Happy Holidays everyone! Here is an early gift for you: can you solve Elisa’s Riddle and find a clue about the sequel? Try your smarts against her, and see if you can figure out one of her wishes. 🙂
Here is her Letter to Santa (with the riddle) and, for extra credit, below is Aiden’s New Year’s Resolution. Can you guess what he means? An IQ of 160, an eidetic memory, a crazy author, and countless amazing readers! Piece of cake… Go!
ELISA’S LETTER TO SANTA
Dear Santa,
When my mental mum Ani (pun intended) asked me to write this, I hung up on her, using some very U.S. Marine vocabulary (I’m furious with her for other reasons). But she kept calling and calling and calling and calling (she’s truly obnoxious that way) until the musical Fur Elise ringtone that Dad installed in our old rotary phone here in Burford filled the cottage with something other than emptiness. And I suppose for that, I became oddly grateful to my mental mum, so I’m doing what she asked. Besides, it occurred to me: I’m not the only one who has ever written to an imaginary person. Stop: don’t go there!
So here are my wishes. But what would a wish list be without a wee bit of logic? Just dreams, and frankly, I don’t dream anymore (except the strange turquoise-tinted nightmares at night). That’s why there is a riddle for reading my list. If you solve it, you’ll understand a lot more than just my wishes (who cares about those anyway?).
Elisa’s Riddle
The first letter is always strong,
Like the iron sign that follows along.
But when I am thrown into the mold
The iron changes to the first hint of gold.
Yet all that strength and all that glitter
are nothing more than a weak whisper
So if you want to find the true treasure
This one little thing you must remember:
The last clue you will find
In the periodic table, group 15, first line
Mix everything together, and there the answer lies,
Clear as cloudless climes and starry skies.
My Wishes
- Freedom for Javier
- One more day with Reagan
- Seeing the Solises one last time
- Stopping the turquoise nightmares and the bloody knock
- The truth
Thank you, Santa! Oh, and get my mental mum to finish my journey, please!
Elisa
AIDEN’S NEW YEAR RESOLUTION
RIGHT FOUR WRONGS
***
Enjoy everyone! I will be back tomorrow and on Christmas with more goodies, including announcing the winner of the Thirty Nights Giveaway and a very special outtake! HAPPY HOLIDAYS and may the next year be filled with peace, joy, and unforgettable book boyfriends.
xo, Ani
I can’t wait for the sequel
Sent from my iPhone
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My first attempt to answer the riddle:
The first letter is always strong,
The first letter of the alphabet is ‘A’. Plus I needed it to spell Aiden. And I remembered some people like their T (tea) weak.
Like the iron sign that follows along.
Periodic symbol of iron is ‘Fe’
But when I am thrown into the mold
The iron changes to the first hint of gold
First hint – gold. “Gold”
Yet all that strength and all that glitter
are nothing more than a weak whisper
‘I’ll admit, I did try to use iron pyrite until I realized it was a ‘weak whisper ‘.
So if you want to find the true treasure
This one little thing you must remember:
The last clue you will find
In the periodic table, group 15, first line
“Group 15 line 1 – “Nitrogen”.
Mix everything together, and there the answer lies,
Clear as cloudless climes and starry skies.
Letters to mix up and decipher: ” A Fe Gold Nitrogen”. Answer: Long Forget Aiden
I like your answer, and believe you may have deciphered the riddle. However, “long forget Aiden”. I refuse to believe to she feels this. She may want to, but Elisa will always love Aiden, and I hope she and him find their way back to one another, as all of us who adore this story most adamantly want them to. Please Ani release the sequel as soon as you are capable of doing, it’s a wonderful story and I am on pins and needles waiting for the next installment. I need my Aiden and Elisa fix.
Ha ha, Alicia, loved this – I’m working on a chapter of the sequel today where the answer to this riddle comes up. 🙂 And I’ll post an outtake for some A+E fix in the meantime. Thanks so much for liking my story.
Wow, I am so so very impressed with this solution that I wish I had thought of it. 🙂 It certainly could be a description of how Elisa is feeling at the end of Thirty Nights–or at least, what she wishes she could do as Alicia says below. It’s not the answer of the riddle (i know, i know how can it not be!!!??), but it’s still very creative and impressive and if it’s okay with you, i’d love to share it with the other readers. 🙂 Great work! Truly. #speechlessinportland – Ani
I actually might just make this Answer 2 🙂 It’s just so good. LOL
WOW THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS – Love it, especially the art, the Lana video and the foreign language. Awesome, I will circulate it. 🙂 xo
I love riddles!
But first, let me just say that I read about Elisa and Aiden on your blog over a year ago or something like that and yesterday when I was a bit bored I googled the story and was thrilled to see that it was published! I bought it online and thanks to reading all night I was more or less a zombie at work today….and the first thing I did when I got home was to pick up my reading again!
You’re an amazing writer!
So…here’s my first attempt at the riddle:
The first letter is always strong
Well, I googled and Titanium came up as the strongest element in the periodic table. TI
And from iron I got FE
First hint of gold
I focused on the first hint part and got A from au for gold
And then N for Nitroglycerin which is in the periodic table group 15 first line.
From those letters I got: in fate
I don’t think it’s what your looking for, but I was just glad I got something out of the riddle!
I also a have more farfetched theory with a letter I’m struggling a bit to fit in and it gives a name… Am I on the right track?