Too Far From Texas

Chapter Twenty-One

"We're gonna be late," I grumbled as I stood in the doorway of Lorelei's office.

"Okay, okay," she said, waving her hands before she grabbed her coat from the back of her chair and slipped her arms inside. "It's not like we're being graded on punctuality."

"You don't know that," I eyed her. "How many times have you rolled your eyes or talked under your breath when someone strolled in late to a meeting?"

"But it's our meeting!"

"Even more reason to be on time."

With tight lips, Lorelei swung her purse over her shoulder and met me at the door before shutting it behind her.

As suspected, at least half of the attendees were already present when we arrived, sitting at the semi-circle table. I gave Lorelei a look and she gave me a shrug before making her way to the center of the room next to Kris.

"Evening, ladies," she greeted us. Then she proceeded to introduce us to a man and woman from the New York office, whom we previously only knew from email correspondence.

Once the rest of the people arrived, we got down to business, passing out a small packet. Lorelei and I watched as everyone flipped through it briefly.

After the Christmas holidays, my best friend and co-writer and I came up with a brilliant idea - to conduct our own writing workshop. We'd worked together throughout January to set up a business proposal for our company, and with the help of Kris, we scheduled a meeting to present our ideas.

Lorelei, much better at public speaking that I was, stood in front of the semi-circle and described to the other members of the group what our mission was. I enjoyed watching her, her animated personality laced with her Australian accent. By the end of the presentation, everyone was on board. We quickly got to work on an outline for the workshop, and Kris gave us suggestions for the locations where it could be held.

Our second order of business, which we hadn't let Kris in on yet, was our second novel. Again, we passed out a small packet, on this time it was merely a snippet of our new story. Lorelei and I had been working on it off and on since our first had been published. We felt like it was a good story, perhaps even better than The Loving Kind, but also unique. Our idea was that it was two stories in one - a novel from two points of view. It was a story of two sisters who had been taken from their mother at a young age and had gone to live with their great aunt. One sister was loved and adored by her, spoiled and grew up to marry the richest man in town. The other sister despised the aunt, never felt as though she was wanted, and with the help of the boy next door, ran away to find her mother.

"I know it's nothing like our last book," said Lorelei, "but I think readers will be enthralled with the story. Stacey and I have some great ideas."

"You mean it's not finished?" asked Kris, her eyes looking over her glasses at us.

"Well no," Lor shook her head. "This is actually how I got the idea for the workshop. I think it would be interesting to see how writers write from different points of view."

"You're not having your class write your story for you."

"Oh no," I argued. "That's not it at all. We will be giving them different scenarios that have nothing to do with our stories."

"I see."

"Besides," Lorelei added, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. "We might not have it all written, but we know what's going to happen."

"Alright," Kris nodded. Then she looked to her colleagues. "Well, I look forward to reading it. And...you'll hear from me about this. As for now, we're all set for the workshop, yes?"