“I don’t like to sit still and you could use getting out and moving. If you don’t have any plans today, we can talk because I know you like to do that. You can tell me all about your process in writing, and then I’m going to show you simple exercises you can do each day.”
She smiled. “Sharing a little of ourselves with the other?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Unless you wanted to do something else?”
“No,” she said. “That is a perfect date. Let me go find a pair of sneakers.”
She jumped up and ran out of the room and up the stairs. He picked up her water and his and moved back into the kitchen to wait for her.
The noise she made barreling down the stairs a minute later made him laugh.
She had some antics to her movement, and he was pretty sure it was second nature to her.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yep. What is it you want to know?”
“How do you come up with your ideas for a story?”
“I have no idea,” she said, laughing. “Let’s go out through the garage and I can set the code to lock the house that way without having to carry a key with me.”
Once they were in her driveway, he asked, “How can you not know where your ideas come from?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “They just do. I can’t force it. I’ll be out in public and see someone do something really stupid and my mind will be like, what would happen if someone decked them for that move? Then the next thing I know, I’ve got this story building in my mind. I either run with it or ditch it.”
“You could build a story off of that?” he asked.
“Not a full one. Just a scene. But once I’ve got a scene, then I’ll try to figure out where the next one goes or how that started. Like maybe that jerk said what they did because their cousin is missing and they don’t know how to find them. I don’t know. I’m throwing darts as I talk now, but that is how my mind works.”
“I kind of follow. Do you know who your killer is going to be before you start?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “That’s the funny part. Or not always.”
“That’s crazy,” he said.
They were walking down the street now. They’d passed someone out mowing their lawn, but no one waved or looked at them.
He’d grabbed a baseball hat out of his SUV and put it on with his sunglasses.
Emma hadn’t said one word about it. She had sunglasses on her face too. He was pretty sure hers had more to do with keeping the sun out of her eyes rather than hiding who she was.
“I normally know a loose plot of my books. I know the main characters. The hero and heroine and what their personalities should be like. It doesn’t mean they don’t come off another way, and that is what I meant about them guiding the story. If they go too far off course, I have to backtrack and change things or let them flow. Depends on how good they are.”
She was laughing when she said that. “I’ll take your word for it. I bought one of your books when you left on Thursday night. I couldn’t put it down and finished it last night before bed.”
“You didn’t say anything last night,” she said. “Which book?”
“This is horrible, but I don’t remember the name. The first murder was in the kitchen. The hero was Detective Sloan. He saved Molly, the sous chef.”
Emma smiled. “Ahhhh,” she said. “Appetite For Murder. Grace helped me with that one over a year ago.”
“It’s only been out for about six months,” he said. “How long does it take for you to write a book?”
“I can write a novel in a month start to finish with edits and tweaks before it goes to my editor. I can draft a book in about two weeks, depending on how fast I get lost in it. But then I spend another two weeks going back through and tightening it up. That book went through my publisher, so they take longer. Their editor goes through it, they send it back for anything I’ve got to fix, then it could be a few more rounds before it’s ready.When I self-publish a book, it doesn’t take as long for me to get it out there.”
“What’s the difference?” he asked.
“About fifty-five percent in royalties,” she said, laughing.
