Somewhere in the latter half of 2011, while standing in the shower I had a flash of an image. These happen on occasion, I usually get the start of stories out of them. In this freeze frame image a
Here’s the info from the oldest draft on I could find.
man in a suit sat on the edge of a hospital bed, looking away from the other man lying in it. I decided I wanted to know who these men my brain had tossed up were, and how they got there.
I began teasing out a story of rough character sketches, random paragraphs, and wonky outlines. I started and restarted, abandoned and picked up, had long talks with my characters, and somewhere in there quit my job, had a kid, and wrote three other books.
Why I don’t do my own cover art.
In the end I got 33,000 words in what will probably go down as my minimalism phase. It was called The Agency up until a few weeks back when William Gibson had to go and put out a book called Agency. Plus, everyone told me The Agency wasn’t a good name for a romance novel. I was planning on doing my own cover art but found out I sucked
at it so got the wonderful Tiferet Design in instead. I worked out how to do kindle formatting on Scrivener. And knowing nothing about how Amazon works when they said it would take up to 72 hours to review my document I thought it would take 72 hours, not four, which is why this official release is happening several days after it went up for sale.
I’m flying without a publisher on this one for various reasons so I really need word of mouth if you enjoy it. Those little stars on Goodreads and Amazon mean more to authors, and their bank accounts, than I think readers realize. If you don’t do the Amazon thing, stay tuned, I’m going to ‘go wide’ with the story in a couple of months.
This is different from anything else I’ve ever put out and I’m scared shitless. I hope you all enjoy it.
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Arthur Drams works for a secret government security agency, but all he really does is spend his days in a cubical writing reports no one reads. After getting another “lateral promotion” by a supervisor who barely remembers his name, it’s suggested that Arthur try to ‘make friends’ and ‘get noticed’ in order to move up the ladder. It’s like high school all over again: his attempts to be friendly come across as awkward and creepy, and no one wants to sit at the same table with him at lunch.
In a last-ditch attempt to be seen as friendly and outgoing, he decides to make friends with The Alien, aka Agent Martin Grove, known for his strange eating habits, unusual reading choices, and the fact that no one has spoken to him in three years.
Starting with a short, surprisingly interesting conversation on sociology books, Arthur slowly begins to chip away at The Alien’s walls using home-cooked meals to lure the secretive agent out of his abrasive shell. Except Martin just might be something closer to an actual secret agent than paper-pusher Arthur is, and it might be more than hearts at risk when something more than friendship begins to develop.
Please note this book has a Heat Rating of zero.
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IT HAD been a long time since Arthur had anyone to cook for. Even then, most of that cooking had been done in Hanh’s restaurant under the sharp eyes of his sisters before he left home for good.
He’d impressed a few guys and even a couple of girls in college by putting together non-instant meals using little more than a two-burner hotplate in his dorm room. But those relationships had never lasted long. He’d always had grand ideas of meetings of minds or souls, someone who fit grandly into the empty places of his heart, but that dream never materialized. The sex, what there was, always felt flat and mechanical, never spurring him on to something deeper.
There had been some dates, once he joined the Agency, but having to lie about his work put early strain on possible relationships before he ever got to ‘come back to my place and let me cook.’
But now he had someone to cook for. Sort of. He had someone to bring very small portions of lite foods, during lunch, so whatever he made had to be small, portable, and maintain quality after sitting in a lunch box for five hours.
He made sandwiches, cut down to fancy party hors d’oeuvre size on Tuesday. He also brought his own book; Walden and Civil Disobedience which had been on his ‘to read’ list for a decade. On Wednesday, he pushed a little too far with a slice of sticky rice cake. Martin took a bite. There was a slight tightening around his eyes and he didn’t finish the rest. Arthur supposed it was an acquired taste.
By Friday he was halfway through Walden, had probably gotten close to a thousand extra calories into Martin, along with fresh vitamins and minerals, and aside from telling him what each thing was, they hadn’t spoken a word.
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