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Selling a book, not to mention a debut, is nigh-on-impossible. Traditional publishers have a needle-sized hole to pass through… but I’d done it.One Fatal Stephad sold, and my publisher had been so excited that we’d planned a release party. Roughly six weeks after the launch, the high had started to wear off.
Hard.
They wanted me to market. They wanted me to magically have a social media following over night. And, as it was made very clear to me, they weren’t willing to invest more into marketing… because the book hadn’t performed.
To this day, it still hasn’t earned its advance.
My publisher doesn’t want to buy more books from me.
Which means, I write my stories now for an audience of me, myself, and I. No editor to appease and no publisher to bow down to. No readers, either. But, clearly, they weren’t there the first time around.
I close my eyes and lean back in the lounge chair.Think, Eden. Think.How can I make this story work? What main characters do I want to spend the coming half a year with?
My thinking is interrupted rather rudely a few minutes later by the arrival of a tall man standing next to my chair. I shield my eyes from the sun to see who it is.
It’s Phillip.
I can’t make out his eyes behind his sunglasses. “Hey,” he says.
I struggle to pull myself up into a sitting position and glance down, sneakily, to see that all my bikini pieces are in the right spots. They are. “Um, hi.”
“Hungover?”
“A bit this morning, but I’m good now,” I respond.
He’s fully dressed. Shorts and actual sneakers, and in another button-down. The silence between us stretches out for a beat andokay, we’re going to pretend like yesterday didn’t happen,I think, and that’s absolutely the right call. Definitely.
“I was just heading out, but I thought I saw your pink bikini,” he says.
“It’s purple,” I say. “Lilac, really.”
Phillip looks down at the said bikini, and my body, and I regret my clarification immediately. But his lips curve just slightly. “Right. My bad. So, I’m heading to the golf course, actually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I have a tee time in… thirty minutes. It’s just ten minutes from here.”
“The one we drove by yesterday?”
“Yes, the Winter Resort has a partnership.” He shrugs. “I can see that you’re busy tanning, but if you want to come, there’s a spot.”
“To come with?”
“Yes.”
“Togolf?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to,” I say. “Well, I’ve played mini golf a few times. That’s not really the same thing, right? Although I guess the balls are the same size, though.”
There’s that curve to his lips again, just barely there. “Yes, I suppose they are.”
I swing my legs over the edge of the lounge chair. Golf. With Phillip. He must have been heading out from the bungalow and changed his mind on the spur of the moment when he saw me on the beach.
“As long as you can promise me there’ll be no rum, I’m in,” I say.
“No rum? You had your fill yesterday?”
