Page 34 of All Jacked Up

This was not helping my current writing dilemma. I had a book to finish and staring at the screen was getting me nowhere.

Maybe I should text him. No. I’d sent the last text, and he’dnot responded. I wasn’t going to send another until he said something first.

Groaning, I threw my abused pen and dropped my head into my hands. I shouldn’t have taken the advance before this was written.

Bad advice, Arden. Bad freaking advice.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the pressure. I could give the money back and then try to write it.

Did they let you do that? My agent would flip out. She’d already gotten her cut. Probably would have to return her portion myself. My eyes scanned the room. Yep, couldn’t do that. I’d bought this place, and I needed the money to live on until this one was published.

“Ugh!” I shouted, leaning back in my chair and staring at the ceiling.

I needed more Twizzlers.

The ringing of my phone wasn’t the sound I wanted to hear. It wasn’t a text alert. Glaring over at it, as if it were the phone’s fault, I saw Jellie’s name and reached to answer, pressing speaker so I didn’t have to actually pick up the phone.

“Hello?” I said, waiting for the sound of her always-chipper voice.

“Am I interrupting your writing?” she asked, sounding cautious.

“I wish.” The frustration was clear in my tone.

“Uh-oh. Still got writer’s block?”

“Yep,” I replied with a pop of my lips. “Tell me something good. I need it.”

She blew out a breath, and I knew she was thinking about a positive tidbit to share.

“Oh! I don’t have cavities!” she said with fake excitement.

I laughed. “That’s good, but now you don’t get to go to the hot dentist for another six months.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “What about the fact that I didn’t eat the entire container of icing last night, watching season five ofGrey’s Anatomy? You know, George getting hit by the bus gets me every time.”

I grinned up at the ceiling. “How many times have you watched that series?”

“I hear judgment in your tone, and I was telling you something good!”

“Okay, fine. You are a warrior.”

“What do you think is blocking you this time?” she asked me.

“I do not know. The others came out so fast. I think maybe the advance.”

“You got an advance last time.”

“That was after I wrote the first one and the story just poured out of me. This one isn’t.”

“Hmm,” she replied, and we both sat there in silence for a few moments. “What was it that you loved so much about the other couple’s story?”

I wasn’t going to answer that one truthfully. Explaining that the hero was Ransom, and … well, in my head, the heroine was me, although it was a fictional story, was my secret.

“I felt like I knew the characters.” That was close enough to the truth.

“Can you write characters that you feel like you know again?” she asked.

I straightened and looked at the screen. The cursor blinking on the white page that started a new chapter was mocking me.

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