He shook his head. “Oh, I doubt that she wants to talk about work today. She’s on vacation, you know.”
“Send me your chapters,” Adrienne repeated. “I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can, though I can’t give you a guarantee about representing you, of course.”
Looking dissatisfied but resigned, Yolanda nodded and bustled away, clutching Adrienne’s card like a talisman.
Chapter Eleven
“I don’t want to prejudice your opinion, but I think you should be prepared. The book is awful,” Dylan murmured as the aspiring writer reluctantly moved away. “It’s been turned down by every reputable publisher and a half dozen agents already.”
“You’ve read it?”
He sighed gustily. “I tried. Made it through a few chapters before I couldn’t stomach any more. It’s boring, clichéd, grammatically butchered and darned near incoherent, plotwise. I tried telling her those things, but she dismissed everything I said by telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“Then why did she ask you to read it?”
“She’s badgered nearly everyone in town to read it,” he said with a grimace. “Even tried to convince Gideon, though, needless to say, she didn’t get anywhere with him. She knew I did a little writing during high school—I worked for a newspaper—and she thought I might have a suggestion for punching up the opening so it would be more intriguing to editors. My suggestion was to burn the first three chapters, but she didn’t appreciate that.”
“I’m sure she didn’t. So what sort of writing did you do? Strictly newspaper articles, or did you ever try your hand at fiction?”
He shrugged and looked away, concentrating for a moment on a group of teenagers who were getting a bit rowdy. “I played around with some fiction. Never seriously, though.”
“Really. Do you still write?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, for a hobby. But don’t tell Gideon. I’m sure he would hate the idea of me dabbling even casually in his area of expertise.”
He sounded lazily amused, but Adrienne sensed that this subject wasn’t entirely frivolous to him. “What have you written?”
Looking vaguely uncomfortable, he shrugged. “I don’t want to sound like Yolanda.”
“You sound nothing like Yolanda. What do you write?”
“I like mysteries,” he finally admitted. “I’ve started a series about a small-town Southern cop who solves crimes in an unconventional way. Hardly a groundbreaking premise, of course, but it’s a little different because he suffers from a couple of phobias that occasionally interfere with his job and that he tries constantly to conceal.”
“That sounds interesting. Have you actually written a complete book?”
He was practically squirming on the bench now, like an embarrassed adolescent. “Yeah, a couple. But it’s just something I do to relax when I’m not working. I’m single, no family, don’t have many hobbies. Writing is something to fill the time.”
“You have no interest at all in being published?”
“Sure, I’ve thought about it. Maybe I’ll send my work out someday—when I’m ready.”
“I don’t suppose you would let me look at it?”
He whipped his head around to stare at her. “Why would you want to do that?”
She smiled. “Something tells me you have talent. I could be wrong, of course.”
He laughed softly. “I doubt you would mince words if you didn’t like it.”
“I like to think of myself as tactful but honest. Not everyone likes what I have to say,” she added, thinking of Gideon’s resistance to her suggestions for his current book.
Seeming to follow the direction of her thoughts, Dylan glanced around as if to make sure Gideon wasn’t nearby when he said, “Don’t tell him I said this, but Gideon’s a darned good writer. I’ve read and enjoyed all his books.”
“Have you really?”
He nodded. “Bought the first one because I wanted to hate it. I hoped his writing would be as unexciting and unpleasant as his personality. I was wrong. The first book was so good I bought the others simply because I wanted to read them. I drove out of town to buy them, of course, then smuggled them into my house in brown paper bags. I wouldn’t want word to get back to Gideon that I read his books.”
“Of course not,” she agreed gravely.