Page 4 of Smoke and Fire
I set the food down, eager to sneak away without a word, but he grabbed my wrist. The gentle burn of his skin zipped straight to my bones. I didn’t know his name, his face, or anything about him.
But with his hot touch that burned like fire, I knew that everything in my life had just changed.
2
BASTIAN
Bastian,
We need to talk.
You’re fighting fires in the forest like a crazy person and have limited availability—I get it. But your career is knocking on the door. It’s time to answer. As your agent, I’m on this ride with you. Your success is my success.
Interview requests have been pouring in from several different avenues. Podcasts, TV stations, some online influencers. In anticipation of launching book #21, we’ve seen sales and traction rising. Your marketing team is actually doing its job, now you need to do yours too.
The stock photo we put up as an author profile photo is soon going to be discovered asnotyou. Eventually, readers will learn that Jess is a single, thirty-something male. I calculate a 62% chance that your hidden career is about to unravel right before we launch into a bestseller slot.
I don’t like those odds.
Growing unrest is noted amongst some of your normally most popular message boards as well, might I add. Only made worse by the constant silence from Jess on social media this summer.
Your goal to push to a #1 spot on the charts for release could happen, but not if you’re hiding in the woods.
I know you want to remain anonymous, but we need to get ahead of what could be a massive issue.
—Priyanka
THE WORDS BLURREDon the screen as I read them. Unable to focus, I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand and navigated away.
Once I finally understood it all the way through, I scooted lower in the booth and closed my eyes.
This was a bad idea. I came to read Priyanka’s communications at the Frolicking Moose because I knew I’d ignore them when I returned home. I’d crash on the couch for eight hours, wake up exhausted, throw some laundry in, and crash again.
This place smelled like vanilla and the heady, thick smell kept me from falling asleep. The original coffee shop had nearly disappeared under all their renovations. I remembered it when it was still a fishing place, when Bethany’s dad still owned it. Proof that life always evolved and sometimes surprised all of us.
With a sigh, I turned back to the onslaught of emails that awaited.
Punctuating my private inbox, where readers couldn’t reach me, awaited financial correspondence. Bills. Bank updates. Interest amortization schedules on a mortgage I was just about to pay off on Dad’s behalf. The usual.
The other email, my author one, gushed with words from sincere women that loved my books. Requests for podcast interviews, video interviews, appearances at conferences, and book signing forms dotted the landscape there. The landscape that I had always ignored. Gradually, it had started to get worse and worse.
How my career as an author hadn’t absolutely tanked from sheer lack of involvement with the readers, I’d never understand.
Nausea welled up in my stomach at the thought of tackling two weeks’ worth of emails. The tab shrank into the ether as I navigated away from that disaster, ignored the messages on my phone from Pri, and found myself staring at a blank white page. The open expanse of the computer canvas justwaitedfor more words.
I had none.
My fingers stalled on top of the keys. Two weeks away on the fires, and all I could think about was getting words out of my brain that whole time. Now I sat here, and my mind filled with snow.
This wasn’t the ideal time to write. Laundry awaited—so much laundry. Had to feed the cat. Sleep. Get some food in my too-hungry body, amongst other things.
Priyanka’s words of warning waved like red flags as I drummed my fingertips on the keys. I reached into the back of my mind. Sometimes, I had to search for words. Find them left in the crevasses and shadows of my creativity.
Writing emptied my brain, like I had an allotted number of things that I could hold in my head to share with the world. The words filled back up over time in a slow trickle.
Especially when I spent time in the forest, hacking at trees, filling my lungs with smoke and my body with charred scars. Like all summer, the words didn’t come. I couldn’t dredge them free. Wasn’t sure I wanted them right now anyway.
I navigated back to the inbox, focused more on Pri and her not-so-gentle warnings.
