she had to go to work the next day. But that’s what big sisters do. They help their younger sibs.

That’s when her sister begged Melinda to publish her stories. Right there on the driveway at their parent’s house. No one knew then that the vacation wound end in tragedy, and a week later, Melinda’s sister was dead.

I have chills just writing this. But that’s what happened. I was there when Melinda got the call.

At the time, I might have been begging her for more page time. I do that so often, the memories blur together. So that was probably what I was doing there,

Anyway, we’re getting off topic. I wanted to tell you about our humble beginnings and that we want to make 2024 special and celebrate the promise that all our books, this newsletter, our blog, our podcast, and everything sprang from.

Melinda’s sister loved books and was a voracious reader. Unfortunately, she only read a few chapters from Curse Breaker Enchanted.

Help us giveaway 3650 copies of Curse Breaker Enchanted, one for every day since the day our first fan passed away on February 22, 2014 by the 10th anniversary of her passing on February 22, 2024.

Curse Breaker Enchanted is free on all stores. Except for a few countries on Amazon because they refuse to price match it. We’ve asked multiple times, but their support people just say they can’t do it.

So we set up a BookFunnel link where you can get it instead if the Amazon store you prefer doesn’t have it set to free.

Signing up to our newsletter is 100% optional. You can download the book without doing that. It’s okay. Not everyone wants fictional characters in their inbox, even though we’re very well behaved and we play well with others unless they try to take away our page time.

How can you help us reach this goal?

Recommend Curse Breaker Enchanted to everyone you know and share the links to download it.
Talk about Curse Breaker Enchanted on social media and include a link to download it.

Ask your library to stock Curse Breaker Enchanted too so your community members can read it. Melinda and her sister spent lots of time at their local library while growing up.
If you already read it, leave a review on Curse Breaker Enchanted and tell other readers what you liked about it and what you didn’t like.

Curse Breaker Enchanted isn’t perfect, and we know that. In our humble opinion, Curse Breaker Hidden is the best book in the series so far, but Jousts might beat it. We’ll see.