Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
“You’re sure?” Steve asks. “Right here. Now. In front of you.”
“I… think so?” I say, nibbling at a lettuce leaf.
“Okay,” Steve says, taking up a spoonful of his cheesy, gooey soup and scrolling back to the first page.
“And be honest,” I insist. “I really want to hear what you think.”
“You got it,” he says. And I watch him scan the words, his face now lit by the ghostly white of the tablet screen.
I don’t say anything the entire time, just let him read. Which he does even faster than I write. It’s nearly time to go back into the signing and he looks like he’s almost done. I don’t remember the last time I just sat and ate a meal without talking or other distractions. It’s kind of nice just to be quiet. I feel bad that Steve didn’t really touch his chicken though. Mine was delici—
Oh. He’s done.
I gulp. Not with a sound like a cartoon character or anything, but I do, indeed, gulp.
He taps the screen dark, hands the tablet back to me, and when he does… he takes hold of both of my hands as I receive it from him. He smiles, looks me in the eyes—I feel my heart flutter again—and then he says…
“Let’s talk.”
Ohhhhhhhhhh, fuck.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I feel like the Devil stole Cordelia’s lovely soul right under my nose. Like her innocence has been lost and… and… and was she watching some really bad porn last night, or what? Because this is really bad porn. I’m talking Seventies moustache porn. Hairy legs, and armpits, and l… yeah. Lots of hair there kind of porn.
“First of all”—I raise a finger—“your sentences were beautiful.”
She makes a crooked smile at me. “Um. Thanks?”
“Your sentences are always beautiful.”
She lets out a breath and grabs her fork, pounding the end of it on the table. “OK, look. Just rip the Band-Aid off. You hated it, right?”
“I mean…” I shrug with my hands. “In the appropriate situation… I could learn to love it.”
That crooked smile turns into a whole face of WTF and she flips the fork over in her palm like she’s about to use it as a weapon. “Learn to love it?”
“Yeah. Like… for instance”—I smile at her—“should we ever find ourselves in bed at night. Together. Under the covers. Perhaps in ten years?”
“What?”
“We’ve been together ten years, we’ve had sex every way you can think of, and maybe… things are little predictable? Hmm? Get my meaning?”
“No.”
“Your story”—I point to the tablet—“would be the perfect spice for us to bond over later in life.”
She pounds the fork, tines down, into the table. “So you hated it.”
“I didn’t hate it. I’m trying to explain to you that if one’s goal is to excite one’s partner under the covers, this could be the ticket.”
“OK. Is that a bad thing?”
Now it’s my turn to shoot her a WTF face. “Cordelia. This is trash. Smut. Porn.”
“But… it’s hot, right?”
“It can be. That’s what I’m saying. If your goal is to get men in prison off, you get an A-plus-plus-plus. If your goal was to write something romantic… this is a spectacular fail.”
“But it’s what the fans said they wanted!”
“Fans don’t know what they want.”
“How can you say that? You saw them yesterday in Reader Rants! They knew exactly what they wanted.”
“No. They were spouting off tropes and technicals. And that’s not what they like. What they like is great characterization and world-building. They just don’t have the vocabulary to express it because they’re readers, not writers. So they think they love the wedding and the baby—”
“They do!”
“They do, but only at the appropriate time. No one wants the wedding and the baby after book one in a series because that couple is now over. They know this! In romance, the wedding is the end. You have to be pretty clever to keep a couple going after the marriage and baby. It’s typically just a happily-ever-after book where you get a little peek into the future, which is super-satisfying, but again, after that, you gotta start over again with the grown-up kids. Because the wedding is the end. Weren’t you listening in the panel when I…”
But I stop. Because she wasn’t there. It was just me and the readers at that point.
I reach over and take her hand. “You write good books. You don’t need”—I point to the tablet—“this.”
“Then why can’t I seem to break through the ceiling? What am I doing wrong?”
“What are you talking about? You’re not doing anything wrong. Your stories are great. I love them.”
“Then why don’t the readers love my books the way they love yours?”
I shrug. “I have more of them.”
“So I should just write more? How is that the answer?”
“It’s not just ‘write more.’ It’s… ‘build a family of characters in a world the readers never want to leave and then write more.’ I’m telling you—the secret is great characterization and world-building.”