Unlock the Secrets of Rogue Night: Get the Facts Now!

Apr 10, 2023

Hey,

This is Ran. You remember me, right? I’m Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker series, and I’m interrupting this takeover because I have news, and I don’t want Robin to share it.

What’s the news?

Kobo.com in the US and UK now offer unlimited reading and listening through their program called Kobo Plus.

We know finances are tight right now, so I wanted to tell you about this because Kobo Plus is like $10 bucks a month or something.

And yes, all our books on Kobo Plus. Not all the audiobooks are there yet because the interface is a little confusing for yours truly. After all, I am a fictional character, and I get distracted by magic, but I’m working on it.

The other news is sad. Amazon announced this week that it’s closing Book Depository on April 28, 2023. If you have any preorders or orders on their site, we recommend you check with them about what will happen.

If you were buying our books through there, don’t panic! We found a printer in the UK that ships internationally, and they can ship books directly to you once we figure out how to set that up. Authors who use this printer told our Scribe, Melinda, that their shipping rates are the lowest they’ve found. So Melinda is exploring that option.

I’ll have more details after we get a copy to see the quality, price, and shipping fees, and figure out the details. We heard from other authors that their quality and pricing are the best, and they will print hardcover books with dust jackets!

So we’re excited, and if things work out, we will offer all our books in hardcover with dust jackets.

And now I need to hand control of this week’s newsletter back to Robin, so I can get back to my book, Shards For His Gift, which will be done before Robin’s next book (Rogue Rescue). And she’s jealous.

—Ran, Sarn’s son and sidekick for all things magical :)

Hi again,

I’m Robin, your temporary host. Last week, I showed you part of Rogue Night, my second book. But it didn’t show you how I met Sarn or why he agreed to help me.

Perhaps we’ll see that in today’s excerpt.

Rogue Night

by Melinda Kucsera

Robin turned two more bends and saw them finally—people! She almost wept with joy. Her shoulders slumped in relief. She wasn’t alone anymore. Help was within her grasp. Then Robin looked around her, and unease coiled in her gut again.

This tunnel looked like the last one right down to the placement of the stalagmites and their drippy, ceiling-bound friends. Either her tired mind was making all the tunnels look identical, or the Litherians had crafted that illusion on purpose. They were a race of stone mages, so it was possible they could have carved several identical tunnels just to mess with visitors.

After all, they were famously antisocial, but they’d vanished from the world centuries ago. Shouldn’t the current inhabitants of this place have done something to differentiate one tunnel from another? Robin wondered how many visitors got lost in this maze each day. Did anyone ever look for them?

Someone must since this place traded extensively with other strongholds. Then again, there were all those traps down here. Robin rubbed the back of her neck. It ached from all the looking down she’d had to do on the march here to ensure she didn't step on something that couldn’t hold her weight. It was a relief to have solid ground under her feet again, but that relief was short-lived since the argument in front of her was heating up.

A man and a woman faced another man. The first man wore furs, not uncommon in this weather except they looked kind of like wolf pelts, and Robin felt uncomfortable about that. The man’s furs looked a lot like the pelt of the alpha she'd freed, but that was impossible, wasn’t it?

There weren’t any wolf shifters anymore. The races of the Magic Kind had all died out long ago, leaving the world’s stage to mankind. Robin backed up, but it was no use hiding when she frigging glowed and not just her necklace or the lumir crystal attached to her coat either. Two white threads glowed around her wrist, and there was a green one wrapped around her ankle over her knee-high boot. Hiding was out of the question.

Besides, Robin needed answers. It was just hunger making her edgy. She had nothing to fear here except failing to find help, and that wouldn’t happen. The Rangers always helped their own, and she was a Ranger herself, or she would still be employed as one if she’d stayed home. Dad had held a space for her.

Was it still available? Could she go home? Just thinking about Larkspur made Robin miss it even more. But Ison might look there for her. He knew where her home was. But now wasn't the time to think about the man she’d left without a word. That punch to the face while she was nine months pregnant had ended any responsibility she had to him. Robin tucked all those questions away for later when Rosalie was safe. But they stayed in her wounded heart, nurturing the tiny flame of hope she held tightly to as the woman she’d heard crying out for her child turned to face her.

She too wore furs, but other than her cloak, which also looked like the pelt of a wolf, she was missing some key pieces of clothing like trousers and shoes. So was her male companion. He'd been silently backing her up throughout the argument with a man in Guardsmen’s blue. The trio occupied the right fork of the intersection ahead.

Beyond them, a bunch of creepy statues complete with glowing eyes brandished their weapons. They looked so life-like, Robin dropped her gloves and patted down her pockets for a weapon. Then she saw they were made of marble. When Robin glanced at them again, the statues' eyes were unblinking crystals, and she cursed herself for being a fool.

Mount Eredren sure did have some strange décor. But what had she expected? A race of misanthropic stone mages had created it, and no one had updated things since then.

Pull it together, girl. Rosalie needs you to be strong and coherent, Robin reminded herself.

Before she could say anything to the trio, that woman pointed at her. There was something wrong with her eyes. They weren’t brown. Robin couldn’t tell what color they were because the light shining on the woman came from a mosaic made of lumir crystals, and it only covered the part of the ceiling that was over those creepy statues. Nor was it bright enough to properly light this tunnel.

“She took my baby,” the half-naked, fur-clad woman said again.

Robin’s mouth dropped open in shock. Surely, she’d heard that wrong. That Wolf Girl hadn't just accused her of kidnapping, right? “There must be some mistake. I didn’t take anyone. I only just met you. I’ve never seen you before.” Robin backed away while all three of them glared at her. But she didn’t back into a wall. Instead, she’d backed into a cave, and it was filled with heaps of junk.

***

Get Rogue Night, book 2 of the Robin of Larkspur series, now.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more!

Melinda’s Substack

Unlock the Secrets of Rogue Night: Get the Facts Now!

Rogue Night

The Robin of Larkspur series

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