Hello again! I’m Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker series, and I am back in your inbox since it’s Monday.

I wanted to come with good news about our books, but I don’t have any today.

Melinda got really sick this week due to side effects of a new medicine doctors wanted her to take. She contacted her doctor about the side effects since they were kind of scary. The doctor told her to keep taking it.

I told her to stop. (So did her mom, so a real person was in the loop providing advice, not just a fictional character with strong opinions.)

My scribe needs to have some quality of life. She can’t stay curled up on the bathroom floor for days.

But that’s not living. I don’t want her to be really sick. It’s also hard to work while being that sick. Thankfully, Melinda had accrued some sick days so she was able to take off during the worst of it. Otherwise I am not sure what she would have done because that job pays the bills.

Someday, we hope our books can pay the bills too. That day is not today, but we’ll never give up hoping and trying to get there.

We didn’t make any progress on that goal last week, but this is a new week. Melinda is feeling much better after stopping that medication. If it’s really medically necessary, then her doctor will have to prescribe something else because that medicine was doing more harm than good.

And I’m not just saying that because it’s hard to write while curled up on the floor. Although Melinda did write despite that because writing is an escape from reality, and the villain in Chaos Reigns is trying to run off with the plot.

(He might have succeeded since Melinda wasn’t up to fighting against that. My aunt could not be reached for comment nor could I find my dad’s guardian angel or the ex-goddess of fate.

So they could have teamed up and stopped the villain. I just don’t know if they did. Yes, I tried summoning them, but they didn’t respond. So we’ll have to wait until the book comes out to find out what happened. But I digressed.)

What news was I hoping to deliver this week?

A few things actually. Melinda doesn’t like me to tell you what we’re doing until she has every detail figured out, and she’s 100% certain we can do it. But she hates uncertainty and I don’t.

If you’ve read the Curse Breaker series, then you know that my life is full of uncertainty. There are multiple books where I don’t even know where we’ll sleep because we’ve lost our home again. That situation is more stressful for my dad and my uncle since they have to figure out those details.

But it’s no picnic for me either since there’s no guarantee that we can stay together. That stresses me out. But somehow, things work out, and we stay together.

So I’m okay with not having all the details. My dad never has all the details worked out. He just does the best he can while figuring out the rest. That’s just how life is.

So come behind the scenes with me. We don’t have all the details yet, but here’s what we’re trying to figure out:

1. New Distributor Issues

We’re still figuring out things with the new distributor and trying to find where it’s sending our books. (Why are there no links? Seriously though, why don’t they provide links to the stores they send our books to?)

2. Chaos Reigns Plot Questions

Since Chaos Reigns takes place during Curse Breaker books 9-12 (Curse Breaker Revealed, Shards For His Gift, Chasing Dragons & Curse Breaker Jousts) and the Rogue Gods Trilogy, how much of those events should we show in that book?

My aunt and my dad’s guardian angel (Misriah) are involved in the Curse Breaker books and Fay, the ex-goddess of Fate is too. But Fay and Misriah also get pulled into the Rogue Gods Trilogy too. So how much of that should show up in Chaos Reigns?

The wrath they need to defeat didn’t sit around twiddling his thumbs during those books. He was causing problems and he got away with it since our three leading ladies were busy with other things. So it’s a legit concern.

This is preoccupying my scribe right now and keeping her up at night. I told her to write it all out as it happened and then edit it. So I think that’s what she’s doing. I may have said this just so she doesn’t cut my scenes but it’s a legitimate way to handle this.

3. Too Many Books

Melinda has too many copies of our books, so she planned to take inventory last week to see what we have, figure out postage and shipping, and put them on our shop. Since Melinda has a small apartment, we need to sell the extra copies to make room for our new books.

All copies will be signed and include a custom inscription from Melinda. We’ll list them on our shop and let you know about the sale once she works out the details. We don’t want to charge what the distributor forces us to charge, and I don’t think we’ll have to since we have the books already.

But I suggested we find a compromise in case we get more orders than we have books for and need to order more copies. We want everyone who wants a copy to get one for affordable price. So we’re working on the math.

4. New Books!

I know. We should wait to order new books until we sell some of the overstock so Melinda doesn’t have to keep stacking books on her couch. But we needed to test a printer in the US that we see a lot of authors use.

So please buy some books from us when we get the paperback sale sorted? Melinda would like to see her couch again and sit on it.

So we ordered a copy of Curse Breaker Enchanted from them. We’re waiting for it to arrive to see the quality. I am refreshing the tracking page every hour even though that won’t hurry it to Melinda’s door. (But if I stop, will that slow the package down?)

5. All You Can Read

We’re uploading our ebooks to Patreon to their shop, and we just found that we can include our books in the tiers so Patrons can get our published ebooks as part of their membership.

We’re still testing how this works, but it’s exciting because we’ve always wanted a membership that included not just the ability to read new books as Melinda writes them, but also epubs of our already published books! So you can catch up and read on your own device AND we can update the book if we need to. More on this soon.

6. Special Editions

We’re currently arguing about what should be in the special edition for Curse Breaker Jousts other than the story and some gold foil somewhere. That’s the only thing everyone agrees on.

Melinda has been helping an author friend with her special edition so she hasn’t started working on ours yet. But I have a list of things she should include. If there’s anything you want in it, please let me know.

That’s where we are right now. Despite being sick from side effects, Melinda got chapters 10-13 published to Patreon and Substack for Chaos Reigns. You can read them right now.

Whatever you do this week, I hope you enjoy it and you read some good books!

If you need some suggestions, here are some new books coming out very soon:

The Fifth Commander – A Dark Epic Fantasy Novel

The Chosen One has become a tyrant and his most loyal servant must stop him in this battle-ridden dark epic fantasy tale.

Squad Games: A Special Edition Illustrated Hardcover

A mercenary captain faces brigands, monsters, undead and more in this action-packed epic fantasy LitRPG. Back now to get yours!