Hi Readers,

Five minutes earlier…

[A purple butterfly, luminous against the falling night, fluttered through Central Park. Others flocked to it, and the swarm circled, spinning inwards toward a glimmer that became a ripple in reality. The Queen of All Trees retracted her branch and processed through the burgeoning portal back to Shayari, her realm. She’d been gone too long, and the enemy was watching. She bent her proud trunk to fit her shining crown through the portal and vanished.

A hundred feet away, a teenager flipped her electric blue fringe out of her eyes and regarded her laptop. The battery indicator flashed demanding she charge the damned thing, but why was the battery so low? She sighed and lowered the lid, pausing when the text on the screen caught her eye:

“Hi there, this is Ran, and I’m taking back Melinda’s newsletter.”

Muttering something about too many late nights and early morning lattes, the recent college grad shut her laptop and left the park certain she had hallucinated that message.]

One hour north of Central Park…

[A boy giggled. He sat in a darkening apartment lit only by the glow of the laptop he’d borrowed to message you: ]

Hi Reader!

I’m back! It’s Ran, in case you forgot, the lovable son of Sarn who took over his author’s newsletter. Or I had taken it over until the Queen of All Trees put me in a digital time out and stole the newsletter from me.

But she was right to take over. I was a bad character. Instead of looking for my author, a really nice, quiet, thirty-something writer who has no life outside of us characters, I was giving away our first adventure. (By the way, it’s still FREE everywhere).

I like giving things away but I need an agent in your world to do the actual giving part. So, I invade other people’s giveaways. But that still leaves us with a missing author and a missing manuscript! The evil corporation who kidnapped our author also took her copy of Curse Breaker: Faceted and its sequel!

Our poor author must be going crazy. She was trying her hardest to get Faceted out on her late sister’s birthday. Melinda promised her sister she’d write our tales. Now it’s up to us characters to make sure those stories are published.

First, we have to get her and her manuscript back. Thank you to everyone who wrote in answers last week. You have all been a tremendous help, but we still need you!

Here are the clues we have so far:

Solved Riddle # 1:

Where Fire burns, Songs resound.
Where Sand and Storms vie,
stands a place out of time.
There a secret worlds
away from Shayari is stowed.

Solved riddle #2:

‘Neath the  Demon  Shroud, a  Rebel’s  Honor  rests.
Watch the star  Eliesmore, follow it to the Green  Stone.
There you’ll find Fantasy and Magic books.

Does this mean anything to you? I’d sneak into Jerlo’s office to look at his map, but he’s not supposed to know I exist yet.

[Something slapped the window startling the boy speakinng into the microphone in his hand. Words appeared on the screen as the dictation software caught up to him.

A white curl of paper tumbled across the tiny lawn toward the steep drop and the parking lot below. Ran snatched it from the wind. He could make no sense of it, so he darted across the dark apartment to a purple glow wreathing a closet door. Flinging it open, Ran thrust his arm through.

“Uncle Miren! What’s this say?”]

Riddle #3:

“Take a Fl _ ght   _ f    F_nt_s_ ,
to the  K_ _ p _f     Dr _ g _ ns
where  a    Br _ k _ n      D_ st _ n _   and
an   _ sc _ p _    plan are hatched.”

Help me solve the riddle. Send your answers to melinda@melinda-kucsera.com or drop by our group or our Facebook page. We’re standing by. Direct us to our captive author, and our missing manuscript!

The Clues:

I can’t list all the giveaways and free book giveaways I entered. But you can find them here and here. I might have gone a little overboard.

Have you decoded the message?

“Take a Fl _ ght   _ f    F_nt_s_ ,
to the  K_ _ p _f     Dr _ g _ ns
where  a    Br _ k _ n      D_ st _ n _   and
an   _ sc _ p _    plan are hatched.”

Send your answers to melinda@melinda-kucsera.com or drop by
our group or our Facebook page. We need your help.

---

Until next time, dear reader

Stay tuned for more riddles, clues and insanity next week. Time is running out. We need to find our author!

Ran, son of Sarn

“The Newsletter Thief”

---

Missed an episode? Check out our past shenanigans here.

Tweet our insanity to your friends! We’d love to meet them.

Hang out with us. We want to be your friends.

Get Enchanted for FREE.

Want to add a dose of zaniness to your inbox? Sign up here, and we’ll schedule an invasion soon!