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ME: Ah.
ABBY: You might want to send Kim a follow-up.
ABBY: And who is Max??? And why is he a dick???
Bugger it.
I really screwed myself over with this one.
Why on Earth hadn’t I changed that title? Or the document name? What was wrong with me?
I ignored her last question and typed out a quick follow-up to my editor with an apology for my mishap. She replied quickly.
LOL, Ellie, I’m not surprised at all. I was waiting for this email. Did Abby make you send it?
And who’s Max???
Why did everyone want to know who Max was?
I told her the same thing I was about to reply to Abby: nobody special. It wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t special. He was a pain in my arse, both fictionally and in real life, and I really never should have written his name in that book.
Or based the main character off him.
At least the heroine wasn’t a redhead.
I had that going for me.
She was blonde all the way.
I had to have a little separation, you know?
I needed some fresh air.
I scooted the chair back from the desk and got up, then headed outside. I was only going to sit on the doorstep. There was less of a chance of me running into my grumpy, secret muse that way.
Plus, it was all I really needed. There was a great view of the lake, the flowers made it all smell pretty, and there was just enough shade from all the trees that I could sit there without dying in the heat.
And if I sat in the doorway, I could still supervise Winston who was sitting in the window chirping at the birds.
Perhaps I’d take the keys and close the door behind me.
Yeah. I’d do that.
I grabbed the keys from my bag in the hallway and stepped outside, quickly pulling the door shut behind me as the sound of Winston’s paws hitting the wooden floor reached my ears.
That cat could hear a door opening from miles away. He was more attuned to it than he was to a bag of treats, and that was saying something.
I leant back against the door and sighed again. I stretched my legs out so they were in the sun and kept my ankles uncrossed, even though it meant I’d probably have sunburnt shins and toes if I stayed out here any longer than ten minutes.
The fresh air was good—and much needed. I’d been sitting at the computer for too long finishing those chapters, and I could feel it all in my shoulders and upper back.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting nature do its thing. I wasn’t sure where to go from here in my book, and the niggling idea that my characters needed to fall headfirst into a sexual relationship wouldn’t quite leave me alone.
I didn’t usually have them get physical this early in a book. I was more of a slow-burn kind of writer, letting it build and build until it reached an ultimate crescendo, but these two…
They were messing itallup.
Maybe I just had to let them get on with it. If they were going to bonk, they were going to bonk. They really did have minds of their own to say they were complete figments of my imagination, but that was how it worked.
