Cone Things

I'm sorry, but I'm still not sure when Do You Take This Quest? is going to be out. It will probably be mid-January, however, at the rate some of my editors are going ...

But I have some wonderfully delicious snippets that I would like to share from book three, and, as ya'll know by now, I'm not going to do a title reveal for that until after Take is published.

So ... I'm going to share them with you ... without titles! I didn't do much writing beyond it and Take last month, you see. Mixed in will be some stuff from Take as well, but I'm not going to tell you what is from which.

“I’d tell you good morning, but it doesn’t appear to be morning yet,” Madeleine remarked, sitting down opposite [Rosamond].


Eric can be so clumsy sometimes. Today he fell into a tree. It was pretty funny, because the cone things fell out on his head. I liked those cone things, so I latter gathered them up and stashed them. Maybe I’ll throw them at his head next time we fight.

“So, friends, are you here to give me the information I seek?”

  “No, we are here to rot away when we die,” returned the quick-tongued. “Are you here to let us out?”

  “Fools!” exclaimed Mordreth. “I could set you free today, and I could release you from your servitude, yet you mock me.”

  “You could also follow your brother out to sea and see if the pirates would be nice enough to kill you as well.”

Unfortunately, there was a storm that night.

  Actually, to call it a storm would do it justice. It was more of a deluge.

“Hello! You’re supposed to be letting me in!” Arthur shouted up at them again. They continued to ignore him. “Hello! It’s me! Prince Arthur!”

  He finally got a response. “Young man, Prince Arthur is dead. You may stop with the practical joke. You don’t want us to come down and stop it for you.”

  Arthur opened his mouth, but could find no response. Dead? Was Mordreth really claiming that he was dead? That would be just like him, wouldn’t it?

“What didst he have to do with birds?” questioned Doranna.

  “Nothing,” whispered Rosamond.

  “But she said fowl! Fowls are birds – even I know that!”

  “Nay, sweet cousin,” said Dick. “She said foul, which meaneth horrid and distasteful.”

  “Oh, well, it soundeth the lame to me!”

“Beautiful!”

  “Splendid!”

  “Magnifique!”

  “It’s a dress. I hate dresses.”

“Girl, are you trying to keep people out of the castle?”

  Robin’s head shot up to see that Robin Hood and various members of his band standing in the circle of the entry way. She opened her mouth for a second, but then shut it; she bit her lip, then said, “Of course I am.” Then she looked back down at the sword she was polishing and returned to it with a vengeance.

  “May I ask why?”

  Robin glanced up for half a second. “Because I feel like it.”

“Ah,” said Push, “but do not judge man by cover! I am ruthless!” He struck a declarative pose. “I once push Duke O’Gair into oven!”

“Uhh … I’m not Robert …”

  Robin pulled away instantly, and gave the young man’s face a good look. “No you’re not,” she exclaimed, taking a few steps backwards and drawing her sword. “How dare you be impersonating my brother!”

Robin turned to Arthur. “Hello,” she said. “How good are you with a sword?”

  “I suppose that will have to do,” said the old man with a shake of his head as Arthur sank helplessly to the floor and put his head in his hands.

“I don’t know,” said Robin Hood. “But there must be a logical explanation – though it might be as logical as Cube Roots …”

  “Cube Roots?”

  “Cube Roots,” confirmed Robin Hood.

“Um, Robin?”

  Robin briefly glanced up from the sword she was polishing. “Yes?”

  “I … uh, Casperl has instructed me to go around asking people how they are coming and so, um –.”

  “Catch.”

  Instinctively, Arthur put up his hands. Barely had he done so than he found a sword hilt in them – the very sword that Robin had been polishing. A moment later, Auroren’s blade was crossed with the blade of the sword he had in his hand.

  For the next minute or so, Arthur could do little more than fend off Auroren’s blade as best he could. He was almost relieved when a well-executed twist of Robin’s sword sent his sword flying out of her hand and into her left hand.

  A moment after that, she was again seated and polishing the sword.

“A wooden practice sword,” Arthur admitted. “It’s all I’ve ever used until just now … it was the only thing I could smuggle out of the castle.”

  She snorted. “Well, I don’t envy you there. I hate wooden swords. They’re cheep imitations and I always loose with one.”

  “You …”

  “And on the flip side, Robert can actually win with one. So, I don’t begrudge them their existence … I just wish that they and their existence would leave me alone.”

“Ah, but with wet hair, you could catch cold and die. I wouldn’t want that happening to you. Why ever did you take that last swim?”

  “You threw me in.”

I love this egg. I want one for my Nutcracker collection

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I also did some writing on HaV Academy, so I have a snippet from there as well.

“No, no we don’t,” Mr. Dially agreed with a laugh. “Well, then, what do you plan to do with yourself for the rest of the afternoon if you aren’t going to be spending your last day of freedom doing what you know you want to be doing.”

  Roxanne frowned at her dad’s thinly-veiled hint. “I dunno. Make you another torture chamber, maybe?”

  “I really don’t need another torture chamber, dear, though I appreciate the offer,” said Mr. Dially. “I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to come up with something else to do.”

Oh, and if you'd like to participate in Snippets, just head on over to Katie's Blog and link up!