Page 43 of All the Right Words
Gina smiled at Joey’s pseudonym. ‘I think I’ll stick to calling you Joey. Great to meet you. I enjoyed your book. And I wasn’t even the target audience.’
Joey’s nervous little face warmed slightly. ‘Oh, you did? Wait, why aren’t you the target audience?’
Gina sat down and slid her bag off her shoulder. ‘I’m not really a fan of bad boys. Or boys, for that matter.’
Joey laughed while Harper tried not to react to that new piece of information. Had she assumed Gina was hetero? She wasn’t sure. Maybe. She often did that out of youthful reflex, even though the world had changed a lot since she’d been young. Or perhaps it hadn’t changed at all but been revealed to be a lot gayer than previously thought. As apparently, was Gina.
Well, anyway. No business of Harper's, so, yeah, whatever.
‘So, let’s talk about your new book.’
Joey’s smile faded. ‘I hate it.’
Gina gave him an understanding smile that Harper had never seen on her face before. She had to assume it was reserved for writers. ‘Let’s talk about it, see what the problem is.’
Joey slumped down in his chair. ‘It’sexactlythe same book as last time. I realised that two-thirds of the way through. Same characters, same structure. Bad boy rescues naïve girl from danger, and she touches his heart, finding his soft side.’
Harper felt a need to interject. ‘That’s not a big problem, Joey. Readers are looking for your brand, and if…’
‘I don’t care!’ Joey spat at her. ‘I don’t care whattheywant. Ineedto do my best work. And I’m just repeating myself.’
‘Joey,’ Gina said quietly. But her tone was assertive, and he turned to her immediately. ‘What is it that you wanted to say with your first book? Because if you’re repeating yourself, you’re obviously not done saying it.’
Joey paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, stories don’t exist in a void. They come out of something in the writer. Unless they’re a hack, and I can see that label doesn’t apply to you. You care about this work. So what is it? What are you trying to tell the reader?’
Joey stared at her for a moment. ‘I didn’t… It’s not based on anything. I couldn’t be less of a bad boy. I mean, obviously. I tried to get a tattoo once, and I passed out the second the needle touched me.’
‘Look, let’s just talk about the next book. Give me the synopsis.’
Joey sighed. But after a moment, he began to pitch. ‘Alright, so… Brock Manners is a former soldier with a chip on his shoulder, suffering from PTSD from serving in Afghanistan. Brock likes to get drunk and pick fights in bars to deal with his pain. After accidentally killing a shit-head biker during one of these fights, he realises he’s created a widow, Laura.Andshe’s pregnant and broke. Oh, and a member of Laura’s dead boyfriend’s motorcycle club is pressuring her to marry him. She’s not up for that because Jago was abusive, but this other guy is even worse,’ Joey said angrily, as though he was remembering actual events. ‘Brock approaches her, confesses what he accidentally did and offers to move her into his house, hide her from her horrible suitor, support her financially and never ask anything of her. Laura’s in a bind, so she accepts Brock’s help. But she promises that she’ll always hate him. And at first, she does-’
‘OK, let’s just talk about the story for a second, shall we?’ Gina broke in there. ‘So, the parallels here are that Brock’s a former soldier who rescues a girl from a motorcycle club, and in your first book, the protagonist was a former firefighter who rescues a girl from her abusive family, right?’
‘Exactly!’ Joey said triumphantly. ‘You see? It screams out.’
‘Well, actually, what screams out is that you like to write books about the healing power of love,’ Gina said flatly. It sounded kind of funny hearing the phrase, ‘Healing power of love’ said in Gina’s bored voice.
Joey blinked. ‘Well, I mean, yeah. I guess.’
‘These men believe themselves broken but get in touch with their emotions again. Stop me if I’m wrong.’
‘No, that’s right,’ Joey said and frowned. ‘But you’re only proving my point here. Same book.’
Gina rolled her eyes at him. ‘Joey, all authors do this.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Joey said. But Harper could tell he wanted to be persuaded.
‘Theydo. Shakespeare had people pretending to be other people constantly. He wasobsessedwith identity. Dickens wrote so many books about orphans; it’s bloody silly. But these were themes that spoke to them. So they couldn’t leave them alone.’
Joey didn’t say anything to that. But a deep wrinkle in his brow said this was going in.
‘You’re thinking this is a failing, and it just means you write your own truth,’ Gina said with a shrug. ‘I don’t see a problem. And honestly, your next book sounds, well, I reckon Brock’s going to wet a lot of knickers.’
Joey snorted. ‘I mean, yeah, he’s a sexy bastard.’ He went quiet for a moment, and Harper let him think. He looked kind of, what was it? Oh, yes. Relieved. It wasn’t enough to hear about the work from Harper. She was just a soul-sucking businesswoman who didn’t understand true art. No one ever said that, but she knew they thought it.
But Gina? Sitting there now, sipping a coffee like she hadn’t just performed another literary miracle? She had no skin in this game, and she was on their level. She got it. Harper was glad to have the chance to see her at work. Gina played it down, but she knew how to get through to even the most panicky struggling writer. Harper had found the business equivalent of a winning lottery ticket sitting on the street.
