Have to work and do all the things today, so here is a short snippet. As an aside, Gutenberg, which is the new text editor for WordPress, arbitrarily eats spaces between words when you paste from Word. Begin primal scream of rage.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences occupied a nine-story building on Old Spanish Trail. Its blocky lines, rectangular windows, and orange brick practically screamed that it housed some sort of government agency.
I maneuvered our Honda Element into the parking lot. It used to be our surveillance vehicle, but last year Grandma Frida decided to rebuild it from wheels up. Now the Element sported a new engine, a reinforced suspension, and custom dampers for enhanced shock absorption. The windows were bulletproof, and the new glass had both the safety glazing and a polycarbonate layer on the inside, so if someone did shoot at us, the windows would crack but hold together. And most importantly, the Element was now equipped with B5 level armor, which meant it would stop most handguns and shotgun blasts. It could have been armored enough to withstand a sniper shot; however, Grandma Frida reasoned that our best chance of survival was getting away fast, and armor was heavy, so she stopped at B5 and added a reinforced floor and run-flat tires.
Unfortunately, even Grandma Frida had her limits, and steering was a bit sluggish. I was used to it by now and I aimed for a parking spot in the middle row.
“So, what’s with you and Alessandro Sagredo?” Runa asked.
The steering was sluggish, but the brakes worked perfectly. I jerked forward, and my seat belt slammed me back.
“Nothing.”
“Aha.” Runa pulled on her own seat belt. “That’s why we screeched to a stop halfway into the parking space?”
“My foot slipped.” I gently eased forward and brought the Element to a smooth stop.
Last night, after Bern carried Rutger into the guest bedroom and Runa settled in on inflatable mattress next to him, I went back to my office, rescued Alessandro’s picture from my desk drawer, and brought it upstairs to my bedroom. He looked so carefree, caught in a magic moment somewhere sunny and warm. When I looked at the picture, a disquieting, unpleasant feeling squeezed my chest, not pain exactly, but a kind of discomfort. I stood in my bedroom and wished with everything I had that I was there, in the sun, with a backdrop of green mountains and Alessandro and I were going somewhere. Together.
It was stupid, and childish, and it would never be. I hid it all inside, put the picture on my nightstand, and went to bed.
“So, you’re just going to go with ‘nothing?’” Runa asked.
“That’s right.”
“Your sister said you met during your trials.”
Sistercide was not a word, but it would be after today. “Yes.”
“Yes what? Is there a story behind that?”
No. He didn’t follow me on Instagram, and he didn’t take my breath away during the trials. And he definitely didn’t show up under my window after trying to convince me to go for a drive.
“We met during the trials, and my sisters haven’t stopped trolling me about it for the last three years. There is absolutely nothing between me and Alessandro Sagredo.”
Strictly speaking, there was 5,561 miles between our warehouse and the Sagredo estate near Venice, Italy. A commercial flight with one stop could get me to Venice in thirteen hours.
“Your cheeks are turning pink,” Runa said. “Are you imagining there being nothing between you and Alessandro?”
Thank you!
Thank you very much, such an unexpected surprise,and I’m on my third reading of
the series, and I love it more each time.
Again, Thank you.
So cute! Thank you!
LOL – nice one at the end!
Like!
Oh poor Catalina. Know we will all feel as tortured as you do every step of the way.
Hooray for the return of Runa! I loved her in Diamond Fire.
+1
Sorry I don’t recall, Who is Runa again?
Runa is the Magus Venenata from Diamond Fire who detected the poison in the icing.
Catalina took a risk on making a friend, and it looks like it paid off! Awesome for her.
I can’t wait. Does anyone know a guestamation release date? I know Diamond Fire said 2019 but that’s a bit vague? I’m guessing late summer…
Amazon has it listed as Aug 27 2019 but I don’t think anything has been officially announced so who knows if that is correct
As I was just checking this out today… Aug 2019
https://ilona-andrews.com/whats-next/
I’m guessing, since Innkeeper and Iron Covenant are self-published, and Hidden Legacy is contractual through Avon, that the Sapphire Flames date would be the one hard date on that page. For Ilona Andrews, anyway. Avon can always switch it up however they want. Like when they pulled Burn for Me. Which was weird.
And I am VERY glad the AL’s ignored that “note to self” about snippets!
I’m glad Runa is sticking around.
This. Is. So. Good!!
Thank you very much for this fantastic unexpected snippet! ?
And I really like Runa ?
Try pasting into notepad and copying from there. You will lose any text formating like bold cursive and fonts etc. But that might be the lesser evil.
That was going to be my suggestion. Sucks, but might be the lesser of two pains.
I have had to do this too. I feel your pain, ilona Andrews. A real ticker off-er but I was forbidden from messing with computer programming code by my workplace. I have a BIL who is all kinds of certified for computer programming who just shakes his head and tells me to follow company policy which is to call the (un)help(ful) desk techs. Sigh.
There is only one tech left at Microsoft who answers his phone when I call about my home desktop system. It is a hybrid system that blows the youngsters minds. At least I am not running a dual system anymore of Linux and Microsoft.
Then I get testy with their incompetence and get shuffled off to the older gentleman who has dealt with me for awhile.
Sorry, patience, Ilona Andrews. This too will be resolved…. eventually.
Perhaps a hard space character code may work?
Haven’t used one in decades so I don’t onow whetjer that is viable.
Oh, nice, thank you! I was going into withdrawal after reading the latest (Diamond Fire), and just wishing there was more! – xoxo – A.
Try pasting into wordpad or even notepad and copying from there. You will lose any text formating like bold cursive and fonts etc. But that might be the lesser evil.
I adore your stories. Thank you for sharing them with us.
Thank you for the surprise snippet. 😀
*rubbing hands gleefully* He-he-he! Catalina has a serious thing for Alessandro and trying to deny it. Nope…not going to work. Nevada tried that with Rogan and look where it got her. 🙂
Yes, but Alessandro has a lot more miles to overcome.
We need a nickname for Alessandro. My autocorrect keeps wanting to make him a girl.
How about Alex? Isn’t Alessandro Italian for Alexander?
Don’t call him Alex. ?
Sandro or Sandros are common nicknames apparently. Also Ale and Alexios.
We call our cousin Alessandro either Aleso or Ale. Sandro is the more traditional Italian for it, I guess.
Sandro. (My cousin Alessandra is Sandra)
I’m Italian and my brother is an Alessandro: you shorten it to Ale or Alex. Sandro is usually a different name on its own ?
My folks were Italian and in Toronto, this means that I’m Italian too (lol). The cousin in Italy was always called “Sandra” by everyone but when she got older, she switched back to “Alessandra”. Maybe it’s a northern Italian thing????
Thank you for the snippet! Good luck with the text editor!
Thank you, and I feel so trolled! Oh, our shipping dreams!
My age is showing: what do trolled and shipping mean?
Thank you.
Trolling means saying to writing something to deliberately rile people up. Runa was clearly a fan favorite, and there’s been talk of pairing her romantically with various characters (including Bern, who she’s sleeping next – for business reasons entirely, I’m sure). Alessandro is already the subject of a lot of hopes for Catalina. So for a short snippet, this invokes a lot of hopes and speculations that have already been voiced.
Shipping is fan speculation about romantic pairings between various characters. (This gets more complicated when fan fiction is involved, someone else might want to comment on the further nuances.) So someone might say – “I ship Runa and Bern! ❤️?❤️ Burna 4ever!!!” (There’s also a convention about combining the names of a romantic pairing into one. I think this comes from celebrity name combinations. ?♀️)
Cassandro is the ship name for Catalina and Alessandro, for example.
And I read it as Runa sleeping next to the Rutger guy who was put on the mattress, not next to Burn (although I do ship Burna!)
…that makes sense! I, ah, didn’t read Rutger as a guy but as an implement. Don’t mind me, I’m distracted, and it made sense in my head!
John Rutger is the guy in Burn for Me who was a cheating husband. Nevada’s first case that we see, right at the beginning. He has a closed military record and is some sort of electrical energy mage.
I really hope it’s not the same Rutger, as he is a cheating, abusive scumbag (Nevada’s word) who attacked Nevada and who I hope would neither be in their guest bedroom nor have Runa sleeping next to him.
Agreed I wouldn’t want the guy coming back or being around them, but I can’t ignore that there is already a character of that name in this series. Maybe the guy’s son? Or a recycled name, but I can’t say that yet just on the basis of “but I don’t like him”.
Hey, unless another explanation pops up, we’ve already broken the only one Steve rule wrt Rene, yes?
I know. I still hope it’s not the same guy.
If he’s been poisoned during something, maybe that’s why Runa is monitoring him? And Baylor Investigations has been hired to do some work that involves the scumbag so they have to keep him alive to get some answers?
He also had a wife he wanted to kill as well as having kids. All of whom carried the same family name.
Thanks for the clarificarion.
Christine
Grrr this drives me crazy when it repeats my name ?
+1 for the clarification and the snippet ?
‘Twas fun, even if my brain is mush.
It beats both the (actually fun) task of trying to explain Cards Against Humanity humor to recently arrived second language speakers at department events and more to the point, what I’m trying to write about the larger importance of slug mouths to the field of neuromechanics – and the greater good of humanity. *so much headdesking*
Also “shipping” takes the ‘ship’ from the word relationship.
Therefore ‘shipping’ refers how characters are oaured (both in canon and just among the fandom).
*paired
Lol I was trying to fit my brain around “oar” being used as a verb somehow… it fit with the whole ship/boat theme.
Well, word play is a big part of the tradition. Hence all the highly layered jokes full of cultural referents.
Oooooh! Thank you, and I’m so glad there is some Runa: I hoped her and Catalina would become friends!
So, she knows the miles to him, how long the flight would take, etc. Hum. Interesting that she has researched that.
I wonder how she got his picture.
Clearly the baby Prime doesn’t realize that she no longer has to take flights with a stop. Or fly commercial.
Probably the baby Prime hasn’t made enough money in three years to charter trans-Atlantic flights, especially from US to EU. If there is an EU in this history. As said in Diamond Fire, there’s wealth and Wealth. Although I do wish there was a medium W for chartering. Cheaper than owning your own, monumentally more expensive (on long trips) than commercial.
Well, he still has an Instagram account. Save and print hehe.
Oh, this is going to be so good! Cant wait!
Regarding your Word pasting problem, I suspect the issue is Word’s rich text formatting. Solution: save your Word doc to a non-“rich text” format. You can do this in the Word save process. Then copy/paste from the non-rich text doc.
Alternative is to first paste to Notepad, which will auto strip the rich text formatting, then copy/paste from Notepad to you pub software.
Too friggin’ cute. Thank you!
Yay, more Runa! She was a little bit of a wiseass in DF, which made her fit in well with House Baylor.
Thanks for snippet. Hoped Run a would be friends with Cat and show her she can be liked by someone outside of family. Can not wait to see Cat in action with the rest of the family.
I am so happy Lina and Runa are friends!
Glad to see the good ship Cassandro sailing strong! And I *did* wonder before if the Ca’ Sagredo in Venice was your inspiration!
🙂
Nice. I’m looking forward to the next installment. 3 years later… that sounds promising. 🙂
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
That is so cool.
Thank you.
I was hoping that someone (Rogan? Mrs. Rogan? Nevada? Runa?) would tell Alessandro what he did wrong with Catalina and why. Standing in front of her bedroom window and asking her to go riding with him in a Maserati convertible where his 10,000+ fans could see them and the Herald could trumpet that he prefers her is not going to win over a shy girl who only recently became known as a Prime. Plus, it would make her a target of jealous fangirls (and fanboys?). Maybe Mrs. Rogan can create a “coming out” party for the Baylors and invite Alessandro, coaching him on better ways to interact with the Baylors.
What he did wrong was being so handsome that Catalina really wanted him and didn’t feel she could trust herself not to magic him into loving her.
“[w]hen I saw Alessandro, I wanted to snap my wings open as far as they could go and dazzle him with everything I had, so he would be mine forever. I liked him so much, I had to let him go.”
The e-version doesn’t have the novella page numbers, but it’s the very very end of chapter 6.
What he did wrong was failing to think through the downside of her gift.
And as we saw in DF, she has major relationship hangups with her gift. Think about it, would you trust anyone saying they lived you? And being wrong means they kill you.
Autocorrupt is killing me today.
*loving
He did nothing wrong! He certainly didn’t say he loved her. He didn’t even say he LIKED her, although we assume that from his behavior*. He showed up with no symptoms of attachment and everyone knew it. This one is all Catalina — I’m not saying Catalina is wrong in any way to have the hang ups she does, but as we see in DF, she is also cementing walls that don’t necessarily have to be there any more. She says it herself, in the quote above, that it was her call, because she was too tempted.
This is a good thing! If she didn’t start out all f-ed up, there would be no room for her character to grow.
_________
*And because IA has straight out said he’ll be the male love interest. If they hadn’t said it here, then for all we know, he might be a bad guy, thinking of using her gift for his own nefarious purposes.
That wasn’t a little snippet—it was a lotta snippet!
Thanks for sharing. And good luck with all the things.
Poor Catalina, sisters will always be trolls ???. Glad to see Runa will be in the book, she seemed pretty awesome in the novella. And Catalina might need a non family person to help her through.
Ohhh love snippets.
And thank you for confirming Runa is going to be in the next book.
3 years, a lot could happen. A romance between Catalina and Alessandro sounds promising. Maybe a trip to Venice and some pasta.
Ciao Bella viva romance!!
Venice, Venice, Venice!!
Hope there is something that happens in Venice.
(Love that City)
Hmm, three years, no longer protected as a new house… made me smile!
Awww! <3
Thanks for this midweek treat!
So cool! It’s going to be a great book!
I am glad Runa is in this one too. I enjoyed her so much
“Your cheeks are turning pink,” Runa said. “Are you imagining there being nothing between you and Alessandro?”
1) love this
2) it’s not just sisters who troll. It’s friends, too.
3) I hope they are friends, and not reconnecting three years later. If Runa doesn’t know about Alessandro trolling, she might not have been around Catalina much for the “last” three years.
Some penny-pincher decided that machines could proofread “just as well as people” and replaced intelligence with circuitry. Bad executives, bad, bad. No treats for you.
So appreciate. Wildfire smoke is so thick it looks like fog. Can’t breathe eyes burning and watering. Something better to think about hooray!
Oh, poor Catalina! It was lovely!
Thank you
LOL Thank you! I like Runa. Also sistercide.
Agreed. “Sistercide”. A perfect word for all of us with sisters!!!
Oh this was a wonderful surprise! Thanks for the snippet, and for bringing Runa back. She was such fun, and Catalina needs a friend.
“Begin primal scream of rage.” ROTFLMAO! I know that feeling. Happens to me all the time on my computer. I have really big fingers and hit the wrong button all the time, and then can’t figure out what went wrong or how to go back.
It is said a computer is only as good as the idiot who wrote the software…
Fun snippet. Thanx
Hahaha loved the trolling. Only real friends & sisters obviously can troll successfully 😀
Thank you, and good luck with all the things.
A wonderful surprise; thank you!
Yesssss!Runa! I’m taking this as a good sign we will be seeing more of her in Catalina’s books. Super excited!! We don’t know the book release date yet, right?
The What’s Next link I posted above says August 2019. Amazon US already has it for pre-order, delivery August 27.
+1 Pre-ordered!
Totally cute & fun! Happy Thanksgiving!
Yay! Fist pump-can’t wait
Thank you for the snippet! And I’m so happy to see Runa, I really hoped that the two would become friends!