Holmes & Moriarty 02 - All She Wrote (MM) Read Online Free PDF

her?”

    “When I found out she actually lived here , in Nitchfield, I drove out to tell her how much I loved her, and we…” She pressed her fists together which I guess was supposed to signify what we grownups call rapprochement. Or maybe it was a gang sign. The Crips. The Bloods. The Quills.

    Of course they’d hit it off. What’s not to love about unconditional admiration? Nella’s baby blues were sparkling even now with the remembered thrill of that first meeting with her idol. The shock and the joy of discovering Anna breathed the same air that Nella did.

    For which I really had to hand it to Anna. I can’t say I’d have been as gracious, let alone taken under my wing an admiring aspirant. Not that aspirants ever showed up at my front door to admire me. Frankly, no one showed up at my front door with the exception of the mailman, UPS
    and the pool guy. No, come to think of it, the pool guy used the side gate.

    “How long have you been writing?” Perhaps I don’t always do the right thing, but I do generally know what the right thing is.

    “Since I was fourteen. I wrote my first novel when I was sixteen.”

    I swallowed the lump of prime rib that seemed to have wedged in my throat. “Are you published?”

    “I’ve had sixty-three poems published. No novels yet.”

    “Your novel will be published,” Rowland told her. He nodded at her with an assurance I’d have thought only Rudolph Dunst was in a position to offer. Nella blushed.

    “You were both in the writing group last year?”

    “Yes,” Rowland said. “Me, Nella and Arthur.”

    Arthur Gohring was the other male student. Arthur struck me as more of a biker type than a writer type. Not that he couldn’t be both, of course. He reminded me of Ving Rhames: brawny, bald and black. He looked like he’d have interesting things to write about—after he finished stabbing his pen through your neck.

    “How long have you been writing, Arthur?”

    It’s my experience that aspiring writers and the newly published aren’t nearly as tired of such questions as veterans of the writing wars. Arthur, however, said in his deep, deep voice, “A long time. How did you get an agent, Chris?”

    Chris . No one calls me Chris. It’s Christopher or Mr. Holmes. I don’t even let my parents call me Chris—though they did draw the line at Mr. Holmes. True, J.X. called me Kit , but that was J.X. He got special dispensation for being…J.X.

    “I got mine from the pound,” I said. “I always think it’s nice if you can rescue one of the older agents. They’re usually housebroken and—”

    “No, really,” Poppy Seed cut in, no nonsense.

    Hadn’t I explained this to Rowland? Was this how the writing seminar was going to go too? Was I trapped in some annoying version of Groundhog Day 101?

    I said, “I’d completed the first Miss Butterwith manuscript so I mailed it to several—”

    Poppy Seed gaped. “ Mailed it?”

    “Right.”

    “Through the post office?”

    “Yeah.”

    “You couldn’t just email it?”

    “No. This was back in the day when some of us still used paper and typewriters. Electric typewriters, of course, and later on word processors, but still antediluvian, I agree.”

    Nella, boldly reaching for seconds of those buttery whipped potatoes, asked, “But how did that work? The agents would receive a package in the mail and then what? Did they mail you a letter to tell you they were accepting your work?”

    “Usually it was to tell you they weren’t accepting your work, but yes. Or they’d call.”

    “How long ago was this?”

    “About sixteen years ago.”

    “Oh. So there weren’t so many writers back then.” She smiled knowingly.

    I started to object, but in a way she was correct. Technology had changed publishing, and was continuing to change it in ways we’d never dreamed back when I was carving out shelf space in my comfortable niche. But it’s not like hard work and, hopefully, some talent hadn’t