Page 1 of You Had Me at Chateau
1
‘As the sun began to set, and the beachgoers disappeared with it, all of a sudden it was just me and him. He reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. He didn’t say a word to me, not with his lips. He said it with his eyes. The touch of his fingers as he grazed my face. That deep, heavy sigh that made his chest rise sharply before slowly sinking again. I could tell that he wanted me, and I wanted him too, but here? On the beach? I knew that we shouldn’t, and I think he knew too, but he didn’t care. And then he did say it with his lips. He leaned in and kissed me, removing all doubt. Why had I spent the last year thinking he just wanted to be friends? Friends don’t kiss each other like this, they don’t lay each other on the sand, slowly pull the string of their bikini, loosening it behind their neck… but this just felt right. Well, right then it did. But you never really know what the future holds.’
Silence. Stone-cold silence. Silence is never good – not in response to something like that. My God, actually saying the words, I’m cringing so hard, and yet she’s saying nothing.
‘Jen?’ I prompt her. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yep, I’m here,’ she replies, chirpy as ever.
That’s the thing about Jen, her tone is exhausting. Even when she’s telling you something that’s bad, she delivers it like she’s telling you that you just won – let me just switch to my TV game show host voice –a brand new car.
‘I thought there might be more,’ she adds.
‘No, no more,’ I reply. ‘Well, I mean, that’s the end of the chapter.’
However difficult it might be to write a book, genuinely, it’s a billion times harder to bring yourself to read it out loud to someone. I even struggle reading it to Jen and she’s my editor. I don’t know, it’s weird, because once the book is published you want everyone to read it, but at this stage, opening up that part of your brain for someone in real time, it’s scary. It’s almost like they might be able to find their way in, and see more than you want them to.
‘Right, okay,’ she says, pausing for a moment. ‘I’m just skimming through what I have in front of me.’
What she has in front of her is my first draft and, if I were to give it a working title, I’d call it something like:50k of Shite.
Things were so great with my first four books. I wrote them so quickly – or at least it felt like I did. It was series, calledAlways a Bridesmaid, with each book focusing on one of the four bridesmaids in a friendship group, set over a summer full of weddings. They were such fun romcoms, set in beautiful locations, with dreamy leading men and the pages were just bursting with jokes and romance. And they were a hit! So much so that Jen offered me a contract to write another series and I bit her hand off. It turns out though that it’s not so easy to just, you know, knock out another hit.
They say everyone has a book in them, but hardly anyone has two. That’s kind of how I feel about my series.
The first one practically wrote itself. Of course, I had the idea before I turned it into a series of books. Now I have the bookdeal, for another four-book series, and I need to come up with the ideas. It’s nowhere near as fun this way round.
Of course, if this were something I just did for fun, I could figure it out. However, it’s not only my job (and therefore my only way to eat and keep a roof over my head), but being contracted to a publisher means sticking to certain terms and timelines.
My book – my shitty 50k – needs turning in again, in a couple of weeks, and it needs to be 25k longer. That’s why I’m on the phone with my editor, because so far our (and by our I mean her) best idea is to write flashbacks to make up the extra.
‘I did have another idea,’ I tell her. ‘And I have a good chunk of it for you to read.’
‘Oh?’ Jen replies.
‘The thing is, it’s a bit of a different genre, and?—’
‘Amber, let me stop you there,’ she interrupts me. ‘You’re a romantic comedy writer. That’s what you should be writing. Actually, I know what you need to do, and I think you do too – you need to write the spicy scenes. That will make up the extra.’
I mean, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a romcom where an entire third of it was just shagging, but this has come up before, where Jen has suggested I spice things up. The thing is, I don’t have a problem with it existing in books, I’m a sex-y person (contrary to what my love life suggests), I just can’t write horny scenes to save my life. Romance – yes. Comedy – my God, I am unrelenting, on and off the page, when it comes to cracking jokes. Descriptive shagging – honestly, I can’t. I just suck. And not in the way Jen wants.
‘Well, we still have our meeting booked in,’ I start.
‘Do we?’ she replies. ‘Oh yes, of course we do.’
You can tell by the tone of her voice that she’s forgotten all about it. I did think it was weird, that she asked for a call.
‘So, how about I send you the other thing I’ve been working on, because it is still kind of a romcom, and you could glance over it, and if you think it might be stronger, maybe we could… pivot,’ I suggest.
Silence again. And then…
‘Okay, yes, send it over,’ Jen replies. ‘But, Amber, think about what I said. We need to get this draft wrapped up before Christmas, or we’re going to lose all the spots we’ve scheduled for getting the book through the different stages, and then, well, we don’t want that, do we?’
No, obviously I don’t want to breach my contract any more than I want to press pause on my income, but I have to write a book that I’m proud of, right?
‘We don’t,’ I confirm. ‘See what I send you. I think you’ll really like it.’
‘Okay but, in the meantime, finish the scene you just read to me,’ she demands. ‘Keep it going, after the kiss. Spice things up! You won’t regret it.’
