Knight: The Wordsmiths Book One

by Harlan, Christopher

  "You'll get it," I tell him. "You always do."

  "Forget me. What's going on with you?"

  I choose my words carefully because I don't wanna spill my guts or treat him like he's my therapist. He doesn't need to know every detail of the drama. “I lost a new thing I was working on.”

  “What do you mean lost?” he asks.

  “Literally. I left my laptop somewhere and no one’s been able to recover it. It was the first thing I’d written in forever. It was the end of my writer’s block, and now it’s gone.”

  “It’s never gone, brother. The computer is a piece of machinery. It’s a tool. The story is in you. Find it again. It’s there.”

  This is why I called North in times of need. He had a quiet and wise simplicity that always made me feel better about whatever was bothering me. Although he was a prolific writer who’s written millions of words, in person he was prone to short and truthful statements that didn’t require a lot of follow up. He was the perfect person to talk to during times like this.

  “This is why I call you. You always know what to say.”

  “I wish that were true. I just offer my two cents. You can take it or leave it.”

  “Well I haven’t left it yet, and I’d be a fool to. You’re the man.”

  “Thanks, Knight. What’s the new one about? The one you lost.”

  It’s a good question, and I’m not even sure exactly how to answer it. “I’m not sure yet. You know that old adage about the sculptor?”

  “I know it well,” he says. “That all the sculptor does is to shave away the stone to reveal the art underneath.”

  “Right. I’m in the shaving process now. But I’ll tell you when I find out what’s underneath all the crap.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “How about yours?” I ask.

  “The next MC book in the Rotten Scoundrel series. This is the best one yet.”

  “I’ve no doubt it is. I’ll let you get back to it. Goodnight, North.”

  We hang up and I feel better. The last thing I need is to slip back into a bad head space. Even grown men need mentors from time to time, and True North has been there for all three of the Wordsmiths. He’s a guy who pays his success forward, and who genuinely embodies the best that the book world has to offer. I know that we’ll speak more soon. But for now I’m going to bed feeling better about everything. Before I do, I think of his words, and on my phone I open up a new note. I only write one thing before going to bed.

  “Chapter One”

  Then I close my eyes, excited as to what tomorrow will bring.

  Part II

  Home

  I let her call me Michael. “Let” isn’t the right word—she just called me Michael, and at first it took me by surprise. Everyone calls me Knight. The readers only know me as Knight. But she didn’t bother with my pen name. She broke right through the barriers that we sometimes keep up between us and the readers. She called me “Michael”, and I never want her to call me anything else.

  19

  Knight

  One Month Later

  “What the hell does she want?”

  It’s a valid question Colton’s asking me. Or, yelling at me. Getting a text—or any form of communication—from an ex, out of the blue, can be a complicated thing, and it makes you ask yourself some serious questions. Should I answer this? What do they want? A million little questions that are better to wonder about than to actually ask outright, but the first question is a good place to start.

  “No idea,” I tell him as we go over some ideas for a future Wordsmith signing. “This is the first I’ve heard from her since she moved out and into what’s-her-face’s place. Maybe she saw all of our activity on Facebook after the signing. She’s still in the indie book world, after all.”

  “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you about that whole thing.” Colton looks at me hesitantly, which is not like him, so I’m curious what he’s going to say. “I just never thought it was appropriate to ask, but since time has passed. . .”

  “Go ahead, I’m over it all. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “I’ll remember you said that,” he says. “Did the image of them hooking up turn you on, like, even a little bit? Not at the time, I know, but when you thought of it afterwards.”

  “No,” I say squarely. I already anticipated where this was going when he hesitated. “Not even a little.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Dude, I maxed out the deductibles on my mental heath insurance to make sure I didn’t picture it too much. On top of that, even when I slipped up and that visual popped into my head after one too many, it was never sexual. If I want to see two women go at it I can click on the ‘lesbian’ tab on YouPorn, I don’t need to see my wife getting eaten out by some chick I barely knew in my own fuckin’ bed!”

  “I get it,” he finally concedes. “I didn’t really think about it like that, I was just thinking like a dumb guy.”

  “Well that’s what you are,” I joke. “I appreciate you staying in your lane, but the answer is no, it never once turned me on.”

  I am intrigued by whatever it is Jenny might want. We don’t have any more business together since the divorce was finalized and all of the financial assets were worked out, so it can’t be about that. We split up the bank accounts and all those entanglements when she moved out, and the house was always mine, so I’m thinking that this has to be about something non-marriage related. But what could it possibly be?

  “What did she text?”

  I read it out loud. “How’s the writing going? Saw the event on Facebook. Glad you’re doing well.”

  “That’s some bullshit,” Colton say. “She doesn’t give a fuck how you’re doing or she’d be here with you. She needs something.”

  “Maybe,” I admit. “I can’t imagine what else it could be other than that.”

  “I’m sympathetic,” Colt says. “Jenny totally fucked you.”

  “Actually, she fucked that girl, but I get your point. But what I was going to say is that I’ve thought about how I should feel about everything that happened. Long term I mean.”

  “I don’t know how you feel anything except anger and resentment, personally. But maybe I’m just a prick who holds a grudge.”

  “You’re that too,” I say, smiling. “In addition to being dumb like you said before.”

  “Haha.”

  “But, seriously though, I’m not talking about who was right and who was wrong. Obviously she was 100 percent wrong. I’m talking about my own state of mind. Should I just look back and get angry and have it ruin my day randomly? I know I have the right to, but is that the best thing for me?”

  “Absolutely not,” Colton reassures me.

  “And, bear with me here, what if this isn’t some phase? What if she’s genuinely gay and just felt like she couldn’t come out her entire life and it just clicked with this woman?”

  “Even so, man, she didn’t need to cheat on you. If she was going to cheat on you she didn’t need to fuck that girl in your own bed, in your own home, and even if she was going to do that, she didn’t need to do it at a time where you’d walk in. That shit has nothing to do with being gay, that has to do with having ethics and being a good person.”

  Colton’s a lot of things, but he’s usually correct in how he sees situations. He laid it out pretty clearly there and I can’t really argue with him. He’s absolutely right. As difficult of a thing as it would have been, she should have told me who she really was, and we could have at least remained friends, and maybe split up amicably. Instead, I got two shocks for the price of one—my wife was gay, and she was also cheating on me.

  “Are you going to text her back?”

  There’s the six million dollar question, the only one really worth asking myself. The answers to those other questions—what does she want, does she have an ulterior motive—they can all be answered by how she responds to me. But it all starts with whatever I decide to do
right now.

  “I think so. I’m curious.”

  “Hey, listen, I know you’re curious—to tell you the truth I’m a little curious myself—but the question is, like you said, is this the best thing for you? Maybe that curiosity leads to more anxiety or depression, or me and Grayson having to drag you off of your couch again.”

  “No, I’m done with all that.” I’m feeling confident, and even though I really appreciate Colt’s concern as a friend, I don’t need it. I’m sick of questions, it’s time to get some answers. “You won’t have to drag me anywhere, don’t worry. But I think I need to see what’s so important as to drag her out from underneath her rock.”

  That last part was harsh, but I honestly feel no love towards her anymore, not after what she did. That wasn’t the case at first, for a while I would have said or done just about anything to have her back in my life, lesbian or not, but that seems like a very long time ago. I was starting to lose that part of myself that harbored feelings for her slowly, but after I met Everleigh that all just disappeared. Gone. Never to return again. And I’m fine with that now, I really am. But I do want to know what’s changed on her end that she’d reach out to me randomly after all this time. I guess I’ll find out.

  “Hey,” I text back. “All’s good. What’s up?”

  I leave it a little cold on purpose. I’ll let her explain if there’s more to be explained, but I’m sure as hell not spending any time on this unless there’s a reason. I put my phone down and go back to Colton. “Where were we?”

  “We were thinking of some cool events for the future and getting some swag made.”

  “I had this idea, but I want to save it for Grayson,” I say.

  “I’m not good enough?” he jokes. “Why won’t you tell me and we can both run it past Grayson together.”

  I realize how it came out, like I’m trying to exclude him, but that isn’t what I mean. “No, I didn’t mean it like that, I meant it’s one of those decisions we should all be in on.”

  “Kind of like the stuff we’re discussing now,” he answers. “Gray’s at a signing. He’s been a little strapped for cash, off the record, and he wanted to see if he could get some buzz going for his last book.”

  Books are like real estate. The longer they stayed on the market without selling the worse their prospects for the future. It’s not a perfect analogy—there are some very high profile cases of already released books being discovered way after their publication date and becoming a hit—like A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. That book sat on the shelves for hardcore fantasy and historical fantasy geeks to enjoy since 1996! Then it got picked up by HBO and became one of the most popular series and TV shows of all time. But that’s obviously the exception, and for genres like ours, that shit never happens.

  I worry when I hear that he’s struggling financially, but the unspoken truth is that a lot of us are. Sure, we put our best foot forward on social media because that’s what it’s for. We take pics at just the right angle, we make sure most of our reviews come out 4 to 5 stars on release day through our ARC groups, and we do our best to make it sound like we’re fuckin’ EL James on steroids. The truth? Most of us are struggling. There are literally thousands of authors and hundreds of thousands of books released each year. Standing out in the online world is a challenge, even when you do everything correctly, and it makes me sad to hear that people close to me are struggling to pay the bills.

  “Yeah, totally off the record. How bad is it?”

  “It’s not great, man, not gonna lie. He’s not filing for food stamps and government cheese or anything, but getting the next few books out is getting to be a struggle. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah.” He’s right. We all know how it is. Think of indie writing like one of those businesses that you see featured on Shark Tank, only we can’t get venture capitalists to loan us money up front against future royalty rates or anything. When you’re trying to make a name for yourself in this game it’s like anything else—your expenses exceed your profit. It’s that simple. Unless you write a hit—something that’s getting harder to do in the Amazon era, and specifically with romance—you’re going to struggle at first. The first goal is a net zero gain where you’re just breaking even. But the ultimate goal? The ultimate goal is to be profitable, cash positive, being in a position where your royalties exceed all the expenses that go along with publication—editing, cover photos, cover design, social media banner design, swag, copies of your own books for giveaways, banners for signings, and a million other little expenses.

  “I hope it’s going well for him, but that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I’m worthy,” he jokes. “Even in a non-Grayson setting. Cool. Let’s do it.”

  “I want to write an anthology.”

  “What?”

  “A Wordsmith anthology.”

  “I like the idea,” he tells me, but he says it in a way that makes me anticipate the . . . “But, there are only three of us. Is that enough for an anthology?”

  “Not really,” I tell him. “I haven’t fully thought this through.”

  “I see that.”

  It’s true. It’s an idea I had yesterday and I haven’t fleshed it all out yet. I know I like the idea of combining our ideas into a single book, but I don’t really want to co-author anything. I don’t even know how that works to tell you the truth. I like the idea of an anthology, but I’d need both the other guys on board—and probably a few more.

  “But I like it. It could work. I just think we need more guys. I can think of a few.”

  “Me, too. But you see why I wanted to curb the conversation until the three of us were together. I don’t even know if Grayson is into it, and it should be an all or nothing proposition, otherwise it won’t be worth anything.”

  “Alright, I see now. I like the idea but it needs some airing out. A lot of it, actually. He’s back tomorrow. I’ll text him. How about we all get a nice dinner? Just the guys. We’ll find an expensive steak house, even though we’re all broke as fuck, and blow what little money we have on an overpriced good time in celebration of our success at the signing.”

  “I love it. That sounds awesome. Text him.”

  As I tell him that I hear my own phone vibrate. I know it’s Jenny, so I roll my eyes and pick up my phone. I hope this isn’t anything too dramatic. All it says is,

  Jenny: I need to see you. I need to tell you something and it can’t wait. Dinner at our old place?

  What the hell? She went from passively friendly to cryptic and weird really fast, but I guess that’s a shift I should be used to with her. She’s mastered the art of the pitch because she already has me interested. I decide to bite. “Alright,” I text back. “I’ll meet you there at seven.”

  I guess I’m having dinner with my ex wife tonight.

  20

  Knight

  Jade Fountain is a Chinese restaurant in town about ten minutes from my house. It’s not a take out place—no egg rolls or any of that American bullshit. It’s the place where Chinese people from all of the surrounding areas come to eat. Their menu is mostly seafood, served Cantonese style, and it takes a certain getting used to. I love almost everything they serve, but it took Jenny a while to make friends with the menu, so I’m surprised when it’s here that she asked to meet me.

  She called it ‘our spot’ because this is where I took her on our first date. If I’m being honest I wanted it to be a test of sorts. I knew that most people raised on American cuisine would find the majority of their dishes unpalatable, but I’ve always loved it, and I wanted to see how she’d react.

  I get there first and sit down. I like to be first to uncomfortable meetings like this, I feel like it gives me some kind of home court advantage. When she walks in I have to admit how good she looks. She’s a beautiful woman, I’ll give her that, but as soon as I see her I know that her beauty doesn’t effect me anymore. It used to be that a batting of her eyes or a si
deways tilt of her head could get me to do whatever she wanted, but, to quote a favorite song of mine, now she’s just somebody that I used to know.

  “Hi.”

  I stand up to greet her. Even though I don’t really want to be here I still act like a gentleman and kiss her on the cheek. Her hair still smells of Eucalyptus. “Same shampoo,” I say, sitting down.

  “My favorite. How are you?”

  “I’m doing good, thanks.” I don’t ask her the same question because I don’t really care how she’s doing. I know that’s petty as fuck, but I’d rather be petty than disingenuous, so I don’t bother asking her back. I hope she’s well, but what I really want to know is what’s going on. “What’s up?”

  “Wow, you cut right to the chase, don’t you?”

  “Normally, no,” I tell her, felling annoyed all of a sudden that I even agreed to this. “See, if we were old friends from college or something, and this was the first time we were seeing each other in a few years, it might be different. I’d be cordial. I’d be interested in what was going on with you. They’d have to ask us to leave because I’d lose all sense of time sitting here talking to you. But that’s not the situation, is it?” I can’t believe that I’m talking to her this way, but I’m feeling a bunch of things that I didn’t anticipate after the text. I’m not depressed, or anxious, or sad, I’m angry.

  “Wow,” she says, looking down. “I guess we’re skipping the pleasantries altogether. I really didn’t think you’d still be this angry after all this time.”

  Neither did I. “What’s up, Jenny?”

  “You don’t want to order something first? We might as well eat while we’re here.”

  She’s right. Just because it’s unpleasant for me to sit with her doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the food that I love. I wave the waiter over to our table and order a few of my favorite appetizers. “Are we sharing?” I ask.