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)
Just like mine.
Is it too much?
Well, it’s the only one left.
I book it and tell the concierge to find Britney Whatshername and help her move Cynthia Lear into the Aria, but the moment I hang up the room phone, I have regrets.
I call up Terry for advice. He answers on the seventh ring. “What?”
“It’s me.”
“Oh. Sorry. You didn’t come up on caller ID.”
“I was using the room phone right before I called you and just… kept using it. Am I interrupting?”
“I’m deep in, man. Deep. In. I’ve got Deckard Blake trapped inside an underground bunker with a crazy AI cyborg on the other side. Picture Raccoon City, but not so high-tech. He’s gonna have to leave the safety of this bunker, run along an old, abandoned train tunnel—holding his breath, there’s no air down there—and then finagle the airlock on another bunker open before his lungs explode.”
“Sounds… tricky.”
“Dude, you have no idea. I’ve got Luke calculating air pressure in the lungs, and Shawn is figuring out the exact torque required to get past the rust on steel—I’ve strategically placed another bunker within an appropriate distance so this move is possible—”
“Of course you have. That’s your job.”
“—and it’s just… I’m deep in, man.” He exhales. “But what’s up?” His tone lightens. “I’ve always got time for you, Steve. Oooh, you’re at the convention! How was the drive?”
“Terrible. But listen, that’s not why I’m calling. I met a woman—”
“What? Damn, dude. I wish I was you.”
I practically snort. “Me? Why? You’re the one writing cool shit like low-tech Raccoon City.” I’m so jealous of his career, it’s not even funny.
Terry explains. “I know I’m married—happily—but everywhere you go, the ladies love you. You’re like a walking, talking romance cover. You’ve been there what, an hour? And you’ve already met a woman?”
“Thirty minutes, give or take. But here’s my problem…” I explain what happened and then sigh. “Am I coming on too strong? The executive suite? Does it reek of desperation?”
“What the hell are you talking about? This is romance-novel gold, dude.”
“I’m not actually in a romance novel, Terry. This is real life.”
“Right. I get it.”
“I don’t want her to think I’m, like, bribing her, or something.”
“Why the hell would she think that?”
“I just explained how Leslie fuckin’ Munch planted a seed of doubt in Cordelia’s head! Were you even listening to me?” I am trying to pace the room, but the cord on the phone is too short, which makes the phone fly off the bedside table and fall to the floor, ripping the handset out of my grip.
Huh. The limitations of low-tech phones. That’s kind of ironic.
I pick the handset back up and hear a dial tone.
Then my cell phone dings a text out in the dining room. I walk out there, grab it off the table, and read: Romance-novel gold! This is great stuff! Keep going!
I growl, but don’t text back. He’s deep in. He’s not even listening to me. Too busy making up his cool dystopian world and getting his action-adventure characters from one crisis to another.
I spend a few moments wondering if I should pick this conversation back up with Shawn or Luke, but then decide against it.
If they’re both writing too, I’ll just get depressed when they start explaining their current work-in-progress. That’s how it is for me these days.
I’m so… unsatisfied. I cringe even thinking the word. It’s so wrong to be unsatisfied when I’m this fucking successful. It’s gross.
But then my eyes wander to the open door of the bedroom and I see the ARC sitting on the bed. My smile is immediate. I have a book to read.
While I would not call myself a book fanatic in the same vein as the ladies who come to conventions like this, I would call myself an avid reader. I’ve been in a slump lately. Nothing seems to catch my interest, and if it does, it almost never holds it.
And while I do have high hopes for Filling the Gap, I temper them with realistic expectations as I grab the book, take it out into the living room, sit down on the couch and open it up.
Four hours later my phone has been turned off to avoid interruptions, my eyes are frantically zipping down the page towards the conclusion, and someone is pounding on my door.
I walk over to the foyer area, my eyes never leaving the page, and then—just before I open the door—I read Cordelia’s final run-on sentence:
Walking toward the setting sun, feeling the warmth of the sand creeping up through my toes and glissading down the slopes of my feet like the grains themselves are tiny alpinists making their descent, I wipe away my tears as I realize that Apollo’s sacrifice means I now must learn to ascend the frightening pitches of my own life, those that have been here, waiting for me all along, but that I have been ever afraid to summit; the wondrous, ethereal, mystical majesty that is existence—which rivals the mythos of Olympus itself—not alone, but carried upon the wings of his sacrifice, and in that realization I feel the ancient spirit of my namesake rise to counter the declining sun; I feel Elpis, I feel hope, because in the tragic, freighted, soul-desiccating but necessary and ultimately sublime peace that bathes me in its grace I understand that he fell… so I might rise.