Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
I’m calling it (coincidentally) Filling the Gap.
It’s taken a while to finish. Normally, when I’m in my flow, I can write pretty fast, but as I started writing FTG… I dunno. I just felt it in a different way and wanted it to be perfect, so I’ve taken a little longer than I normally would to revise it and rethink it and really hone it to the best, most pristine, gleaming version of itself that it can be.
My plan is this: Show up at Sin With Us with bunches and bunches of free copies of the new book, hand them out to whoever I can hand them out to, make friends with the biggest writers there, get them to co-sign how swell my new book is, get one of them to introduce me to their agent, get a big, traditional publishing deal, and then blow everybody’s mind with my grand literary opus that tops the NY Times bestseller list and gets turned into a movie that I have complete creative control over and that changes people’s lives and leaves a mark on history.
Doesn’t feel like too much to shoot for.
So, I really need Britney to tell me that she likes it. That it’s good. That it’s special.
Because I’m ready to explode out of the middle-tier writer purgatory place I’m in. And I know. I know I sound like kind of an asshole. I know I should just be happy that anyone reads anything I write at all and grateful that I’m making a go of it, but if I’m being honest with myself… I really, really want to graduate to the big leagues. Like I say, not just because of attention or money—
“Cordelia, can you rub some more lotion on my back?”
—although I wouldn’t mind moving out of this pool house and buying a house of my own with its own pool and its own pool house that I could rent to someone else, rather than being the one doing the renting and serving occasionally as the impromptu pool girl.
“Uh, sure, Sheila.” I pull myself out of my stream-of-consciousness reverie and push myself out of my seat, padding barefoot around the deck to the other side of the pool where Sheila lies face down on the fully supine lounge chair, wearing only the thong portion of her micro-bikini, tanned butt cheeks glistening in the sun, the top half of her barely-there-in-the-first-place bathing suit discarded off to the side to avoid any unsightly tan lines.
It’s quite a sight. Especially given that Sheila is at least twenty years older than my mom and dad.
I’ve never asked her outright how old she is exactly, but if the internet is to be believed she’s somewhere between seventy-five and maybe, like, ninety?
Her first movie credit is listed as ‘Girl In Candy Store,’ and that was seventy years ago. She could’ve been five at the time or she could’ve been twenty-five. Hard to know. I’ve looked for the movie but can’t find it. It is, like so many things about Sheila, a mystery.
In any case, however old she is, it’s safe to say that it’s a fair bit older than most women you might see hanging out by a pool wearing almost nothing but a smile.
I appreciate that she’s wearing anything at all. It took about six months after I moved in here to work up the nerve to ask her, politely, if she wouldn’t mind wearing some kind of a bathing suit when she came out to tan rather than just being totally naked all the time. I mean, it is her house. She can do whatever she wants. But it could be kind of distracting sometimes when I would look out the window as I was trying to work.
Not that Sheila isn’t beautiful. She absolutely is. I mean, either she looks really good for her age or she looks impossibly good for her age, so I’m not saying she shouldn’t do what she wants and wear what she wants or not wear what she doesn’t want. I’m just saying that when I’m sitting inside my little cottage tucked away behind the main house, trying to drill down and write a hundred-thousand-word novel, a naked septua-, octo-, or possibly nonagenarian parading around outside makes it tricky to focus.
“Just the middle area, dear,” Sheila says as I arrive beside her and pick up the bottle of sunscreen, squeezing the creamy, warm solution onto my hands and rubbing my palms together to distribute it evenly.
I have to have an even distribution or everything will feel off and I’ll have to start over and do it all again. I’m aware that everything won’t actually be off. It’ll just feel that way. But, ultimately, I’m the one who has to live with the feeling, so I’m not sure it makes a lot of difference.