Taming the Author

11: Get a Hold of Yourself

Like I said, I wasn't new to the effects of intimate gestures. I was a guy. I woke up with the same problem guys had in the morning, and my body reacted to attractive girls and pornographic materials the way any man's body did.

But feeling her lips, touching her soft cheek and brushing my hand against her side made my senses go haywire. I wanted to push her down, hold her against me and never let her go. I wanted her to feel what I was feeling, and sense that she wanted me too.

And as I moved my lips against hers in response to her chaste kiss, I realized I simply... wanted her.

No, it wasn't the physical calling. It was something different. I just wanted to hold her and never let her go. I just felt like whatever I was doing was right and that I had found what I didn't realize I was looking for.

Then she pulled away and pushed my chest back. “That's enough,” she breathlessly said.

I swallowed and jumped away, realizing how I just sexually assaulted her. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—I didn't really... I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!”

“Sure,” she muttered, reaching out for the laptop on her bedside table. “Um...Can you get the food? I'm starving.”

I nodded and quickly walked to the table. I shakily picked up the plates and walked to the bed. “W—Where..?”

“Just there,” she answered, already busy typing something on her laptop.

I nodded and placed the plates on the foot of the bed.

She then patted the spot on the bed that I sat on. “Let's see your feedback,” she said.

I quickly pulled out the manuscript from my bag and took my place beside her.

One of the first things I realized when I read the manuscript that morning was how different Loramina's writing voice was from her speaking voice. It was like I was seeing things from a male writer's perspective.

Being a bookworm made me notice things that other book readers don't. One of them was the difference of books written by male authors, to books written by female authors.

As in real life, I noticed that male authors tend to be more straight forward. They engaged into the action and pressing parts without hesitation. Kisses were kisses. Sweet moments were sweet. Violence was violence, and grotesque was grotesque. Their characters' personalities widely varied, to the point that each of them stood out like real people in a crowd.

Female authors added more detail. Kisses were dissected. Facts, even those that didn't matter in the long run, were exhausted. Sweet moments were qualified. Violence sought for remorse. The action was usually left at the end of a long wait – either that or it was sown in parts and pieces within the story. Their characters followed a certain identifiable trend, which I found easy to understand and predict.

People wouldn't like this stereotype of mine and in the first place, I didn't claim it as a universal rule. There were authors who, of course, deviated from the trend. And Claus Lorewind, or Loramina Wilcourde, was one of those authors. In my favorite series, she killed off a bunch main characters to send a message in her story – no warning, no remorse.

And the way she straightforwardly described the events in the chapter she submitted that morning made me see only the details that would seem to matter later. I only saw a part of the novel, but I was dying to read the rest.

I decided I would get the chapters Rupert already edited before the day ended.

“I suggest we re-write this part,” I said, showing her the page with my marks scribbled in red ink.