Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 22517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 113(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 113(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
one
. . .
Layla
The bell over the door chimes happily and my stomach sinks.
She’s not here for me. There’s no way…
The woman shakes her umbrella and smiles at the bookstore owners, Jada and Eleanor.
Come on…
Her eyes dart to me as she unzips her wet raincoat.
My back straightens. I clasp my hands on my table and give her my biggest smile.
Her eyes flit over to my stack of books, then to my custom-printed retractable roll-up banner featuring my bestselling series, then to the pile of Sharpies, then to my desperate face.
That big smile turns into a tight awkward one.
I swallow hard while I will her to come over and secretly beg her not to at the same time.
She drops her eyes to the floor and hurries over to the Travel section.
I let out a low painful sigh as I glance at the clock. 4:17. It’s almost over.
This is so humiliating.
It’s my first bookstore signing, and with the way it’s been going, it’s probably going to be my last.
Jada and Eleanor ordered three hundred copies of my books. Three hundred!
They’re stacked all around me, piled up like a big wall of shame. I haven’t sold one. Not one!
None of my readers came even though I posted it on all my socials and blasted my newsletter so many times until a big chunk of them unsubscribed.
I thought at least a few dozen of them would show up. I was wrong.
I’ve been writing erotica for four years and I have eleven books out. I started strong out of the gate, but my books have been selling less and less lately. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
The first year, my readers anointed me the queen of dirty talk.
I guess I’ve lost my crown.
Maybe I need some real-world experience.
It’s hard to write dirty-talking males when you’ve never experienced them in real life. When you haven’t experienced anything in real life.
I’m an erotica author who has never had sex. Does that make me a fraud? Does that make my books inauthentic? Is that just pathetic?
All of these horrible thoughts are racing through my mind as I wait for the clock to hit five o’clock so I can go home.
It’s a two-hour drive home through the mountains and the rain is coming down hard. This whole day has sucked balls.
And I have to do it again tomorrow.
The signing is supposed to be a two-day weekend event, but if I have to stay until I sell all these books, it might turn into a two-year event.
Relief, dread, elation, and humiliation all hit me at the same time at five o’clock when Jada locks the door and flips the sign to CLOSED.
She turns around and smiles warmly at me, which makes me feel extra awful. Jada was the one who invited me to come for a signing when I stopped by the bookstore two months ago. She was so nice and friendly. We chatted about books, I told her who I was, and she freaked out. She had read my first series and invited me for a signing.
I was reluctant, but I said yes. She just seemed so excited about it and I guess some of that excitement rubbed off onto me.
Well, the excitement is all gone now.
“Was it okay for you today?” she asks as she comes over.
I swallow hard and nod overly enthusiastic. “It was great!”
Totally not the most professionally humiliating day of my life.
“Too bad about the rain,” she says as she glances at the window. “Rain always keeps the readers away.”
“Yeah,” I say as I feel my cheeks getting hot. It’s nice of her to say, but it only started raining this afternoon and no one came this morning either.
“It’s going to be sunny tomorrow,” she says with an optimistic smile.
“Great!”
I can’t wait to go through all of this again without the weather to blame my failures on.
“Should I leave my table or bring it into the back?” I ask as I get up.
“Oh, just leave it all here,” Jada says as she wanders over to the pile of my books. She picks up the one on top—Smooth Customer.
“I adore this book,” she says as she flips through it with a big smile. “I read it again last night.”
“You did?”
“Yes!” she says, starting to gush. “That kiss in the rain! Oh my god! I read that part about twenty million times. Did that really happen to you?”
I snort out a laugh. ‘Does that look like it happened to me?’ I want to say.
“No,” I say, forcing out a smile. “It’s all fiction.”
Unfortunately.
Everything I write comes from my brain, not from experience.
Hot, dirty-mouthed, muscular men are not in my boring little circle. My circle consists of my cranky old cat Henry, my overly critical mother who does not approve of what I write, my neighbor Jim who always complains about my garbage bin being out too early or too late, and the delivery driver who nods at me while keeping his headphones in even though I try to talk to him every time. Once, I gave him a homemade muffin to be nice. He took it, but I saw him throw it in the garbage bin on his way out. The garbage bin that really should be on the side of my house by now according to my neighbor Jim.