The Sexpert

by JA Huss

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. She’s a woman, on her own, struggling to make good things happen for herself in this world. I can’t charge her money for helping her.”

  I smile. Big. And goofy, I have a feeling.

  “What?” Eden asks.

  I shake my head, “Nothing. Just... I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she says, cocking her head and smiling back. “Oh,” she says, looking past my shoulder, “you got it hung.”

  I turn to look with her.

  “Yep. You like it there?”

  The sculpture I bought for her is mounted on the wall facing the French doors that open to the patio that has an even more spectacular view of Pikes Peak than my old place had. (Although, to be honest, there is no unspectacular view of Pikes Peak.) We stare at the sculpture for a moment. Two bodies, bound together, growing together, as if borne from the rock itself. The gauzy, Autumn light streaming into the apartment spills over it in a rusty glow.

  “Well,” she says, “I’m no art expert. But I love it there.”

  I smile as I turn to face her and put my hands on her ass, “You’re no expert?” I ask.

  She grins and shakes her head. “Not at art, anyway.”

  “Yeah...? At what then?”

  She shrugs and says, “I dunno. Knowing how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”

  “That’s a way more valuable skill,” I say, placing my mouth on hers as a shadow of lovers bound together in stone expands and spreads across the room.

  We all start out as just a piece of rock.

  And hopefully, eventually… our shape takes form and we become something.

  Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you get to become something together.

  If you want to check out our other books you can get Sin With Me here

  If you want to try out another JA Huss book that’s “sorta” rom com, give Mr. Perfect a go.

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit where Johnathan and I get to say anything we want about the book. These are always done last minute and never edited so excuse our typos. :)

  Thank you for reading our book. Were you charmed and delighted? We hope you were charmed and delighted. We wanted to do something apart from our first effort together and also pretty substantially apart from what Julie has written, historically.

  In short: We wanted to have fun. And we did. So, we hope you did too.

  But that’s not to say there isn’t something else going on inside this story. Of course there is.

  On a separate level, beneath the rom and com of it all, this is a story about identity. About perception. Both the perception the world has when they look upon us and the perception we have of ourselves when we glance inward.

  And while Julie and I didn’t have this conversation when we began working on this book, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it’s a theme we’re both exploring now.

  I have spent almost the entire of my life acting. I have been performing in front of audiences since I was eight years old. Acting and being an actor is not just a job or a thing I do, it is very much who I am. My understanding of myself is inexorably bound to the craft and career of acting.

  But most of you reading this don’t know that. Or maybe, in some passing way, if you see me, you may have some vague recollection of having seen me before in that thing you watched that time. So, for those of you meeting the idea of me through reading these books that Julie and I have written (and will be writing), to you I am an author. A romance author at that. And that is something that I am currently learning to embrace and to feel joy in being.

  Because I would suggest that the act of feeling joy isn’t always something that occurs in a person organically. Sometimes one has to work at it. I certainly do. In part, because I’ve also spent much of my life occupying the role of a tortured artist. I’m naturally a very moody person, so it was easy, but I also felt like in order to be serious about my work (and to be taken seriously), it was incumbent on me to suffer. But as I’ve gotten older, what I’ve come to realize for myself is that the suffering didn’t make me a better artist, it just made me a miserable one.

  And an unintended side effect of writing these books is that I’ve discovered my sense of exploration and play again. My sense of wonder at the miracle of discovery. Because every time I sit down to write, I really have only the vaguest of ideas about what’s going to spill out. And so, suddenly, I find myself surprised again in ways I didn’t know I still could be. And as a result, I find myself eager to do more exploration so that the rush that comes of unearthing new ideas can wash over me again.

  I still wouldn’t call myself a novelist either, however.

  But that’s not because I’m not. It’s just because I think that I’m deciding I don’t intend to call myself anything anymore. Because to be defined or categorized is to limit that notion of exploration I was talking about.

  I “am,” is something that I don’t think can ever be accurate. The next time someone asks me, “What do you do?” I think my answer will just be, “What I can.” Because to drill down to a thing that I call myself or an idea that is supposed to represent me feels disingenuous and like a lie.

  I love Eden. Know why? (Of course you don’t. I haven’t told you yet.) Here’s why: Even though Andrew flips his shit on her for lying to him, she never was. Not really.

  “Are you The Sexpert?”

  She didn’t feel she was. I mean, she’s not stupid. She knows what he’s asking. But part of the reason she never just cops to it isn’t simply because she doesn’t want to get busted, it’s also because on a deep, cellular level, she never felt she was. Not really. Not in any authentic sense. And that made it easy for her to pretend.

  She also didn’t feel like she was the kind of person who could live in The TDH, or who deserved to be seen, or who could have the things she wanted. Again, not really. But, of course, in the end she got kind of everything she dreamed of because – in part – she learned to just sort of follow her own muse. To walk the path that was honest to her.

  (Side note: My single favorite thing Eden says in this book is, “...everyone is too busy checking their phones to make eye contact with me, so I can’t even make a new friend while I wait.” To me that sentence sums up the very core of who Eden Presley is, and I love her for being that way. She kind of breaks my heart. But I digress...)

  Andrew has his own issues with identity, obviously. Dev kind of hits at some of Andrew’s malfunction, but the real secret to Andrew is found inside the rocks he climbs.

  There’s this illusion in life that there’s a “there” there. That we “become” something, or “grow into” someone. But that’s not true. Not that we aren’t always becoming or growing, but it’s present tense. It’s active. There’s no plateau. There’s always another summit to crest or pitch to throw. And even when you think you’ve got a grasp, the hold can give away and crumble and then your carefully plotted path has to be reimagined.

  Tangential segue: I used to skateboard. I loved it. And the greatest and most influential group of skateboarders from my youth were the Z-Boys of Dogtown out of Santa Monica, California. The Zephyr Skate Team. Progenitors of the art form. There was a movie made about them sometime back called Lords of Dogtown starring Emil Hirsch and the late, great Heath Ledger.

  But there’s an even greater documentary about them called just Dogtown and Z-Boys, made by one of the original Zephyr Team members, Stacy Peralta. Skip Engblom, the Captain Hook to these Lost Boys, says in that documentary of the great skater Jay Adams, “He will be in the middle of a maneuver, and have the whole thing collapsing on him, and somehow, in the center of that disaster he’ll make something else out of it completely ... which becomes art.”

  And to me, that’s the secret to life. Or one of the secrets anyway. Once you learn to stop fighting the changing, morphing, transitioning evolution of the universe... Once you lea
rn to accept that there’s no control to be had... Once you stop trying to conquer the mountain and accept that it’s bigger, stronger, and more indelible than you... You can give over to it; and inside what feels like chaos tumbling around you, you can reinvent, readjust, and revive yourself entirely.

  And that morphing, twisting, evolving being is who you are.

  So, there’s no way to classify you... You’re constantly a work in progress. You are emerging from the stone, changing and transmogrifying as you stretch and reach and yearn.

  I think it’s important to look at ourselves. In fact, I think it’s crucial. All the greatest assholes I’ve ever met have one thing in common: They do zero self-exploration. But I think it’s equally important not to define ourselves. Not to limit ourselves. And not to be defined or limited by how we’re seen by others.

  Because we are not one thing. We are everything and we are nothing all at once. We are the vastness of space and we are the inconsequence of ... well ... nothing. I sat here for like five minutes trying to think of something that is truly and utterly without consequence and I came up with nothing.

  Which is kind of the point. You are important. You have impact. You matter. If Eden’s channel had never taken off and gone viral and launched her into the romantically comedic bedlam it did, she would still have been just as significant. Andrew still would have found her (we believe) and she still would have changed his life just as he changed hers. It would have looked different. It would have felt different. But it would have been no less meaningful.

  There were goals I set for myself as a young actor. I’ve absolutely hit some. Some I don’t know if I’ll ever hit. One thing I never imagined myself doing was writing romance novels with one of the great and unique voices of the genre. But here I am.

  And so, what does that say about my path, my direction in life, my journey?

  I’m pretty sure it just says that I’m still on it.

  Thanks again for reading this little yarn we spun. There’s a whole bunch of inhabitants of The TDH and each one of them has their own tale to tell. We hope you’ll keep coming back to find out more about them. We’re not yet sure where they’ll take all of us, but I have a feeling shit’s gonna get wild.

  Xo,

  -JM

  17 July, 2018

  I have been writing things down on my phone note app about what I wanted to say about this book for over a month and so yeah… I think I have a lot to say.

  So when we do these EOBSs I get to cheat a little because Johnathan always turns his in first. Lol Like… I TOTALLY embrace the whole “last minute” thing with these End of Book Shits. So of course he sent his EOBS to me before I sat down to write mine. And I just read it. And I knew his was gonna be about identity because he told me that like a week ago. And I knew mine was gonna be a little bit about identity too. But the thing I really loved about Eden and Zoey was how they got to “their moment” ya know?

  Some people get lucky in life. Luck… is sucky. You never want to get where you’re going on luck alone because you can’t just go grab more luck, right? You can’t make luck out of nothing. You can’t shape a story into luck. Or a video channel, for that matter.

  Just the other day Johnathan and I were talking about the Company TV series. And for some reason we were discussing this whole idea of our executive at MGM being excited about our project and did she just feel that way because her and Johnathan are friends. Because they are. And he was of the opinion that no, that’s not why this is happening. Yes, she wants him to be successful. And yes, she wants to support him because they are friends. But she’s not gonna waste MGM’s time and money on this project for that reason alone. She’s a professional, right? And I said, no. Good. I don’t want that. Because if that’s the case then what we have isn’t real. And I need it to be real.

  Which brings me back to the Amazon Kindle Unlimited scammers who all just got busted these past few weeks.

  I get why people cheat at shit. I get it. They want money, or they want fame, or whatever. They want something and they don’t care how they get it.

  I am not one of those people. I am not looking for the “result” of success. i.e. Money. i.e. Fame. i.e. Whatever.

  I’m looking for personal satisfaction. Much like Johnathan talks about is inner artist and how that dictates his goals and what he wants to do with his time. This is me too. But it’s not “art” I’m after. It’s just “satisfaction” with what I’m doing, and who I am, and the futures I create for myself.

  So this brings me back to Eden and Zoey and their “luck.”

  Well, it wasn’t luck. Their “overnight” success was two years in the making. They hustled out videos and honed their “craft” for a year before anyone took notice. This was me when 321 hit the NYT bestsellers list. It wasn’t overnight success at all. I think 321 was my NINETEENTH BOOK! And I had only ever been on one list before that book and that was the Bend Anthology with my Erotica Consortium friends. Hitting NYT for me was WORK. That’s it. It was work. I did the work. I wrote the books. I got better at my craft. I kept going. And the stars aligned that winter.

  There was no luck involved in what I did. Not really. It was just work.

  I like this idea. I hate the idea of luck. People get lucky all the time. They’re called one-hit wonders for a reason.

  I’ve been on the USA Today bestseller’s list 21 times. That’s not luck. That’s WORK.

  So yesterday morning Johnathan and I did an interview with Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn podcast. If you’re a reader you probably don’t know who she is. But if you’re an author you definitely know who Joanna Penn is. She’s an amazing woman. And I’ve been on her podcast before a couple years ago and that time I was talking about marketing.

  This time Johnathan and I were interviewed together and it was a little bit about the collaborative process and a lot about the whole “journey” we went through from having an author/narrator relationship, to writing a screenplay, to writing a series of novels, to writing this standalone Sexpert book. And how all those things added up to this one moment.

  Now, to be clear, we have no clue how the Sexpert is gonna sell. We have no idea if people will enjoy it or whatever. We don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future.

  All we can do—all ANYONE can do—is be true to themselves, do their work, make their “thing” whatever that is, and put it out there.

  That’s it. That’s all you can do.

  And some might say the rest is luck.

  OK. Fine.

  But I don’t think it is. Sure, the whole stars align thing seems like luck on the surface, but it’s not.

  Fate—or whatever you want to call it—is nothing more than preparing for your future. Every time I decide to get up at 4 AM and write so I can meet a deadline I make my future. Maybe that future is big, maybe it’s small. I have no clue. The only thing I know for certain is that if I didn’t get up and write. If I didn’t meet that deadline, If I didn’t put out that book… then sure as shit, nothing is gonna happen.

  You can’t win the game if you’re not even playing.

  Johnathan and I are most definitely “players” in the game of life. I think we both understand very well that our time here in this world is finite.

  Every one of us has an expiration date and none of us know when that’s gonna happen. And when you have this perspective you look at life differently. You see all the opportunities to change your life rather than all the things conspiring against you.

  Every day is a new opportunity for me. That’s how I truly feel. And sometimes I can shift fate just enough to change tomorrow and find the next phase of satisfaction.

  If you’ve read my Junco series you’re familiar with this theme. Because through all six of those books that’s the goal. To shift fate just enough to change tomorrow.

  It can be done, you guys.

  One choice can change everything.

  The moment Johnathan decided to ask me if I’d like to try and sell The
Company as a TV series, he changed his tomorrow. And when I said yes, I changed mine too. And when I asked him to write books I changed it again.

  And no, it hasn’t been easy. Sometimes it’s been really fucking hard. But you know what that’s called?

  WORK.

  But here in this moment I think Johnathan and I both feel satisfaction with what we’re trying to do together as a writing team, with the product we put out, with the creative process, with the art.

  I don’t want success if it’s fake. I don’t want to cheat my way to the top of anything. I mean, I guess if I was like... in a life or death Hunger Games world I’d cheat that fucking system to death, OK? Live or die, I’ll cheat.

  But we’re not living the Hunger Games. I’m not gonna die if my book doesn’t make the Top 100 on Amazon. I’m not gonna die if The Company doesn’t get sold and so I’m not gonna cheat.

  Because here’s the thing about me… I’ve got a million stories to tell. If this one doesn’t resonate with as many people as I had hoped I got another one in my back pocket. And I’ll just take it out and put that out there too. Give myself yet another chance to reach people. And if that one doesn’t resonate either, I’ll get out another one. And another one. And another one. And I’ll keep trying. And I’ll keep going.

  Because that’s how you change your tomorrow.

  So I’m sorta glad that Hollywood is so cutthroat. I mean, do people get movies and TV series made simply because of who they are or who they know? Of course. Of course they do.

  But that’s not the kind of success Johnathan and I are building. We’re content to put out a Sexpert video every week for a year with no viewers. We’re OK waiting for our moment. Because what we’re doing now is getting ready for it.

  That’s all Eden and Zoey were doing too. They put on their blinders, did their work, and got ready for their moment.

  I think I’ve written about this in another EOBS but I have no idea which one it was. Prepare for success. It might take twenty years for your stars to align, but hear this: If you’re not working towards that moment—if you’re not on the other side of the door when it opens—well, that’s called ships passing in the night.