Fantasy

Interview with the Dragon

Hi Readers,

We, the fictional characters who star in Melinda Kucsera’s books, hope you’re taking precautions to stay as safe as you can during this public health crisis. If you’re wondering how we’re coping, well, as you can imagine, some characters are handling this better than others. But we are all keeping our distance.

It’s hardest on me, your host, Ran, the talkative, and I hope, likable, son of my very magical Papa, Sarn. I like people; I like hugs. I prefer to be carried when Papa and I are on adventures, but I have to keep at least six feet between us because Papa has an underlying health condition. 😦

No one will tell me what that condition is either. (So frustrating!) If you’ve read the Curse Breaker series, you know I asked lots of people what that condition is. Not even the Queen Tree would tell me. 😦

(If you haven’t read the Curse Breaker series, now is a great time to catch up. All our books are in Kindle Unlimited, AND Amazon is offering 2 months of Kindle Unlimited for free if you sign up for a membership. This offer is good for residents of the US and UK only, unfortunately.)

Your host signed our scribe up for Kindle Unlimited so we could test this, and she (and us) had instant access to Kindle Unlimited. We could not test the UK link above because we’re in the US, but the link above was provided by a UK author our Scribe knows. So, you should go right to the offer.

Those links aren’t affiliate links. We get nothing if you sign up except the satisfaction of knowing we connected you with books. We only get paid if you choose to read our books in Kindle Unlimited. We hope you will because we only exist when you read us.

Available in Kindle Unlimited!

Enchanted, His Angelic Keeper, Darkens, Faceted, Falls, Sundered, Relic Hunter, Hunter’s Night, Rogue Night. Read them now!

And now back to our ongoing newsletter adventure. Since this takes place before the pandemic, I can cling to Papa during the scary parts, and we left off during a very scary part. When last you saw us, (we’ll just pretend yours truly wasn’t sleeping on the job last week), the Newsletter-Dragon, (yes, her), blew the doors off our Scribe’s apartment, and we pelted her with questions, none of which she answered, that contrary digital snake. 😦 So now, we’re back for round two of interrogating the dragon.

Holiday Troubles, Part 13

Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12

The dragon’s blue-glowing eyes stayed fixed on me. Uh-oh. What did she want from me? Did I really want to find out? I swallowed my apprehension because I needed to know. We had to get our Scribe back. “Wait a minute. If you know where Melinda is, why don’t you recue our scribe? Why involve us at all?”

The Newsletter-Dragon just gave me an unreadable look. But that question kept repeating in my head. It was the key to this. I just knew it. If only I could work out why. Then it occurred to me, and I stared at the dragon in surprise. “You want us to help you rescue her.”

“Kudos for you kid.” The dragon exhaled a smoke ring in my direction. Apparently, no one had told her how dangerous secondhand-smoke was for children like me.

I swiped my hand through the air to break up her smoke ring and clear the air. “What’s a ‘kudos?'” Was it a weapon of some kind? I could so use one right now or a tough shield. Not that Papa would let me wield anything more dangerous than a slingshot. I patted my pocket to make sure my slingshot was still there. It was.

“It’s just a saying.” The Newsletter-Dragon waved away my question with a smoking claw, and that was when the smoke alarm went off, activating the sprinkler system. Water rained down on the dragon, soaking her. She flickered as some of her ones and zeroes winked out. “No!” the dragon moaned as she shrank into a blue spark and dove straight for the smartphone in my other pocket.

She wasn’t getting away that easily. I pulled out the phone and tried to run out of the room, but Papa had a tight grip on me, so I stayed put. Since the phone was advertised as waterproof, I powered it up and unlocked the screen.

“You did this to me!” The Newsletter-Dragon glowered at me as she wrung out her tail.

“No, you caused the sprinklers to go off with all your smoke rings.”

“How about we don’t piss off the dragon anymore, hmm? She’s caused enough property damage.” Uncle Miren plucked the phone from my hand.

So not fair. But he’s taller than me, and Papa refused to let go of me. He was doing the overprotective father thing again.

I squirmed, but it did no good. Papa had long arms and lots of magic. All the better to keep me within arm’s reach even though there was no immediate danger. The little fires around the smoking ruins of the door were out now, and the dragon was digital again, so we were safe from her machinations for now. Or were we?

I eyed the back of the phone since that’s all I could see from my vantage. “Why does she need our help. Did you ask her that?”

“I don’t have to tell you,” the dragon said, and I could hear the pout in her tinny voice. We wouldn’t get any answers out of her, not while she was wet and miserable and blaming us for everything.

“Then tell us how to get our Scribe back.” Auntie Sovvan poked the phone in my Uncle’s hand. Uncle Miren glared at her, but Auntie Sovvan ignored him, which was her right as his older half-sister.

“Nice try. I’m not telling you that until you agree to help me.” I imagined the dragon folding her forelimbs and turning her back to the phone screen.

“Why not?” I asked, but the dragon didn’t reply.

My aunt and uncle looked at each other. They were at at a loss for what to do next. I needed that phone. I’d make that fire-breathing worm tell us what we needed to know. I elbowed Papa in the belly. If anyone could get that phone back, it was him. But he was content to sit there and hold onto me while someone else did the actual interrogating. Nothing I did could budge him on that.

Papa still looked pale and tired from all the magicking he’d done to save us, and there were blue smudges under his green-glowing eyes. Maybe he should save his strength for the rescue part of our plan. I quit struggling, and Papa relaxed his hold, not enough for me to escape, though. He knew me too well.

“Please give me the phone. I can handle this.” I held out my hand.

Uncle Miren glanced at my aunt, but she shrugged, as I knew she would. Then he finally handed me the phone.

I rolled up my sleeves and prepared to battle wits with the stubborn dragon. “We’ll help you if you tell us where our Scribe is and how we can reach to her,” I said before anyone could interrupt me or object.

I figured Papa could take the reins of this plan from there. This rescue would probably involve a lot of magic. I just hoped he was up to it. “Those are our terms.”

“Agreed.” The dragon turned back around to face the screen and winked at me.

Uh-oh. What trouble did I sign us up for? I didn’t have long to wonder because my hands disappeared then my arms, then I was gone, and everything was fading to black. Somewhere far away, I heard laughter.

It was that damned dragon. She’d tricked me again! I’d get her for this, just you wait and see.

***

We hope you’ll be back next week to find out what trouble I accidentally got us into this time. I should have known that dragon would trick us. She’s a sneaky snake.

Stay safe, stay home if you can, and read lots of books. Please do what you can to #FlattenTheCurve, so the heroes out there who are on the front lines of this fight don’t have to choose who lives and who dies.

Together, (but appropriately spaced, so we’re not infecting each other), we can slow the spread, so our healthcare systems can handle this pandemic. From everything we’ve read and watched, it’s not too late in most places if everyone does their part. ❤

A note about our Scribe

If you’ve been with us for a while, then you know we’re based in NY state, one of the hardest-hit states in the US. On top of that, Scribe worked in one of the state’s hot spots. So far, Melinda is okay. She has not come into contact with anyone who has the virus. (That we know about, but we are only a 1-hour train ride from NYC.)

Back in January, she had put in for some vacation time starting March 9th; the day before the National Guard set up a quarantine zone in the city where she works. Our Scribe has been home with us since then. She started working remotely as best she can to protect her elderly neighbors and parents on March 18th when her vacation ended, so she has not been back to that hot spot since March 9.

She’ll be home with us until at least April 10th unless her company extends that, and we are doing everything we can to keep her safe, so we can get that all-important page time, and you can get the next books in our series. 🙂

Our Scribe will be back to working on those books as soon as she finishes putting the Forgotten Magic Anthology together. All the final versions of the stories came in last week, so we have to allow her some time to compile them for the formatter.

We’ll be back next week with more magical mayhem and maybe even a live reading. I’m trying to convince the Scribe to read our books aloud online. 🙂 But the Scribe is an introvert, so it’s not going well.

Bye for now, this is Ran, your host, signing off. I hope I entertained you for a little while and took your mind off the uncertainty that is all around us right now.


Deals, Giveaways & Other Cool Stuff


         

In Case You Missed It