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She found the embrace against his body repulsive—as was Plank’s perverted smile—but that feeling was counterweighed by the thought that they would soon be assigned to Noffin as punishment for this dereliction.

Then, she strode into the garden, the door closing behind her.

And so began the first stage of her escape from the castle of Thamann Hotaks, the reviled dictator controlling the Central Realm.

—

Yep, thought Fiona Lavelle.I’dkeep reading.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of her Blue Strayer—well, her Chevy Camaro—she continued editing. She had eleven notebooks filled with the novel, which now totaled about a hundred thousand words, roughly half finished.

But she had decided to revise the story somewhat to incorporate current events, one might say—the levee collapsing behind her as she drove along Route 13.

She had just managed to escape and a moment later had found herself plummeting down an old trail at the base of this mountain, where the car ended up stuck in the mud beside the raging torrent of runoff water spilling over the top of the levee.

The storyline might go like this: Her hero—not “heroine” of course—was escaping in the magical Blue Strayer sled from her nemesis Thamann Hotaks. But the man had shot a Melting Spell toward her and it had dissolved the dam, endangering an entire village andknocking the Strayer to the ground in a forest, where it ended up stuck in the mud. And complaining mightily about it. Arana Braveblade’s Strayer was more than a means of transport. It had become her ornery yet lovable sidekick.

Amusingly, just at that moment, the car shook briefly in a fierce gust of wind, and rain machine-gunned the roof.

Lavelle yawned and stretched. She was still somewhat groggy. After Big Blue had streaked to a stop where she now sat, Fiona surveyed that scene and decided she was indeed seriously stuck in the mud and thought: Screw it.

And had done what someone else might not, under the circumstances. She took a nap. A glorious three-hour bout of oblivion. Not undeserved, considering she had wakened at three-thirty for the drive from Reno.

Then, waiting for the storm to pass, she’d noodled with the book.

Now, though, it was time to free herself, as Arana Braveblade was doing in her story.

Though Lavelle’s magic would come from a different source of spells: YouTube.

On her phone she viewed dozens of clips of men and women getting out of mud. Eventually all the escape efforts seemed to come down to roughly the same technique.

1. Find rough-surfaced material (dry, if possible—not likely here, so she would use the carpet from the trunk and floor mats) and force it under the front of the drive tires—rear, in the case of the Camaro. Not as helpful as the front. It was better to pull rather than push in such a situation. But there you had it.

2. Gently rock back and forth. Drive, reverse. Drive, reverse.

3. Keep doing it until you were free.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Got it.

One thing remained.

Lavelle checked herself out in the mirror. Her pink-framed glasses, the backward baseball cap, with no makeup, of course. She appeared more pale than she usually did, though her Roman nose provided some Technicolor; the cold had turned it significantly red.

A natural look. Fine.

All right, now, it’s lights, camera, action time…

She switched to the front camera—selfie mode—and hitRecord.

“Hello, all. It’s stuck-in-the-mud Fiona. I’ve been following all you dears who’ve posted advice about getting unstuck. Here I am with Big Blue—my two-year-old, kick-ass Camaro—who is a bit…under the weather. Ha.”

Switching the camera off, she tucked it away, then pulled on her parka and stepped out into the rain, walking around to the trunk of the car.

Ten minutes later, she was ready and started to record again.

“About to get started!”