Rachel grasped Nick’s hand, leaning in to kiss him. “Thanks for being a mind reader. I don’t know how you pluck those wishes out of my head, but I do appreciate it. Can you sprint uphill too? I have to pee.”
“On it. Come Deke, I’ll race you to the house. Maybe you can shake off half the sand on the way.”
*
Nicks iPhone dinged. He saw it was Cassie finally calling back. Gus, John, Dan, and Deke at his feet decided to stay with him in their favorite hangout on the deck. Nick wrote, while his three companions plotted out the areas in Washington, they would be either baiting serial killers or infiltrating a terrorist compound. The three worked from new laptops, networked together. The only sound in the last couple hours had been Dan cursing his less nimble computer savvy. Nick answered.
“Hey, Cass. Tough time getting a gig in Olympia?”
“I need two weeks, Nick. Please! Our publishing friend, Linda will move heaven and earth to get a print run to the bookstore in that time frame. She’s already launched it. The only thing she requests is a signing in Seattle, and possibly a few signings at small shops in each area. She wants to do a print run of five thousand. Linda told me they’ll work a deal with the printer so these will be numbered copies of a much larger first edition printing.”
“That’s nice marketing, Cass. Sure, two weeks will be fine. If I have to leave earlier than that, I’ll hang around for whatever you can arrange. Gus will be with me, so we should be able to sell a bunch of ‘Caribbean Contract’ too.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve already talked to the store in Olympia. He’s ordering in more of your complete line of novels. We’re doing a consignment deal with ‘Assassin’s Folly’ because of the numbers. How’s the new novel coming? Did you title it yet?”
“I’m considering ‘Dark Interlude’, and yeah, it’s coming along great. My assassin Diego opens himself up to a relationship with one of his marks, a woman named Fatima.”
“I’m hooked already! Send me the first twenty thousand when you get there.”
“I passed that yesterday. I’ll e-mail it later today in Kindle form.”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re writing at a Nora Roberts’ pace.”
Nick enjoyed that comparison for a moment. “No, I’m not even close to ‘La Nora’, but I am having more fun lately with the writing. Are you making the trip out this time?”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it. We’ll hit all the sites. I hope you’re bringing Rachel and Jean along with Gus.”
“Yep, and Deke the dog. Rachel thinks she’s going to be early delivering Quinn, so this trip may be more exciting than it should be.”
“I’ll warn the pediatric wing around every major signing,” Cassie said. “This signing excursion will absolutely put you into the upper stratosphere, Nick. I’ll have to convince you on a really big stay in the heartland next.”
Nick smiled, thinking about the Detroit area, where the Middle Eastern population had skyrocketed. “The heartland is a neglected area, Cass. We’ll talk about it.”
On a side note, you really took that ‘Big Texas Son’ book killer off the radar. He hasn’t checked in with a book killing in quite a while. I never thought it was a good idea to engage those bastards on a personal basis, but you proved me wrong.”
The fact he had done much more to the ‘Book Killer’ Big Texas Son than reply to his book killing reviews brought another smile of satisfaction to a real killer’s mouth. “Yeah, we have to confront them, Cass. I think authors who hide away, or worse, get devastated by these people with hidden agendas is the wrong formula. If we can keep a sense of humor, and remember that most of these ‘Book Killers’ haven’t even read what they’re killing in the Amazon marketplace, the key is common sense confrontation. For instance, why do a one star hit piece on the latest novel in a long selling series, but offer no specifics, or even hint the ‘killer’ had even read the ‘Look Inside’ feature on Amazon. I promise never to lose my sense of humor when confronting them, but I will have my say.”
“There’s no question you’ve handled legitimate criticism very well, especially repeated hits on your first novel. Reminding the detractors that everything they were turned off about in the first novel was illustrated in the preview feature, even helped with the first novel in your series. It’s always been policy not to confront readers.”
“I agree with the policy if an author can’t confront with anything but whiney crap, or ‘how dare you question my writing’ episodes. Anyway, let’s get this new signing endeavor in the works in any time frame you can manage. I’ll await your confirmation from Linda.”
“On it, Nick. See you in Olympia for sure.”
“You sure will… bye Cass.”