Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,53
sound upset and when their meals arrived a few seconds later, the conversation shifted. They didn’t really get back to discussing Valentine’s Day again that night, which was a relief to her.
And as it turned out, any plans they might have made would have been wasted because the thing, the event that changed everything, the one Jesse had been expecting would happen, finally arrived.
Only, it didn’t look like the thing that would end everything. Not to start with, anyway.
Only two days after their dinner in Auckland, Jesse headed downstairs, yawning and looking forward to the first cup of coffee. The French press sat on the island, half-full and still warm enough to drink. Even if it wasn’t, she could run it through the microwave for a few seconds—a habit that made Aran make retching sounds, when he first saw her do it. Yet the coffee was perfectly drinkable, so she wasn’t sure what his objections were. It was better than pouring the other half of the pot out, just because she didn’t drink a pint in thirty seconds the way he could.
Aran had drunk the other half of this morning’s pot and was who the hell knew where, doing something mysterious.
As usual.
Jesse dropped bread in the toaster, drank coffee, watched birds flit about the still half-dormant garden visible outside the kitchen window. Unlike most of the double-glazed and insulated homes in America, she could hear faint twitters and calls the birds made through this window. She watched and listened while running the next scenes of her book through her mind. When the toast was buttered, she took the plate over to the laptop and went through her usual morning check of sites, social networks and news feeds.
She came to a halt in the middle of her Facebook stream, at a comment that had been posted to one of her author groups very early in the morning, UK time. Which meant it had been late last night for someone in the States.
She read the post again, her heart screaming.
Read an alt hist by a complete newbie author—just finished it. One of the best stories I’ve read this year and last year…maybe this century. Going back to read it again. Give it a look yourself.
And below the text was the cover of her book, with Kiss Across Chaos emblazoned on the top and Jerry Hale in the flourishing script the cover artist had used instead of the upright squared-off font Jesse Hall military thrillers got.
Beneath the cover was over thirty comments from other authors, saying they were going to check it out or that they had read it already.
The comments were mostly from the Australian and New Zealand authors, who had already passed through their day. North America was still to wake up.
The last comment she came to had gone unanswered.
Who is Jerry Hale, anyway? Anyone heard of her before?
Jesse didn’t respond. The last thing she wanted was for everyone to know who Jerry Hale was. Yes, it was great that one guy thought it was a good read, but that was just one guy. There were also people who hated Harry Potter, too.
Her intense curiosity let her do something she rarely did. She checked for reviews on the book.
It had only been out for just under six weeks and it already had forty-three reviews, ranging from three stars to a staggering thirty-eight five-star reviews.
She spotted the same question in the reviews. Who is Jerry Hale? She doesn’t seem to exist anywhere but on the book cover.
Jesse hadn’t bothered with an author photo or even much of a bio. There was one line; This is Jerry Hale’s first novel. She had bought the site domain, JerryHaleAuthor.com, purely to run email via the domain address. She hadn’t put up even a rudimentary site. After all, who would bother to look for one?
Her heart thudding even more, Jesse broke with her normally iron-clad personal rule of not checking her sales except at the end of the month, to square the bookkeeping for the month. At the end of January, she had sold only a dozen copies, as she had expected to do for a first novel by a complete unknown.
She pulled up the sales charts and sat back, breathing hard.
Since January 31st, when she had last checked sales, Kiss Across Chaos had sold three hundred and eighteen copies.
In eleven days.
Jesse went back to the reviews, perplexed. It was a silly little novel. How could people like it so much?