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Harlow
“Okay, what’d you do this week? I haven’t talked to you in forever.”
Paloma gestured through the screen, then took a sip of her iced tea. She was in the Eastern Time Zone, happily settled in the panhandle of Florida, so she’d had more of her workday than I had so far.
“Plotting,” I said. “I really like it. I think I’ll be ready to send a full pitch and a first chapter to Cora and my editor next week.”
“Oh she’s a bad bitch,” she said, smacking her hand on the surface of her desk. “I knew you had it in you.”
“Bea helped so much. Thank you for passing along her info.”
“Fucking Bea. I should start giving her a cut of my royalties because I think my brain would’ve self-destructed by now if it wasn’t for her.”
I laughed. “What about you? Don’t humble me too badly.”
“I’ve written thirty thousand words this week. I think my arms are going to fall off.”
I rolled my eyes. “I feel so sorry for you.”
Paloma snickered. “I know you do. Your words will come, just gotta trust the process.”
Eyeing the stack of scribbled notebook pages, I set my chin in my hands and sighed. “I am. It’s so different, though, you know? I’ve only ever had to plot out one protagonist, one major set of issues, one trauma, one journey through the story. Now I’m balancing two, and it’s not easy.”
“Still going with the story we talked about last week?” she asked. She wasn’t looking at her screen anymore, so I knew she was multitasking.
“Yeah. I like the stalker idea. It keeps me in that suspense world that I like, and my hero is a guy she used to hate, but he’s the only one who makes her feel safe now. That takes some mental adjustment for her. I think it keeps the tension in two places in the story that way.” I flipped a few pages. “Still trying to figure out how to reveal his background, though.”
She hummed. “Narrator-kept secret? Or does the reader know, and it’s just your heroine who needs to figure it out?”
“Such excellent questions,” I said gravely.
Paloma laughed. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”
“I know.” I rubbed my forehead and sighed. “I’m almost plotted through the climax.”
She popped her eyebrows up. “You’re making good progress. Usually, it takes you a solid month to outline everything.”
“I’m telling you, I did that one prompt, and the whole story just unrolled in my head.”
“Tell me about your guy again.”
Tugging the notebook closer, I rattled off some notes. “Jack Briggs. Thirty-six. Gruff. Protective. A little obsessive when he finally lets someone in. Has some abandonment issues stemming from his childhood.”
“Hot.”
I laughed. “Yeah?”
She grinned. “Let me guess, dark hair, dark eyes, big strapping muscles.”
Did my eye twitch? She’d have noticed if it did because even though we didn’t check in weekly, Paloma was probably the longest friendship in my life besides Ian. There would be no broad-shouldered, dark-haired heroes with excellent facial hair and dark, heavily lashed eyes in any of my books, thank you very much. Not if I could help it.
“Nope,” I said decisively. “Going for a blond guy this time.”
Her eyebrows climbed high on her forehead. “Blond, huh? That’s a … choice.”
“Yup. Gray eyes. A tatt on his forearm, one on his back she doesn’t know about. Tall, wiry muscular. Like swimmer’s build.”
Paloma hummed, tapping her chin and narrowing her heavily lined eyes in a way that I did not like. “This is interesting.”
