AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was so tempting to write ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’ The weather outside was frightful, but it wasn’t night. And on the battered and wild coast of Maine, even a small tempest brewing just offshore could be impressive with crashing waves, mist that held tiny, icy shards, and a howling wind.
Lori Sykes was tucked into a booth in the quiet corner of the bistro where she could watch the raging weather outside and the hubbub of the café’s customers and staff. She’d settled in to try to work on her latest novel. The prose wasn’t flowing, so she was editing what she’d previously written. She wasn’t happy with her work in progress and wasn’t sure why. She was giving serious thought to scrapping it and beginning again.
The remnants of her breakfast—crispy bacon and an enormous cinnamon roll the size of a dinner plate were strewn about the table for her to nibble on. There was also a pot of black, Irish tea. She’d paid her bill, but the waitress made sure her tea and water were refreshed. She’d have to remember to slip her an extra tip.
Despite trying to focus her thoughts and efforts, she found her attention wandering, snagged by the clinking of flatware and glasses as other patrons came and went. There was a lovely kind of buzz throughout the bistro. She overheard bits and pieces of conversation—one waitress grousing to another about the chef; one man bemoaning to another about the end of his marriage; two conference attendees mapping out their strategy for the actual signing. Lori found herself jotting down snippets of what she heard to be used in the future. ‘Grist for the mill,’ her friend Jessica called it.
The hushed conversation between two aspiring authors caught and held her attention for a moment, and she smiled. They were lucky. They each had the other with whom they could discuss their thoughts and their fears. Three years ago she’d asked for a two-year sabbatical. When the first novel and the three that followed had been increasingly successful, she’d asked for an additional year. While it had been grudgingly granted, she’d been told there would be no more extensions, so the decision about whether or not to return to teaching was rapidly approaching.
Lori had had no one to talk to when she asked for a sabbatical from her teaching job to write her first novel.
Her principal had kept in touch and was urging her to return and ‘write on the side.’ Her friends and fellow members of the Mystery Writers’ Murder Club scoffed at that notion and encouraged her to make the break permanent.
Christie had advised Lori to tell the principal to go fuck himself. Christie was a retired Baltimore homicide detective whose first novel had been a successful phenomenon, and that was her usual advice. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the fear that held Lori back, but Christie tended to drive full speed into everything and had a take-no-prisoners outlook.
Jessica, on the other hand, had said, “I get wanting the perks of being gainfully employed, but you have talent and have been so successful. Why on earth would you go back to doing something you’d come to hate versus doing something you love?” Easy for Jessica to say; she was making millions a year from her writing and was engaged to a hunky detective, which meant access to great benefits.
Fiona's circumstances were closest to Lori’s own. “Your Aunt Viola gave you a gift. You have made an amazing success of it. Sell your place in Chicago, find a place here in Maine, and embrace your future.” Fiona was the most practical of them all, but she was right. Fearing what might happen was no way to live one’s life and certainly wasn’t using the wings her aunt had given her.
She looked around the bistro and grinned. Lori had to admit that sitting in a cozy bistro on the coast of Maine nibbling on the most amazing cinnamon roll she’d ever had, sipping perfectly brewed tea, and living life mostly on her own timetable beat the hell out of standing in front of a chalkboard, teaching Shakespeare to sleepy, uninterested, or sometimes even dangerous teenagers.
Tapping her long, manicured nails—something she’d never been able to keep while teaching—on her laptop, she thought back to the talk she’d given the night before to a group of mystery and crime writers. She’d been asked to speak at this conference on the importance of character development in the genre, something she felt many books lacked. She knew the event planners had asked Jessica first, but when Jess declined, she suggested Lori.
Jessica knew that Lori shared a similar opinion about writing character-driven books versus the predominantly formulaic novels that seemed too prevalent in the genre. She thought it had been well received, but it was her first time attending a conference as a speaker and she had spent the night tossing and turning, second-guessing herself.
She was normally pretty self-confident, but public speaking was definitely not her jam. The room had been packed, more so than either she or the event planners had anticipated. They’d needed to bring in extra chairs and move her to a larger room. She’d had one heckler, whom the hosts of the event had managed to handle while they assured her that kind of thing happened to everyone.
Lori had to admit from that point forward, her presentation had gone well. She planned for a question-and-answer session that had gone on far longer than she thought it would. And when they finally had to leave the ballroom, a small number of authors had followed her into one of the hotel’s comfortable common areas, where they’d talked for another two hours.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. No amount of musing on what had happened the previous evening was going to put words on her screen, and that’s where her focus needed to be. She realized as she re-read the previous chapter that her main character was refusing to do what she wanted. She smiled, recalling Jessica’s advice on that subject.
“You can try and make them do what you want or force them to follow your plan, but in the end, you won’t like it any more than they do,” she’d said. “It’s best to let them have their head and follow where they lead.”
So, Dylan, where do you want to go?
From the moment she relinquished control of the story to her character—a hunky detective blatantly based on Jessica’s fiancé—the story seemed to unfold itself effortlessly. God, how she loved when that happened and her muse kicked in.
“So, the great lady author deigns to sup with the little folk?” asked the voice of the heckler from the night before.
Last night she hadn’t been able to really see his face, but this time she recognized him. Antony Cobain was an author of some note. He’d written numerous bestsellers the decade before but now his novels were written off, at least by most critics and some readers, as clichéd, predictable, and going for more shock value than anything else. For Lori, his characters lacked any depth, and his mysteries were pretty predictable. He was the very antithesis of what she wrote and had been the best example she could have named. Could have but hadn’t.
“I don’t know what the event planners were thinking when they asked you to speak last night. Good god, you’ve only written four books in three years. Can you even support yourself?” he sneered.
“Why yes, Antony, I can. Quite nicely; thank you for asking.”
“You just wait until you get to your tenth or twentieth…or fiftieth, if you get that far. You’ll find your blush with early success will desert you and you’ll have to crawl back to teaching. You know what they say: those who can’t, teach.”
Even though he was speaking her worst fear, she refused to be bullied by him or anyone else. “That is what they say, but I left teaching to pursue my dreams. Nothing will ever make me regret that decision. And didn’t I read somewhere you’d accepted a position as a professor at some private academy or school?”
He drew himself up so as to look down on her, which wasn’t difficult—he was standing, and she was sitting. “I’ll have you know the Madison Institute is one of the best academies, catering to the finest minds in Virginia and the Eastern Seaboard. It is my own alma mater and I feel privileged to be teaching there. I can assure you my duties in educating young minds leave me plenty of time to write. I am also under consideration for a position with Yale. Of course it would mean leaving Madison, but Yale is Yale.”
A woman standing just behind Cobain inserted herself between them with her back to him.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have to say I absolutely love your books. I have all four of them, and I was hoping to get them signed tomorrow.”
Lori flashed her a brilliant smile. She absolutely loved this kind of interaction and feedback from readers. “I will absolutely sign them for you.”
“Most event planners,” Cobain sniffed, “prefer that you buy the books at the signing.”
