All the Waters of the Earth

Chapter 1: Romance Writer's Problems

My fingers hovered over the keyboard of my computer. I kept typing.

... and he shifted, pressing his full male heat into her petals.

Delete.

... and he gently slid his member into her secret center.

No. Delete.

... and he impaled her on his straining shaft.

Ugh. Delete.

I rapped my fingers on the side of my desk.

What's on Facebook?

No. No distractions. Keep writing.

Or ... take a break.

I got my ample booty out of my chair and walked into the kitchen of my duplex to pour a glass of water. Today's writing was not going very well. Romance novel number sixteen, I feared, was falling into the pitfalls of cliche and drivel. I needed something new. My hero was not making me wet. At all. I tired of typing and deleting, typing and deleting, not getting anywhere.

The thing was, I loved being a romance novelist. I loved everything about it: inventing cute ways to make the characters meet, describing the hot men and women, making up a secret, tragic past, and the sex. Oh, the sex. I loved all of it.

My fictional guys tended to have a few things in common. They were all tall. They had chiseled good looks: high cheek bones, strong jaws, full heads of hair, and gorgeous bodies. They were uniformly Alpha males, the type who would fuck you hard against a wall and make you moan in pleasure. The type to order you around and then show you their soft underbelly. Ooh, baby, make me shiver. I liked them to be men, you know, not wishy-washy, but I liked them to have a soul, too.

For some reason, though, I was having trouble with this book. I always start with the sex, but if I couldn't get that right, then I knew the rest of it wouldn't work either.

I needed inspiration.

Given my profession, I had this habit of always looking for the real life versions of my heroes. I couldn't stop doing it. That sexy-ass DILF in line at Target, with broad shoulders and a beard, balancing a tiny baby girl on his impressive bicep? He looked like Zack from my fourth book. That tattooed masterpiece at Home Depot, all jeans and legs and boots and body? If you grew his dark hair a little shaggier, he kind of looked like Clint in book twelve. And that artsy Mexican hottie standing by the bar with the Smith and Wesson belt and what had to be a giant cock? I was going to have to write a book about him next. He was first on my list of heroes after this one.

The thing was, I had banged out fifteen romance novels in seven years and I wasn't stopping anytime soon. Normally, it was pretty easy for me to do; just not today, for some reason. I had done this long enough that I knew the secret to finishing a novel: keep at it. And I kept at it, almost every day, all day. I was a little unusual for a professional writer in that I did not keep regular hours. I was not one of those OCD people who has to write every day at the same time and have the same music on and wear the same clothes.

Well, most of the time I was in yoga pants and a cami but they were clean and rotated.

But still, I wasn't really a girl for routine. No manky old college sweatshirt for me to write in, sitting slovenly around the house. A girl had to show some pride. You would never find me without full makeup on every day and a Brazilian blow-out for my naturally frizzy hair. I had to look good to take my kid to school.

I was no writer recluse either. I got out of the house, often, going for drinks. Life was too short not to play. I liked to go out with my friends, and made sure to get babysitters even though I had a kid when I was seventeen. But I also liked to write and I did it almost daily and I was glad to make a living at it, although I had to supplement my income in other ways: I got child support from my ex, Carlos. And, whether you believe it or not, I also was a nude model at an art school.