The New Elite

by Sarah Noffke

  Sophia glanced at the Cave, thinking fondly of Lunis resting in there with the other dragons. She knew they were all recovering after the epic battle. Dragons were like cats. They pounced hard and fast but needed a lot of recovery time after the fact.

  The wind didn’t let up when Sophia came to the edge of the cliff overlooking the Pond. She had only been standing there for a moment when she sensed him at her back.

  Wilder moved faster than her. Quieter. His combat experience gave him that advantage, but also his age and experience.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, considering her options, and chose one. She turned to face him, knowing what was coming next.

  The dragonrider stood only a few feet away, a curious expression in his blue eyes, and his brown hair taking note of the wind that passed through it.

  He had his hand extended. In it was her pocketknife.

  “Why does it have a glass slipper on it?” Wilder asked, flicking open the blade with ease to show Cinderella’s shoe etched into the silver.

  Sophia reached out, her fingertips brushing his hand when she took her knife. “Because it’s symbolic.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Wilder said, scratching his head.

  “It’s got the glass slipper because Subner knew I would drop it, and you would find it and give it back to me,” she explained, realizing that probably still didn’t make much sense to him.

  He smiled softly, his dimples surfacing. “That seems like a complex riddle.”

  She nodded. “That’s how my life goes.”

  “Why did you drop it?” he queried.

  “I didn’t mean to, or at least I didn’t think at the time I meant to,” she answered. “I think the universe has a strange way of communicating with me sometimes. The real question I had to answer was whether I wanted it back.”

  “So, what does this mean?”

  “It means although my head tells me to run, my heart wants me not to.”

  “What are you running from?”

  “You mean who.”

  He tilted his head to the side and took a step forward. “Who are you running from?”

  “You know,” she said. She didn’t think she could say it out loud. It was ridiculous to Sophia that she had fought seven-headed dragons and ogres and magitech, but standing in front of this guy made her feel weak.

  “Why would you run from me?” he insisted.

  Wilder knew. Of course, he did. There was no denying the obvious between them.

  “We just don’t make any sense together,” she protested, finding her voice scratchy suddenly.

  “Because…”

  He wasn’t letting her get away easy on this. He wanted her to say all the words, and not hide any of it.

  “Because we are too different,” she started, not wanting to state specifics.

  “Because I have lived on the Earth for so much longer?”

  Why did he have to say it out loud, she wondered with frustration. “We are just too different,” she repeated.

  “Age is a relative thing, especially when you are a dragonrider,” Wilder argued. “The chi of the dragon changes us. It changed you.”

  “Hiker, he would…” she said and trailed away.

  The laugh that spilled out of Wilder’s mouth echoed over the Pond. “Oh, he will no doubt go ballistic. There will be yelling and destruction in his midst. But you know what?”

  “Do I have to say what?” she muttered, a smile in her eyes.

  “Well, you just did, so I will continue,” he said with another laugh. “At the end of the day, it’s our choice. No one gets to live our lives for us. If you want to make it work, regardless of our situation or age or whatever, then we will.”

  “And if I don’t?” Sophia asked.

  He shot her a challenging expression. “Then why did you drop the pocketknife? Why did you want it back?”

  She didn’t have an answer, so she stepped forward and looked up at him. “I guess we have a lot to figure out.”

  “Indeed,” he said, the smile in his eyes making them dazzle. “But first things first…”

  He lifted his calloused hand and brushed it across her cheek, a spark radiating from that first touch. It only intensified as Wilder laid his lips on hers, kissing her with gentle pressure and hungry thirst.

  The winds around the two dragonriders whirled, wrapping around them before suddenly dying out completely. All at once, everything was calm, and the waters of the Pond were as placid as glass.

  This wasn’t a happily ever after for the two dragonriders, only a secret moment, stolen away. Tomorrow would come and bring more adventures. And tomorrow they would keep their secrets until the time was right to reveal them.

  The Story Continues with Justice Unhatched

  Coming April 24, 2020

  The Dragon Elite are growing more powerful.

  But so are their enemies.

  Dragon eggs have been stolen, but Sophia isn’t deterred.

  She will get them back and make the thieves suffer.

  Once she figures out where to look for them…

  The stakes are higher than ever as Sophia is sent on mission after mission to help the Dragon Elite, do Subner’s bidding and also save those at the Gullington who are still cursed.

  Quiet might be better, but the housekeeper for the Castle is still sick.

  Sophia won’t stop until she finds a cure for Ainsley.

  But to save the eggs, the housekeeper and her friends it’s going to take harnessing the strongest power in the world. And the most allusive.

  Can love save everyone?

  Pre-order today and have it delivered to your Kindle Reader at Midnight on April 24, 2020

  Sarah’s Author Notes

  February 26, 2020

  Thank you so much for reading. Your support of the Liv Beaufont series and this one has been life changing. Thank you! Seriously! Thank you.

  So wind was a pretty important part of this story. Here in LA, we have the Santa Ana winds and they’ve been blowing like crazy, keeping me up at night and distracting me while I work. When we have those windy days, I always say, “The winds of change are a blowin’.”

  I feel like wind represents change for me. In Sophia’s case, I wanted it to symbolize her own internal struggles manifesting themselves outwardly. More on that later. Incidentally, as I write these notes, the winds are up again, howling through my old windows. I guess more change is on the way.

  I don’t know much about my own family history for various reasons. My father’s side of the family I knew was mostly Cajun French. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I get back from Scotland and my parents inform me that we’re Scottish. They sent me the family crest and reminded me that my father’s middle name is McAfee, my grandmother’s maiden name. And hence, that became the famous name of Quiet’s ship. Incidentally, I got the name Quiet, for the very powerful gnome, because it’s my dad’s nickname for my stepmom. I always found it very endearing. She calls him “Bubs.”

  A big thank you to my awesome friends for all the ideas and inspiration they’ve contributed to this book. Martin, for instance, had the idea of Hiker getting roped into the Nigerian Prince scheme. There’s something very entertaining about a 500-year-old Viking using technology for the first time.

  Speaking of awesome friends, my friend Crystal and her wife inspired the Crying Cat Bakery scene. I think they are my favorite characters now. Crystal is often telling me of the funny things that happen between her and her wife. I finally was like, “You two are going into a book.” And so we had the magical bakery run by an OCD baker and wanna-be assassin. When Crystal asked if her ski mask was clean, I totally was grateful that my friends are so awesomely weird and provide so much fodder.

  There’s a lot of bakery themes in this book between the Crying Cat Bakery and Fairy Godmother College. Happily Ever After was inspired by Zumbo’s Just Desserts, a show Lydia and I watch together. Oh, and is there any interests in a spin off series about Fairy Godmoth
er College? If so, let us know!

  The bakery theme is also inspired by a strange thing I did in my mid-twenties. I had just graduated with my masters in management, moved across the country to a small hippie community in Oregon and taken a very stuffy job. I hated it! I was working for a very well known “Oprah Book Club” author. He was my idol. And he made me count paper… Anyway, I did what anyone with no savings and a ton of angst would do. I quit.

  Then I went to the bakery down the street where I got my morning coffee and begged the sweet couple who ran it to give me a job. I had zero experience in the service industry or with baking in general. But I thought that running a bakery would be romantic in the poet-sort-of-sense. The couple took pity on me and gave me the early shift.

  I had to be at the bakery at 5 in the morning to make, bake and stock the cases full of pastries for when the shop opened at 7. The oven was bigger than a normal sized kitchen and I couldn’t reach the top racks without jumping. You can guess how smart of an idea that was.

  Alone for hours each morning, I baked hundreds of pastries, sliced bread, made the coffee and also the pizza for the lunch crowd. I made $8 an hour and got more life experiences than in years at corporate America.

  And I learned it was romantic working at a bakery. The smells of sour dough in the morning and flour on my cheeks and sore muscles at the end of the day… Well, it all stuck with me and although I didn’t realize it at the time, those experiences would inspire parts of books. Seems pretty priceless thinking back.

  Anyway, it was also freaking hard work. I lasted three months and then took a job for a government contractor that did secret reconnaissance work for foreign countries. I can say no more about that…but who knows if that fodder is in my books somewhere…

  Speaking of fodder… Hold on. I’ve have to go hide under my sheets for a moment before I can tell this next reveal. I don’t know why I do this to myself, but this is coming from the girl who wrote two books about her personal life. I blame MA.

  After the release of those books, many LA guys wouldn’t date me, so afraid they’d be put in a book and made fun of. One was like, “I’m glad you didn’t put me in your freaking Asshole book.” I was like, “Yeah, because the short guy who I called ‘Adult Chris’ totally isn’t you…”

  I’ve learned my lesson though. No more writing explicitly about my personal life. Oh no. Now I just do it covertly and then call myself out in my author notes.

  So the Wilder romance storyline... Again, I’m casting the accusatory finger at Michael. Everyone has to have a good scapegoat and he’s usually mine. Anyway, when we plotted out this series, he wanted the romance introduced in the beginning of this arc. If not for that then I could have avoided what happened next, hence the blame.

  There might have been some influences from real life that influenced that whole romance storyline with Wilder. Like for Christmas, I might have gotten a guy I’m seeing a fork. A single fork. It was based on a running joke. Since he’s Scottish, I made a joke about forks when we first met. I was like, “Do Scotsmen even know how to use a fork?” Why yes, I am usually insulting to strangers at first meeting. It’s how I keep the uptight jerks away. A screening process of sorts. A friend once asked me, “Don’t you think being rude will scare people away?” I was like, “The hope is that it keeps the weaklings away.” Anyway, the Scotsman admitted that he didn’t know how to use a fork, so I got him one for Christmas with the promise that I’d teach him how to use it. Then for Valentines I got him a spoon. I’m a real romantic.

  And hence we come to the Cinderella storyline in this book. Of course our Sophia couldn’t drop a glass slipper. It had to be a pocket knife. Fork, spoon, knife. You get it now. 12 And remember that she gave Wilder a fork for Christmas when he unexpectedly gifted her with a grappling hook.

  I probably shouldn’t be sharing all this, but what the hell!

  So the Wilder storyline is obviously inspired by parts of my own life. The complications and feelings that Sophia goes through are pretty close to my own. Fodder comes from reality.

  In this book there was a story, inside of a story, inside of a story. I used the Cinderella metaphor for Sophia’s situation which was loosely based on mine own. I knew like Cinderella that Sophia would run when the “ball” was over—after the King Arthur mission. Similar to Cinderella, she ran because her mind said it didn’t make any sense. And I knew that she’d drop the proverbial “glass slipper” because of what was in her heart, as her fairy godmother foretold.

  The question I haven’t answered for myself is will I drop a glass slipper of sorts? Only time will tell. Or the next book will. PREORDER now to find out what Sarah does with her life! Lol Shameless, I am.

  Okay, share time is over for you all.

  Sincerely,

  Tiny Ninja

  Michael’s Author Notes

  March 7, 2020

  THANK YOU for reading our story! We have a few of these planned, but we don’t know if we should continue writing and publishing without your input. Options include leaving a review, reaching out on Facebook to let us know, and smoke signals.

  Frankly, smoke signals might get misconstrued as low hanging clouds, so you might want to nix that idea.

  Dammit, I don’t know who the Scotsman is in Sarah’s story. You know, the one she gave a fork to for Christmas.

  First clue, it happened last year.

  It’s driving me nuts at the moment. I know of a FEW Scotsman it could be, but I don’t know - and she hasn’t been fessing up. Any comments about who she is seeing?

  Is he an author? Is he the guy she went on the sight-seeing trip with (see other author notes.)

  Is Sarah making this stuff up? She is a tiny ninja. It would be like her to throw up smoke screens.

  Or just like. That’s like her, too. Well, it’s like all fiction authors. It’s in our job description that we lie for a living.

  I’m just hoping that her glass slipper isn’t a knife. I’m not sure how the guy should accept that sort of gift.

  Note: The bakery oven really doesn’t have to be much taller than…what, 5’6”?

  Diary for March 8-14th (mostly the same for all books this week.)

  Tomorrow (March 6th) I head out to the Las Vegas McCarran airport and fly to Los Angeles. From there, Judith and I head over to London. Originally, this was for the London Book Fair.

  However, that has been canceled due to the Coronavirus. Once the word spread that the London Book Fair was closed, many of my author contacts asked if Judith and I were staying here.

  I told them no.

  At first, I tried to explain that the Coronavirus is not as big a deal as the news makes it out to be. However, that only went so far before I came up with a logical argument that makes more sense to most I tell.

  EXPLANATION:

  I live in Las Vegas. Las Vegas averages 80,000 to 130,000 new visitors A DAY. It’s probably safer for me to go to London than to stay here in my hometown.

  “But you will be on an airplane.”

  Pretty sure the news isn’t freaking everyone out about flu deaths.

  I am cynical. In the United States, the news shows make money by selling ads. Negative stories draw more attention (and more viewers) than positive stories. So, sell more ads for more money news shows talk about negative stories with large amounts of hysteria.

  I’m not stupid. (At least, I don’t think so. I’m sure someone believes I am.)

  We have a large amount of antibiotic hand cleanser to take with us, soap, masks should we need them, and we pay attention to our health.

  We are aware of the risks and are willing to accept them. Once again, note that going to London is probably safer than staying in Las Vegas (what random encounter will I have if I just stay here?)

/>   However, having said all that, you aren’t getting me on a cruise ship period. That is a hard stop. I don’t care about the statistics; being stuck on a large ship for thirty days (for me) is such a horrible future I am not willing to take even an infinitesimal chance at it happening.

  For those books releasing this week, I am already in London, meeting fans, talking to fellow authors, and sharing tips and tricks to selling stories at the Self-Publishing Live event (by Mark Dawson.) Later in the week, I’ll have more dinners with a select crowd who have come, and by Sunday, coming back to America.

  I’ll see you in the next diary entry—one I should probably title “Where in the world is Michael Anderle and did he escape Covad-19?”

  The answer, statistically, is yes. But then, so is the answer to dying in a car crash (1 in 103 if you are curious.)

  I think the statistics show that IF you get the virus (and you are reasonably healthy or younger – I’m 52), the chance of dying is about the same as dying in a car accident.

  On a positive note – I will visit London and have a fantastic time. Now that I know the statistics better, I fear the freaking flu more than I did yesterday.

  So, Coronavirus? Not so afraid.

  Flu? Much more concerned.

  Stupid Covad-19.

  Ad Aeternitatem!

  Michael Anderle

  Acknowledgments

  Sarah Noffke

  I feel like I’m on the stage at the Oscars, accepting an award when I write my acknowledgments. I stand there, holding this award, my hands shaking and my words racing around in my mind. I’m not an actress for a reason. I’m a writer and talking to people in “real life” is hard. Not to mention a ton of people all at once.