All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,49

and my body has changed to match that.

“We don't know each other very well,” I say after a long pause.

She waits for me to add a “but” to that statement, but I don't. I'm not qualifying it, not yet.

“Yes, of course,” she adds when she gets the point, after an excruciatingly long pause.

I hope it doesn't change anything in our relationship, but for now I have to keep my secrets to myself.

Emma gets up and walks around the wall of bookshelves casually glancing at the spines. I sit back in the chair and watch. Most people tend to only display the serious authors on their bookshelves. There's an ego factor to it, like you want others to think that you are a better reader than you are, whatever the hell that means.

When she walks over to the middle, she sees all of the editions of my books. They fill up nearly an entire bookshelf all by themselves. When I first started, I never had author copies made.

I was proud of what I did, but I was also embarrassed by displaying them proudly. It was almost as if I didn't think that my work measured up to the likes of John Irving, Jim Harrison, and other serious American men of letters.

But what makes a writer serious in the first place?

For some reason, if a male author writes about love, the book is considered serious literature but if a female does it then it’s just fluff.

Well, fuck that.

Life is too short to pretend to be someone I’m not.

Millions of people around the world have devoured my work and have proudly displayed it on their bookshelves for everyone to see, so why shouldn’t I do the same thing?

“I'm sorry to bring this up again,” Emma asks, “but when we talked earlier about your writing method, you sort of mentioned what you used to do but not what you're currently doing. Can you tell me more about that? Like, how are you such a prolific author?”

“I realized that I was suffering from burnout when I started to spend a lot of hours out of my day procrastinating. So, I started to research procrastination and productivity. Then I developed a system of writing basically only for an hour a day. I can write for a lot more hours, but I limit myself to one hour exactly. Usually, spread over three writing sprints.”

“Wait, that's all? So, how does that work? I thought you would be writing like six hours a day, seven days a week.”

I laugh and say, “Close, but no. I now write one hour a day five out of the seven days a week. Sometimes, I will do more if I'm in the mood, but most of the time I don't.”

“So, you do writing sprints?”

“Yes, twenty-five minute, twenty minute, and fifteen minute writing sprints. I tell myself that I know exactly what I need to cover or where I'm headed in the story. Then I just grab my phone and start dictating.”

“You dictate?”

“It’s faster than typing and I’ve had issues with carpal tunnel and other wrist problems.”

“How does it work?”

“I sit at my desk and talk into my phone. Sometimes I go on a walk and occasionally, I ride my horse.”

Emma raises her eyebrows in utter shock, but musters to say, “I feel like you live on some other planet.”

I laugh and she laughs along with me. When my hand touches her, accidentally, I don't recoil back and neither does she.

Instead she looks up at me and I lean closer to her.

The gravitational pull that I feel toward her is impossible to deny.

Now that I know that her relationship with Alex is completely over, I don't stop myself.

Our lips touch.

Her mouth is soft and delicate, but our kiss is not. There's a hunger in our kiss and I push her against the bookcase.

I haven't known her long and yet the sexual tension seems to have existed between us long before we met.

I run my fingers up her curvy body. She pulls away, but only for second and then presses harder against me.

I open my mouth slightly and let my tongue find hers. I hold her with both hands.

She kisses me back, harder each time. I push her back against the bookcase more firmly and a few books fall down on top of us.

“Oh my God!” she yelps from surprise.

I laugh and she laughs, too.

When our eyes meet again, she reaches up to kiss me, but I pull away.

“What's wrong?” she asks.

I can hear the