“Fine.” I smiled because it felt warranted.
“Great,” Nathan said in his easygoing way. He leaned back in his chair and eyed me. I could see the gears in his mind working.
“So, how are things?” I asked, determined to change the subject. I was crap at small talk, so this conversation was going to be all kinds of awkward.
“The book is going great. All I have to decide is if the clown is going to turn into a demon or if a demon tried to possess the clown but got trapped because there was something scarier inside the clown. I’m working it out, though.”
I blinked. Then I blinked again. Horror was not my genre. I didn’t want to watch horror movies. I didn’t want to read anything darker thanGoosebumps. Nathan loved it all.
“Well, I guess that’s good,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, why a clown?”
“Because people are terrified of clowns.”
“And rightly so.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t done a clown before. I’ve always wanted to do them.Terrifiermade clowns popular again. I figured I should just ride the wave.”
I nodded. That made sense. Tropes were important to our jobs for a reason. “When do you think you’ll finish?”
“A couple weeks. Then I need a solid read through on it. Then I’ll send it to the editor, and we’ll go from there. I don’t think it will need a lot of work beyond the first draft. I’ve been editing as I go, and it’s good.”
Nathan never suffered a crisis of faith. He always knew that what he wrote was good. I was having the exact opposite problem.
“And how are things going with you?” Nathan asked when I didn’t say anything for several beats.
I wasn’t prepared to get into my problems just yet. I needed more time. Fortunately, the server swooped in at that moment to take our drink orders. Nathan had the attention span of a gnat. I figured he would move on to something else as soon as she was gone. I was wrong.
“Are you still not writing?” Nathan asked, his gaze never leaving my face. His tone wasn’t accusatory—the smallest of miracles—but I could read the worry in it, which did nothing to ease my anxiety.
“I’m writing,” I countered. “I’m just throwing it all away as soon as I finish.”
“And why are you doing that?”
“It’s crap.”
“How do you know it’s crap?”
“Because when I read it, all I think about is a toilet.”
Nathan snorted, then he caught himself. “Dude, I think the most important thing is to write. Just get it down on paper. All the crappiness can be smoothed over in editing. That’s why we have editors in the first place, right?” He lifted his hand for a high five, but I didn’t oblige him.
“I’m just stuck,” I replied when he lowered his arm. “I don’t know what it is.”
“When is your new book due?”
There was no hiding my cringe this time. “Six months ago.” I refused to meet his gaze. “I got an extension but … I only have three months to get it to them.”
“And you’re not writing anything?” Nathan was incredulous.
Multiple heads swung in our direction at his screechy voice. I smiled at them before pinning Nathan with a death glare. “Can you keep your voice down?”
I was mortified. I had to see these people on a regular basis. The Landings might be big—really big actually—but it was an insulated community. I saw the same faces more often than I was comfortable with.
“Dude, you need to get it together,” Nathan’s voice was lower, but he didn’t look happy. “If you miss a second deadline…”
I didn’t need him to tell me what would happen if I missed a second deadline. It would be done. All of it. My fledging author career would disappear forever, and I would have to work retail.
Not really. That was just the story I told myself when I was feeling really freaked out.
