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Unrepentant as always, CeCe gave her an impish smile. “You really should lock your laptop. But please don’t. Your books are very good. Especially that sexy one.”
The book she was referring to—Best Kept Secrets —was one Brenda never intended to see the light of day. It was a thriller, like all of them, but it was centered around a secret underground porn ring that operated out of a country club. She’d drawn on her own experiences with the hypocrisy of the Social Register world to write it, but she didn’t want to ruffle any feathers by publishing it. Since she’d known in advance that it would never be read by anyone, she’d really let loose in her writing. Technically, it would probably be called an “erotic thriller.”
“It could be a movie, that one,” Granny declared.
“You know I can’t ever publish it. Mom’s head would explode.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass. You can use a fake name. What’s that called? Nom de plume? As long as you get the money, that’s what matters.”
“I don’t know, Granny. I thought about it, but people work their whole lives to get published. It’s a slow process, and that’s if you’re really lucky. It’s not some get-rich-quick scheme. I’m not sure it’s really the answer to our problems.”
“It’s better than OnlyFans.”
Good lord. Every time she thought her grandmother couldn’t shock her anymore, she was wrong. “That would go over so well with the school administration.”
“Oh phooey. They should pay you more.”
“Now you’re making sense. I’m going to see about taking on some extra responsibilities. Maybe I can coach something.”
“Coach what? Dog-walking?”
Olaf’s ears perked up at the word “walk.”
“I’ll figure it out!” And she went to get her leash.
But the school was having budget issues, and even if there was something Brenda could coach, she’d have to do it on a volunteer basis. Which was how she found herself teaching after-school creative writing to the seventh graders on Wednesdays, for no extra pay at all.
So on a momentous day in November, she submitted her country club porn ring erotic thriller to an online publishing company her grandmother had found.
“I’ve been doing some research,” CeCe had said, “and there’s a publishing company with a very quick turnaround, online only, and they specialize in books like that. I bet they’d snap it up.”
“You really want me to do this, don’t you?”
“Absolutely. Your books are so good, and it serves Laney right, trying to call all the shots.”
“And you want to go back to the senior home.”
“I’ll be saying some prayers for Best Kept Secrets.”
Brenda didn’t tell anyone else about submitting her book, except Galen.
But she told him just about everything, so that was no surprise. No detail of her life seemed too mundane for him. He looked at everything with a kind of curiosity that sometimes struck her as childlike—except when they were in bed and he applied that same curiosity to how best to bring her pleasure.
“Hot damn,” he said when she broke the news about her submission. They were sharing a glass of wine in his cozy living room. Outside, the first snowfall filled the air with exuberantly twirling snowflakes. “Can’t believe I’m going to be fucking a published author. That’ll be a first.”
“All I did was send it in. They might reject it.” There was a good chance they’d reject it, in her opinion. What did she know about writing a book? Just because she’d read a million of them didn’t mean she could create one.
Except that she had. And was now working on her tenth. If the publishing company liked her writing, there were plenty more books where that came from.
“If they do, you can try somewhere else, right?”
She sipped her wine and let her head rest against the back of his couch. Other than his goldfish tank, everything in his place was either red or black or some combination—mostly plaid. It was like a lumberjack’s flannel shirt in home decor form. It usually smelled of wood smoke, although sometimes it smelled like sex. Like right now, since they’d just finished one of their breathtaking bouts of mutual sexual satisfaction. They never seemed to get tired of each other.
“I’ve been trying to think of a name to publish under, if they accept the book.”
“When they accept it.”
She wished she had his confidence. “Let’s stick with ‘if’. I don’t want to jinx it. What about my initials, B. S. McMurray?”
