His smile was easy, but there was a gleam in his eyes I couldn’t quite identify. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was feeling triumphant.What’s up with that?
I nodded, trying to see the pitfalls of continuing to talk to him. I was the sort of person who liked to get ahead in a conversation.Is he laying a trap? Is he flirting? What exactly is this?
“What other types of shifters have you had in your books?” he asked.
This entire conversation was surreal. He knew nothing about paranormal fiction. He was a straight Michael Connelly guy. He liked mysteries with a touch of action adventure. All the heroes were men, but there was always a hot woman around to have sex with when there was a lull in the action. In my mind, Andrew was the type of guy who’d imagined himself as James Bond when he was growing up.
“Well, I have a series set in New Orleans,” I replied, forcing myself to keep the conversation going so I wouldn’t obsess about Brody. “I have alligator shifters in that story.”
“And alligators are hot?” Andrew was understandably dubious.
“They are the way I write them.” I shot him a cheeky smile that he didn’t return. He really did seem to be working the alligator thing out.
“But wouldn’t there be a scale issue?” he pressed.
“I don’t believe so.” I shrugged. “I don’t think about it too hard, though.”
“Oh.” Disappointment rippled across his features, which really did look as if they belonged on the pages of a fashionmagazine. They were doing nothing for me, even though I recognized—at least on a superficial level—that they should be sending my heart fluttering.
“What other type of shifters have you written about?” he asked.
I had to bite back a sigh. It took effort. He just wouldn’t let it go. “Bears,” I replied blandly. “I once did a rabbit shifter, but that was a joke. It was basically an excuse for me to throw a really horny guy into the story.”
“Yes.” He bobbed his head as if that was the answer he was expecting. “You write sex. How does that work?”
Suspicion had me shifting and giving him my full attention for the first time in ten minutes. He’d been droning on so long he’d become mostly background noise. Until now.
“Why are you asking about that?” I asked.
“I’m just curious.” His shoulders hopped. “I would think sex scenes would be easy.”
“Not really.” I shook my head. “There’s only so many different ways you can write Tab A being inserted into Slot B.”
He blinked. Then he blinked again. “I see,” he said, his forehead creasing.
“Are you an author?” I asked, playing a hunch.
“What?” He visibly shook himself out of whatever reverie he’d been lost inside. “No, but I have a few book ideas.”
This was normal. It was rare for me to meet a book lover who hadn’t at least imagined him or herself writing their own book. Readers had vast imaginations, and authors filled their wells. Sometimes readers wanted to fill their own wells. I had started that way. For every me, however, there were a hundred other people who never got past the dreaming. I had lost track of how many loose acquaintances and old classmates I’d run into at various events who floated the idea of telling me their story idea and having me write it. Then we could split the money. As if theidea was the hard part. I had more ideas than I would ever get to write about. Ideas were easy. Writing, while often fun, was still work.
“I’ve been doing market research,” Andrew explained, reminding me he was still there. “Romance is apparently the top-selling genre.”
I nodded. “That’s true.”
“I prefer mysteries.”
I just waited him out.
“I was thinking maybe I could write a mystery and include romance in it,” he explained, his eyes sparkling. “Like … I could hit the two hottest markets and make a killing.”
I had to temper my response because it involved an eye roll and a derisive throat sound. Somehow, I managed to keep my face bland. “That’s called romantic suspense.”
“What is?”
“When there’s a mystery taking up half the plot and romance taking up the other half. There’s already a genre out there for that, and it’s pretty popular.”
He frowned as if I’d kicked his puppy. “I wasn’t really talking about romance. Just sex.”
