She found it unfortunate, but shameless self-promotion was a big part of the writing game these days. Ivy often wondered if Charles Dickens and Mark Twain had dealt with the same problems. At least she had the internet.
Carl slept for an hour while she went through her e-mail, reading blogs she followed, but for the most part, deleting spam from people trying to sell her internet promotions. Ivy wished she could take advantage of more of them, but fifty dollars here and fifty dollars there added up quickly. She had a couple of monthly promotions she used as well as her website upkeep, but that was about as much as she could afford at the moment.
Most writers go into it thinking they’re going to write the Great American Novel, get discovered, and start raking in the big royalty checks. In reality, it rarely happened that way. First-time authors seldom saw big money. Ivy knew she would have to kiss a lot of frogs before finding a prince if there were actually any princes left out there.
She loved writing, and it occupied her dreary hours at home. She had stories to tell and would keep it up as long as her fingers continued to work, or until her mind gave out.
In Ivy’s mind, getting rich and famous was not as important to her as having her work become popular with readers. Like most fledgling authors, Ivy fantasized about her books becoming feature films someday, but she tended to be a realist and knew that was more than likely a fantasy.
Carl roused at her side. “You writing, baby?” He stretched and yawned. “You writing about my amazing sexual prowess?”
“Just answering some e-mails.”
“Any good news?” He threw his bare legs over the edge of the bed, stood, and walked into the bathroom.
“I got an e-mail from one of those literary agencies I queried in New York. They wanted to see the first three chapters.” Ivy shut down and closed her laptop.
“That’s great, baby,” he said over the flushing of the toilet. “Maybe you’re on your way to being able to support me in the style to which I could become accustomed.” He laughed and trudged back to the bed. “What are you going to do?”
“I sent them the first three chapters of both manuscripts. I’m not going to hold my breath, though.”
“Don’t be that way, baby.” He leaned over and pecked her on the cheek. “You’ve been hoping for just this sort of opportunity for as long as I’ve known you. Be positive.” He rolled over and pulled the light blanket up over his shoulders to settle in for the night.
7
Carl did indeed have a big day planned for them. After a hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant, they piled into the Lexus and began driving all around the wooded countryside. They met two different realtors who showed them several properties.
A condo on the lake with a private boat dock particularly impressed Carl. Ivy wasn’t as impressed. Its decor was ultra-modern, and it turned her country stomach. The art on the walls looked as though it had been done in a preschool, and Ivy thought the abstract metal sculpture would have received a failing grade in any welding class.
Carl tried to look nonchalant, but Ivy could tell he was very taken with the beautiful view of the boats on the lake and the surrounding green mountains.
“Lovely view,” Ivy said as she took his hand at the wide window overlooking a set of fast boats pulling water skiers. “Noisy, but nice.”
The realtor regaled them with the opportunities the private dock below offered and how much they’d enjoy visiting here while others suffered the hot summers in Arizona.
Ivy walked away to look at the tiny kitchen once more and asked if she could use the bathroom. The heavy, balding realtor told her yes, and she went into the even tinier guest bath. When she came out, she made a point of going to stand by the door to let Carl know she’d seen enough.
They went on to one other condo that Ivy saw more potential in but was still not bowled over by. After the condos, they traveled down some narrow asphalt roads to look at hunting properties and cabins. Eventually, they drove up to the little log cabin that had been pictured with the dog on the green lawn.
The lawn was overgrown now, and there was no dog. Ivy found the setting quite picturesque with the tall oaks, maples, and sweetgums salted with shorter dogwoods and redbuds amongst the trunks of the bigger trees. Ivy could imagine the beauty in the spring when the shorter trees would be in full bloom. Behind the cabin, Ivy could see a fenced area where someone once maintained a vegetable garden and a small glassed-in greenhouse for starting plants.
A flagstone walk led from the gravel drive to the green tin-roofed porch, fronting the entire cabin. A wooden porch swing suspended by rusty dog chains hung at the far end of the long porch.
“It’s charming,” Ivy whispered to Carl as he helped her up the railed wooden steps.
“I knew you’d like this one,” he whispered back and gently rubbed the small of her back as she turned and glanced around at the green countryside beyond the cabin.
The charm continued inside with a substantial river-rock fireplace, weathered pine planking on the floors, a deep ceramic farm-sink, and a retooled antique cooking stove in the roomy kitchen. Ivy thought she’d been transported back a hundred years to a nineteenth-century pioneer’s homestead. She fell in love with the rustic cabin at first sight.
Less impressed, Carl asked about plumbing, wiring, emergency services, and zoning codes. Ivy thought he was looking for an excuse not to be impressed. Ivy, however, could find none.
The realtor tried some pressure tactics when he thought they might be buyers, telling them he had two other offers on the property. Carl ignored this ploy and continued out to the utility room where a washer and dryer sat next to an old galvanized washtub set up as a deep sink for prewashing. A clothesline with wooden pins still clipped to it swung in the light breeze beyond the back door.
“How much is this one listed for?” Carl asked as they stepped back out onto the front porch. A pickup came bouncing up the road. The driver honked and waved as he passed.
“One seventy-five,” the realtor replied, “but I think they have offers up to two twenty-five already. It’s a good property for summer rentals, especially if you fit it with bunks in the two bedrooms and a sleeper sofa in the living room. A person could set it up to rent out to as many as six or eight.”
“Not with only one bath,” Carl huffed.
“Another bath could be added easily enough off the second bedroom.” The realtor shrugged.
“Is this on a well and septic or city utilities?” Ivy asked.
“A good sweet well that taps right into the local aquifer and a septic tank that’s been pumped regular. The house is only twenty years old.”
“Hmm.” Ivy nodded and sat in the porch swing. “How far is it from the river? Any flooding problems in the area? I noticed some washed-out areas along the road as we drove in.”
The realtor gave her an odd look but pointed toward the south. “It floods some down that way in the spring, but never up this far, and if it does, the roads are usually clear to drive through in a matter of a few hours.”
The realtor cleared his throat and tried to change the subject. “The river everyone uses for tubing passes three miles from here. That’s why this place would be perfect for advertising in sporting and vacation magazines. It’s close to the tubing station on the river and the lake.”
“No problems with pesticide runoff into the aquifer then? I see lots of bean fields around here,” Ivy persisted.
“No, ma’am, most of the farmers use the GMO seed now and don’t need to use pesticides.”
Ivy stood and joined Carl walking toward the car. She took his hand, and he squeezed it warmly, giving her a wink and an appreciative smile.
“Thanks for your time,” Carl told him. “I have your card, and we’ll be in touch.” They got into the car and left the realtor standing in the knee-high grass, looking disgruntled.
“He thought he had a sale.” Carl smirked. “Those were some good questions about the groundwater and flooding. Really threw
him off his game.”
“He didn’t expect educated questions from a silly woman, I suppose.” Ivy chuckled as she buckled her seatbelt. “Typical chauvinist prick.”
“Yes, exactly.” Carl glanced at her, but Ivy thought she saw a spark of newfound respect in his bright blue eyes. “Did you like that place? It sort of looked like every cowboy cabin you write about right down to the wood-burning cookstove in the kitchen.”
“The only thing missing was the smelly outhouse, but we could build one of those.” Ivy laughed, bent, and took two bottled waters from the cooler at her feet. “You liked the condo on the lake better, didn’t you?”
“As an investment, but not to live in myself. The condo with the private boat slip is a perfect investment property here. It has three bedrooms, two baths, and could be set up to accommodate as many as ten fishermen.”
“It would take a long time to get a return on your investment at almost half a million.”
“Not really, a place like that would rent for up to three grand a week, and with the proper promotion, you could probably keep it full for twenty weeks a year. It would pay for itself in a couple of years with good management.”
“You’d have to find a good local management company.”
“Or move here and manage it myself.”
“What?” Ivy asked, looking at him aghast. “You’d leave Arizona?”
“I spend most of the summers away from Arizona now. I thought we might spend three seasons here and the winters back in Arizona. This would be a nice central base of operations for my other properties, and we both like the area.” Carl took out a cigar and lit it.
“We?” she asked, stupefied, and took a long drink of her water.
“You’re always complaining about not having a steady income,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I thought I could set you up in an office here, and you could take reservations and arrange for cleaning and stuff. I’d pay you a salary.”
It made her happy that he was thinking of her, but it surprised Ivy that Carl would think she’d be willing to simply pick up and move at the drop of a hat.
“It’s certainly something to think about.” Ivy took another long pull on the water bottle.
Who the hell does he think he is? Who the hell does he think I am? He thinks I’m some desperate, needy woman who’ll just drop everything in her life to move to the sticks and clean his rental properties.
8
Their return trip to Arizona proved to be quiet and uneventful. The weather remained clear, and the Lexus had no problems. Ivy found herself counting down the miles as they got closer to the valley and was happy to drop onto her comfy sofa and cuddle with Cheshire when she finally got home a week and a half after leaving with Carl for Tulsa.
Strained conversations had peppered their trip back, and Ivy could tell she’d confused Carl with her long silences. He’d made her a generous offer of employment and an opportunity to spend more time with him. Carl must have assumed that was what Ivy wanted and could not understand her pensiveness and lack of gratitude.
“I’ve obviously insulted you somehow,” Carl said after he dropped her bags on the floor in her bedroom. “It’s certainly not what I intended.”
“I’m not insulted, sweetie.” She reached for his hand as he passed her on the couch. “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t know that I want to pick up and move to Missouri without giving it some very careful thought.”
“Well, of course, you don’t. You need to talk it over with your family, and you’ve got this place.” He swept his hand to indicate her apartment. “When is your lease up here?”
She thought for a minute. “Four months, but the new management company told us we could break the lease as long as we gave them a thirty-day notice. They have a long waiting list for tenants here.”
“That’s good. It will take some time to get the financing settled on the condos anyhow.”
“Condos as in both the units we looked at?” Ivy asked with a raised eyebrow.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he said, grinning. “They both have the same potential, and the second one was considerably less expensive than the first. The return on the investment would be quicker. I’m going to look into some reservation software I read about.
“I’ll e-mail you the info, and you can check it out, and if you don’t mind, contact some of those magazines I stuck in your bag about their advertising rates and packages. Check out the ads in them and see if anything appeals to you. You’re a writer. I bet you can come up with some great ad copy to attract renters.” He bent and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He left her sitting with her mouth open.
I feel like a damned secretary already, and we haven’t even talked about a salary yet. How long am I expected to do pro bono work before I start getting a paycheck? What the hell am I thinking?
Ivy stood, walked to her room, and began emptying her dirty clothes from the suitcases into her laundry bin. She stared at the mounting pile and knew what she would be filling her day with tomorrow. It would not be the study of software programs or advertising packages. That was for damned sure.
Ivy picked up the bundle of bass fishing and Ozarks vacation rental magazines and slammed them onto the top of her dresser but continued to pitch her clothes into the bin with mounting disgust.
He invites me on a trip and calls it a working vacation, dangles a home in the green mountains and a relationship under my nose, and hints at a salaried position along with a pile of work. Mom always said that rich men didn’t get rich by passing their cash around freely. She also said no man would buy the cow if he was already getting the milk for free. Maybe I should have paid closer attention to Mom after all.
Feeling disgusted with herself and her choices of late, Ivy stripped and stomped to her shower. Maybe a long, hot soak would clear her head. She stood under the hot spray and let it wash her tears down the drain. She allowed the hot, steamy water to soak away her aches, both mental and physical. Ivy stood basking in the shower until the water began to cool. She finally turned off the water, stepped out onto the rug, and grabbed a towel. She wrapped her dripping hair in one and her curvy body in another.
Back in her room, Ivy plugged in her laptop and pulled up her documents file. She opened her latest manuscript and began rereading her last few chapters, editing as she read. She always found small mistakes this way; missed words, wrong words, or continuity issues.
After midnight she saved her work and logged off. Ivy thought about giving her e-mail a quick check but thought better of it and turned off the machine. It had been a long, tiring day at the end of a long, tiring week. She glanced from the stack of magazines with their promise of a new and unknown future with Carl back to her laptop with all her hours of work and the yet unfulfilled promise of a future as an author.
I should be realistic. I’m nearly sixty years old. What sort of future do I really have as an author? If I go to Missouri with Carl, I can still write and possibly have the relationship I’ve been hoping for with him.
Ivy closed the machine, set it aside, and fell back onto her pillows. Once he knew the coast was clear and Ivy was no longer working, Cheshire jumped up onto the bed and curled up next to her, purring softly. Ivy dropped her hand to his soft fur and kneaded his belly. He caught her hand with his clawed paws and began biting at her fingers, encouraging her to continue. She did but soon fell asleep to the soft rhythm of his purring.
The next day found Ivy covered up in the dirty laundry. Her apartment smelled of Tide, Downy, and dryer sheets by the middle of the afternoon when she finally put away the last load and opened her laptop for the first time that day. Ivy went into her e-mail file and was surprised to see something from the Strider Literary Agency already. It had only been a week since she’d sent them the requested chapters, and she hadn’t expected more than the cursory automatic ‘we got your submission’ response.
Ivy eagerly pressed the key to open the mail.
&nb
sp; Ms. Chandler,
We are happy to inform you that your opening chapters have been well received by our review committee, and they would like to see your two completed manuscripts. If the rest of the manuscripts are as impressive as the opening chapters, I believe we will be able to offer you representation. With that in mind, I am attaching a copy of our standard agreement for you to familiarize yourself with.
We look forward to seeing your manuscripts and possibly working with you as a promising long-term client.
Sincerely,
Janice Strider, President, The Strider Agency
Ivy popped open the attachment and read through the basic legal mumbo jumbo. What it boiled down to was the Strider Agency being entitled to fifteen percent of any profits her book made from royalties or movie rights the agency might arrange.
Ivy quickly hit reply, attached the document files of her manuscripts, and sent it off for their consideration with a hopeful heart. Could it really be this easy? She’d read about such things happening, and even one of the women in her weekly critique group had found representation and received a contract along with a sizeable check for one of her sword-and-sorcery fantasies. Ivy never really thought it would happen to her.
She came back to her senses. It hadn’t happened yet. She finished going through her mail, deleting most of it, and thought about doing a little work on her new manuscript. Instead, she opened her blog page and wrote four hundred words about how happy she was to have made it to round three of the Agent Acquisition Battle. She didn’t write anything about Branson.
Ivy dedicated her blog to her writing and generally didn’t bring up personal matters unless they had some connection to her writing life.
Later this week, she would be doing a podcast with a friend, and she intended to talk about the events in Tulsa as that story had been in the national headlines, and YouTube had been airing the storm damage non-stop. Her friend told her he could link to photos of the destroyed Clarion’s pool area as well as some of the news footage of Joanna and Carl’s interviews. No publicity was bad publicity, as the saying went. Ivy was happy to get all that she could. If getting caught in a tornado in Oklahoma could help her sell books about women in the Old West, she’d take it. She also took the time to send a letter to the Clarion people about the spineless manager and the heroic young woman at the hotel that night.
Promises: Do You Know Where the Poison Toadstools Crow? Page 5