Tuesday Tales: From the Word QUESTION

Welcome to another edition of Tuesday Tales. Summer is here, and with it comes all the anticipation of getting closer to as normal as we can get. This weekly blog takes you into the current manuscripts of a select group of authors including myself. We write to a word or picture prompt. This week, our 400 word scene is based on the word QUESTION. This will be the last post from this story since the paperback version goes to the publisher today. Make Mine a Manhattan.

Enjoy.

The sirens blared once more, making me jump.

When I get my hands on him…

I reached for the phone before the alarms sounded again and checked the call display.

Crap! It was my agent. She would have questions, and I had no answers. My latest romance novel, Afternoon Delight, the one I’d started well over a year ago, had soured on the page, the victim of poor planning on my part and the pandemic on the other. For weeks, the situation had been so dismal that it had been impossible to write anything. Once I’d started again, the deadline looming, threatening to crush me, I’d rewritten the same chapters over and over again—the chapters she’d described as poorly written and snooze-worthy.

In her words, If this is a contemporary romance, what planet are you living on? What the hell, Robin? Where’s the damn sex? This is as exciting as watching paint dry.

Hardly a vote of confidence. Unfortunately, she was right, which was why I was in such a bad mood, as my mother put it, and hoping for a miracle.

Groaning, I pressed the call answer button and put her on speaker.

“Gina, good morning.”

My voice was so saccharine sweet and bubbly it made me want to barf. I glanced at the clock. It was just after eight. How could one day start off so badly? The coffee fiasco, the blaring phone ring, and now this.

Swallowing my distress, I resumed the call.

“It’s rather early, even for you. To what do I owe the honor?”

She laughed, the sound lacking the slightest twinge of humor.

“You know damn well why I’m calling, Robin. My inbox is empty. Why is that? Let me guess. You don’t have the revised chapters and the rest of the first draft you promised me. You probably haven’t added a word to that literary disaster since we spoke a month ago.”

“Wrong. I’ve been plugging away at it,” I lied, picturing her in some sleazy, black leather, Dominatrix outfit, befitting her current tone of voice, the cheeks of her well-rounded ass hanging out while she cracked her whip.

The research into shall we say more unusual sex play was getting to me, although I hadn’t unboxed the dildo I’d bought online, the truth of the advertising claim, better than any man, yet to be verified—not that I’d had many to compare it to.

Stay safe and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales