AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Screenplays,” I told him. “I’m trying to get into television.” I gave him the briefest rundown of my project with Stream.
“That’s impressive,” he said warmly. “Congratulations.”
“Congrats are premature, but thank you. It’s taken a lot to even get this far. I went to screenwriting school and live in LA.”
“You know what you’re doing, obviously. What genre is your screenplay?”
“If I equate it to books, it’d be sports romance. The series features a professional baseball team, so there’s a lot of that, but there’s also a bunch of hot, single guys who need to find the right women.”
“Of course. Sounds like it’ll appeal to both women and men with the sports angle.”
“I’m hoping so, even though romance is female heavy. I’ve read romance for years, and everything I write seems to have at least a little in it.” Which was weird when you considered my own failure-ridden romantic history. Eternal optimism maybe? “You said you started recently. Are you working on your first book?” I nodded toward his laptop, which he’d set on top of his notebook.
Knox crossed an ankle over his other knee and relaxed into the chair. “Second. I came to Dragonfly Lake in June and wrote fiction for two solid weeks on a vacation from my full-time financial work. The story just sort of poured out of me. I took another few weeks to finish the book after my day job was done, then I sent it off to a content editor and am working on a different story until I get it back.”
“Smart.”
“I keep getting ideas,” he said. “Like, at all hours of the night. So many ideas. I just need to figure out how and when to write them.”
Smiling, I said, “Sounds familiar. So you’re on an extended stay here while you write?”
“I’m moving to Dragonfly Lake, actually. I’m on the house hunt, just waiting for the right place to come available.”
“Wow. I don’t know if I can be considered a resident, but welcome to town and good luck with the hunt.”
“Thanks. It started out as a vacation and an experiment. Something about the lake air and the slow pace sparks my creativity. I’m still doing the financial stuff—I can work from anywhere—but my dream would be to write fiction full-time.”
“We have something in common then,” I said. “What’s your book that’s with the editor about?”
He stumbled around for a couple of minutes, trying to summarize, and I totally got that. I’d done that plenty when people asked me the same. Being able to summarize a full book in a few sentences was a skill set that took time to develop.
Knox explained a little about his world—which was a fictional planet—and his storyline. I hadn’t read a ton of sci-fi, but I was intrigued anyway and asked him if I could read what he had.
“Seriously?” he asked. “You don’t have to.”
I laughed. “Obviously I don’t have to. It might take me a while to get to it, because this place is keeping me hopping, but I’d love something to get my head out of reality for a while. If you’re up for it.”
“It’s raw.”
“I’ve been a beginner before too.” I told him my email address and he jotted it down in his notebook.
“Okay. You’re on,” he said as I registered a sound behind us, coming from the front lobby. “Just be gentle.”
“Absolutely.”
I turned toward the lobby doorway in time to see Cash walk into the room with a frown on his face as he sized up Knox.
Chapter7
Cash
Ava had been on my mind for the past seventy-two hours.
Her aunt’s funeral was today, and I hadn’t been able to get away from the restaurant even for an hour because Zinnia had something in Nashville that she couldn’t skip.
I remembered how draining and awful my mom’s and grandma’s funerals were. In Dragonfly Lake, people showed up in droves, with everyone wanting to help somehow, and I heard it had been no different today. I was sure there’d been a thousand well-meaning hugs, hundreds of condolences, countless looks of sympathy to endure.
I was absolutely worn out after the funerals in my family. And though the Diamond ladies had rallied around Ava this week, at the end of the day, she was all alone.
