Page 117 of Smoke and Fire
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.
Interviews.
Podcasts.
We need to talk.
The words carried more implication than anything else. Pri wasn’t wrong. We did need to talk. Since last year, my sales had been expanding like a slowly inflating balloon. The lines bumped up and up on my reports, sometimes stabilizing at a new plateau. An advertising push would raise them again now that the marketing team had proof that people wanted my work. Rarely did sales drop drastically, although the days popped up and down in any normal pattern.
Then . . . they exploded.
A few strategic influencers on Instagram got a hold of Rodrigo and a wildfire of fandom began. Jess raced like a freight train toward new popularity this summer. Social media growth became exponential. Fan groups popped up in book clubs, online, at conferences, romantic gatherings. Invitations to speak at conferences, talk with experts, and meet fans flowed in constantly.
With the launch of my twenty-first novel, I stood to break my own record—and maybe some others—in sales.
If you’re serious about this career and the money that you want to make,Pri had said before I left last time,we’re going to have to reveal Jess.
Of course I was serious.
Protective-younger-brother serious.
The building plume behind the mountains drew my gaze, and I stifled a frustrated head shake. We just finished a two-week rotation on another fire and had forty-eight hours off to do laundry, recover some sleep, and pretend like we didn’t overuse our bodies on a daily basis. Food would be paramount. So would rest.
