Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (2 page)

BOOK: Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel)
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Chapter 3

 
 
 
 
 

A couple of nights later, the phone rang. I could hear it, though that didn't mean that my dream was willing to get out of the way for long enough for me to break free of sleep and wake up to answer it.

 

Finally, the ringing stopped, only to start up again.

 

This time I managed to push myself up out of bed and fumble for the light on the nightstand.

 

"Shit!" I squealed as I leaned to far over for a lamp that wasn't there and almost fell out of bed on to my face. That was the problem with being on book tours for as long as I'd been, by the time you got a chance to end them, to go back home and sleep in your own bed, everything felt like it was out of place even though it wasn't.

 

I looked at the digital clock beside me, adjusting to where the lamp and nightstand actually were. Almost eleven am. Hmm. Must have been a rough night, last night...

 

But the phone wouldn't stop ringing this time, so I scooped it up and answered it. "Hello?"

 

"Tell me you aren't still in bed..." It was David, no doubt calling me to nag me about something book related.

 

"I'm not still in bed," I said dutifully, lie or not.

 

"Yes you are."

 

I shrugged. "So what. I thought I'd celebrate the fact that you were right, for once.
Love Eternal
hit the bestseller list just like you said it would. If that's not worthy of a couple of glasses of champagne, I don't know what is."

 

He sighed. I got the feeling I'd said something wrong, and was about to be on the receiving end of a lecture I wanted no part in. "That happened more than a week ago, Beth."

 

"Really?" I fumbled with the phone and tried to bring up the calendar, only succeeding in nearly hanging up on him. Had I really lost four or five days to the booze? I mean, I knew I was depressed, but that was crossing from the land of character foible to one of true scariness.

 

"Yes," he said, as I gave up on the calendar and put the phone back to my ear. "Is everything okay? Do you want me to come over?"

 

"No, no," I said, waving his words away with the sweep of one hand. "I'm fine. I was about to get out of bed when you called. Burning the midnight oil last night, that's all." I was going to leave it at that, but I knew what to say to keep him off of my back for a while, and so I said it. "I was outlining, actually."

 

"Really?" his voice sounded both please and surprised, the perfect reaction to make me not feel so bad about telling him the little white lie. After all, if it had caused him that much joy, what harm did it cause?

 

"Really," I said. "And better yet, I think I know how it ends."

 

"Well done," he said, ever the encourager. "I'm impressed. I have to admit, it hasn't been all that much fun on this end, trying to keep Wellspring off of your back and still entice them with promises of the new book. Want me to give them some snippets?"

 

I frowned. I hadn't been expecting him to push for details already. "Snippets?"

 

"You know. Tell me a few of the details so I can stir up some excitement for you on their end."

 

I shook my head. Lying about the outline was one thing, but actually painting myself into a corner by shouting random ideas as they came into my drink-muddled head, only to make myself hate even more the book I'd be forcing myself to write was another thing entirely. "No way," I said. Not in a million years. You tell them that the last two have hit the New York Times list right out of the gate and that this one will be no exception. That's all they need to know."

 

Besides, that was probably all they cared about. I looked across the room at my lonely writing desk. The laptop was there, staring back at me. I'd rather do just about anything else in the world other than sit there and plug away at it, but that would have to happen sometime soon...

 

For now though, I could hear one of the little bottles of alcohol I'd smuggled off of first class last week calling my name. "Thanks for the call, David. I don't need you checking up on me, though..."

 

"Beth?"

 

I rolled my eyes. This man simply did
not
know when to take a hint. "Yes?"

 

"You called me last night. The message was garbled but... Well, you said some things I wanted to talk to you about..."

 

My breath caught in my lungs and my heart froze. Had I? My mind raced, trying desperately to piece last night back together. I'd had a couple of glasses of champagne, that much had been true. Then I'd had the rest of the bottle. Ordered pizza. Watched something crappy late into the night.

 

Had I called him? I must have, though I couldn't for the life of me remember what I'd said...

 

"Oh," I said, trying to play it off. "Well, I've worked it out now, so never mind..."

 

"Never mind?"

 

"Yep."

 

"You've worked it out now?" he asked, incredulous.

 

"Yep?" I answered, uncertain.

 

David sighed again, and I got the feeling that, more often than not, I was way more trouble to him than I was worth. And I was worth a whole damn lot... "So you don't need that advance to be bumped up, like you asked?"

 

Oh! The advance!
That
must have been what I'd called about! "Actually, yes," I said, doing my best to keep my voice level and getting the feeling that I was failing miserably. "That would be awesome, if you could work that out for me. I've got some bills coming up that I wasn't expecting, and a few extra bucks would do wonders for me."

 

"Fifteen thousand dollars is hardly a few extra dollars, Beth?"

 

"Yeah, well, I know. But they're already going to pay me the money, right? I'm just asking for it a couple of months early."

 

"They pay you the money on delivery of the novel," David said, in a tone that said but-we-both-know-that. "So when I ask for them to push your payment forward, they're going to want to know when the book will be ready."

 

Right. Of course. I closed my eyes and tried to get a handle on what I had planned for the next couple of weeks. Nothing that couldn't be moved or gotten out of, really, now that the book tour was done. "Tell them they'll have it in sixty days," I said, knowing that would be far sooner than they'd be expecting. The check signers at the publishing house would be fools not to pay me early, for that sort of return on investment.

 

"Really? Two months?"

 

"I told you," I said, "I did a bunch of outlining last night. I really think this one is practically going to write itself!"

 

"Wow, David said, "you must really know how this one ends. Okay, I'll tell them. But Beth?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

"This is going to lock you into that time frame. You know that, right? You can't spend the money and then take six months to deliver..."

 

"I know, David. Send me the cash and I'll crank out the words, just like always."

 

"As you wish. Take care, Beth. Let me know if you need me, okay?"

 

"Goodbye, David," I said, not trusting my voice to say any more. I was crying, for some reason, and the laptop was smirking at me from the corner of the room.

 
 
 

Chapter 4

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

So, I did what I always do when I dig myself a hole I don't know how to climb out of.

 

I waited until Thursday. Thankfully it was already Tuesday, which meant that I only had to drink, sleep, eat and be miserable about my life for a couple of days until I could scrape myself up off the bottom of life's shoe, so to speak, drag my ass into the shower and make myself presentable.

 

Thursdays, you see, are the days when the Smut Slingers meet at the Sands cafe in Long Beach. Membership is rather exclusive, though what had started as an unwieldy group of ten had dwindled to a far more manageable and much more consistently published band of four, over the years.

 

As I parked the car and fed the meter, I made sure my sunglasses where in place. The bags under my eyes wouldn't bother the Slingers one little bit, but I could do without getting recognized on the way to the cafe, especially today. Why, if one more fan came up to me and told me how close to real life one of my characters made them feel, I thought I would scream.

 

I don't know if they were telling me the truth or feeding me a line they thought I'd want to hear, and truth be told I don't know which would have been worse...

 

The cafe was quiet, which is why it had been our home for close to a decade. I nodded to girls behind the counter and they dutifully started making me the usual, ham and cheese on rye with slice pickles on the side.

 

Then I headed to the back, and was greeted by a chorus of groans.

 

"Oh good," Grace said with the bluntness that embodied everything she did. "The flavor of the month is here. I was worried you'd be late. Heaven forbid, I was just saying, that Beth is caught in traffic. If she is, who will regale us of tales concerning her terrible, bestselling books and horrible, adoring fans?"

 

I grinned from ear to ear and yanked my sunglasses off, throwing my arms around the old woman. Pushing seventy, she was still as feisty and devil-may-care as ever, and despite the act I knew she had a soft spot for me.

 

"Grace," I said, patting her back with over-acted gentleness. "I'm so glad you're still alive. Last week, I was worried you wouldn't make it to another session."

 

"You wish," she said, returning my smile and squeezing me twice as hard to make up for the fact that I wasn't squeezing her.

 

"Not really," I said, truthfully. I didn't know what I'd do without her and the others. They'd been where I was, and would probably be there again. Sure, I was the toast of the romance publishing world now, but that wouldn't last forever. One day, maybe next week, maybe next year, I'd be out and someone else would be in...

 

Someone like Hank, who sat in his usual spot off to my left. I sat down and he covered my hand with his, giving me a wink and pushing his blond locks out of his eyes as he did so. Hank was, as he said himself, gayer than Christmas. He wrote the same stuff the rest of us did, but he'd confessed a few years back that he just 'gave them all dicks and them chopped some of them off in a later draft'.

 

"Hank," I said happily. "You were supposed to send me a link to your blog tour. I had to go online and find it myself, like some sort of peasant."

 

He shrugged. Self-promotion wasn't my thing, but I played the game when I had to. If you didn't, your books didn't move and you faded away. But Hank... Well, Hank had to have his arm twisted just to tell you what he was writing, and his humbleness didn't end there.

 

"Sorry," he said. "You know how it goes..."

 

Charlotte sighed, leaning over and giving me a peck on the cheek before swatting at Hank's hand. "You should know by now that the only way we're ever going to get this guy to own up to how good his stuff is if we hypnotize him into thinking someone else wrote it for him."

 

I nodded, pecking her cheek back. It was true. Of the four of us, Hank's stuff was the best. That is, it had the most raw inspiration. Maybe there really was something to the whole 'give them all dicks and take some away later' approach, but I suspected it had a lot more to do with the raw talent God had seen fit to give him.

 

Of course, that was sadly offset by the fact that Hank was barely making a wage at the whole romance writing game. Whereas Grace had been going for almost forty years, Charlotte had quit her job after her first book and never looked back and I was still, by the skin of my teeth, writing words that people seemed desperate to read, all three of us knew that if there were any justice in the world, Hank would be reaching the heights that some of us took for granted.

 

The Smut Slingers didn't stand on ceremony, and each of them had half-eaten food in front of themselves.

 

"Thanks for waiting to order," I joked, lacing my voice heavily with sarcasm. "I'm so glad I can count on my closest friends to do the right thing when I'm, what?" I glanced at my watch. "Five minutes late?"

 

"Seven," said Grace. "You may be able to afford that shiny Rolex now that you're a bigshot, honey, but you still aren't able to use it to tell the time."

 

I rolled my eyes. The waitress came over with my sandwich and a tall, cool Long Island Ice Tea, which I practically dove head first into. No need to hide my desire for a drink amongst these three. We were writers, after all. Hank had three empty bottles of beer in front of him already, and the others were on their second colorful drink.

 

We chit-chatted for a while, catching each other up. They asked about the book launch, and I didn't bother to lie. I told them I'd hated it but played along, and the topic moved on to other things. It was only an hour later, when Hank asked the fateful question, that the conversation came back to me.

 

"So," he said, smiling over at me like an assassin mixing the perfect concoction. "What are you going to write next?"

 

That was the question of the day, wasn't it? I shrugged, genuinely uncertain. "No idea. Maybe another billionaire something or other?"

 

They all made faces at me. Each of them had jumped into that water, and they'd all made out like bandits. Still, it was a crowded pool.

 

"Maybe some sexy vampire stuff, then?"

 

Charlotte practically choked on her drink. "Really?"

 

I shrugged again, feeling backed into a corner even more than when I'd lied to David about having already outlined the damn thing. "I don't know. I don't really care, either. I just want to get this last book over and done with. It'll be such a relief to be out from underneath this damn contract."

 

"Yeah," Hank said drolly. "I can't imagine how you've handled all of those advances. It must be so stressful knowing they'll market any piece of crap you write to high heaven, making even the most jaded of your readers beg for more. You're so brave, Beth. Truly."

 

We all laughed. But somewhere, deep down, I got even more afraid. If these guys couldn't help me come to terms with whatever I was going to put down on paper next, who could?

 
BOOK: Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel)
2.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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