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I’ve got one pain-in-my-ass storm to deal with for now. Josslin can wait her turn.
And maybe if I keep ignoring my ex… she’ll finally take the hint and go away.
One can only hope.
Chapter Two
Brynn
Today is one of those golden days in Seattle. The kind that makes you forget why you have to book a tropical vacation every year in a futile attempt to regain the vitamin D you’ve lost from living in a city where it rains 152 days a year.
But on this last day of August… It’s a rare sunny day and seventy-four degrees. I swear that when the weather is like this, there is nowhere else I’d rather live.
As an author, the weather isn’t a massive determinant of where I live. I spend most of my working days inside my skyrise apartment, so the rain doesn’t affect me much. And since I write primarily angsty historical romance books set in the Regency-era of England, the rain in Washington and the dreary weather help to put me in the writing mood.
On dreary days, I do most of my writing while paired with a hot Earl Grey tea London Fog, fuzzy slippers, and my desk perched in front of a large window that overlooks the city.
Now, as I transition my hand into a new sub-genre, contemporary billionaire romance, I find myself with some serious writer's block. Book one of this new six-part romance series was already supposed to be turned in a month ago to my publisher with a large advance already paid for the entire six-book installment.
“I think this trip is going to be good for you. When’s the last time you even went on vacation?” Sheridan, my agent-turned-good friend, says, folding another pair of my shorts and dropping them into my suitcase as it sits atop my pale blue down comforter.
“It’s been a while.” I attempt to pull up a memory of the last time I was actually on vacation. “I guess the last time was about five years ago when Daniel graduated from law school. His parents paid for us to go to Hawaii as his graduation present.”
After we got home, it was all hands-on deck for both of our careers.
Daniel started his internship at the law firm he still works for today, while I returned to my job as an HR representative at a large department store chain.
With Daniel’s long eighty-hour work weeks, I spent a lot of time alone in our apartment. One night, I saw a social media ad for a writing competition with one of the biggest names in the romance publishing industry.
Since I spent most of our trip in Hawaii reading romance books on the beach lounge chairs, it’s safe to say that I’m a bit of a bookworm. But I had never considered writing a book of my own before.
I wrote the short 10,000-word excerpt for a historical romance and entered my submission without allowing myself to think too much about it.
I practically squeezed my eyes shut when I hit send on my submission email. Then I suppressed the memory completely into the back of my skull, hoping that I wouldn’t feel any sense of rejection when I inevitably wouldn’t hear back from the publishing house. Or even worse—when I got the rejection letter.
To my absolute surprise, neither the ghosting from the publisher nor the rejection letter came. Instead, I received a letter stating that I had won the competition. They asked for the completed book and an outline for the entire rest of the series.
They wanted a series?
More than one book?
I hadn’t even written a full first draft of the one I had sent them.
That’s when I got an agent and a writing coach, all at my mother’s advice.
My mother is easily my biggest fan. As an English major who teaches high school English in the town where I grew up, she instantly jumped on board when I told her about my new career change. My practical father, on the other hand, tries to be supportive, but that mostly comes out as “Well, at least Daniel is a lawyer and will be able to support you once you're married and your writing career fades out."
I’d love to remind him that I’m actually the breadwinner in my relationship, but since my father assumes my success could fizzle out at any moment, that wouldn’t prove anything in his eyes.
He means well, I know deep down that he does—but he’s old school, and I mean that quite literally. As a math teacher at the same high school my mother teaches at, my father believes in working a job, gaining tenure, and then working for thirty years until you can retire with a pension.
It's not that I don’t understand his logic or that it’s not a solid plan. It’s just not the path I’m on right now.
Instead, I took my mother’s advice and plunged headfirst into my agent search, which led me to Sheridan. In a matter of a year, my career went from a Human Resource desk job to a best-selling author. It's been five years since I published my first book, and now I'm ready for a genre change to mix things up. I need a new challenge in my life… something new to broaden my writing skills.
“See, you need a little sun. And maybe a little ocean breeze will drum back that creative spark that you need to start the new series. We need to get you away from this apartment. And a distraction from the constant reminder of Daniel wouldn’t hurt either. You should have told him to move all his things to a storage unit while he's gone. He's not even on the lease and he left all his crap here. What happens if you come to your senses and meet someone else while he's gone?” she asks with a lifted brow.
I didn't ask Daniel to move out of the apartment when he left for Australia for eight months because he's still planning to come back. Wouldn't it have been weird to ask him to move out during our break, only for him to move back in less than a year later? Seeing his things still hanging in the walk-in closet reminds me that soon enough, this phase of our relationship will be over, and we'll be stronger for it.
