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Whoa!

Sally busied herself with stirring more sugar into her already sweetened coffee while she attempted to appear cool, calm and collected.

“Um…well, I suppose that, um, a twenty percent cut sounds about right,” she said, hoping her voice sounded normal.

Max nodded.

“Especially considering that I’m about three-quarters of the way through the next book in the series and you doing all of these Jillian interviews will go a long way towards drumming up the sales numbers once I release it…”

That was a good point, Sally considered. A good twenty-percent point.

“Um…yeah, I see the logic behind that,” she said.

“So, we have a deal?” Max asked.

“Fine, we have a deal. Wait! On one condition!”

Max quirked an eyebrow, waiting.

“You let me get Tiffany’s phone number for you and you call her for a date!”

Max stared at her.

“Who’s Tiffany?” he asked.

Sally sighed.

“Our waitress.”

Max winced.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sally! You’re determined to send me to jail, aren’t you?”

“She’s twenty-three, you goof! Anyway, that’s the offer. Deal?”

Sally held out her hand expectantly. A moment later, Max took it and shook.

“Deal,” he grumbled.

Chapter 5

Later that afternoon, Amy was at home in her living room, sitting on her super comfy, incredibly-expensive-but-so-worth-it Italian leather sofa she bought last year, typing with her laptop on her lap. Even though it was only three p.m., she was already dressed in a favorite pair of flannel pajama pants and a cami top which clung to her small, round breasts. She had no plans to go out for the rest of the day. Her and Rachel had spent the morning walking the beach as far as the Oceanside pier and back—an easy 10,000-plus steps—and then had eaten lunch together at their favorite pizza spot. Now, she wanted to just be comfy and get some work done.

Amy was curre

ntly blogging about a lesfic novella she had started reading the day before and had just finished about an hour ago. It was not going to be a good review. She didn’t normally like to tear down the works of lesfic authors, but this one had been particularly bad. One of the risks of the ease with which writers could get their books published on Amazon’s Kindle was that a lot of really bad fiction was out there. And At Lynette’s Place was terrible.

Putting aside the plot holes, one-dimensional characters and sex scenes that were damn near impossible—Scissoring on an exercise bike? Really? What were they, acrobats?—the writing was awful! Amy was certain her seven-year-old niece had a better grasp of writing the English language. The writer had also managed to hit virtually all of Amy’s pet peeves, like using “of” when she meant “have”; “you’re” instead of “your” and using the non-word irregardless. What’s more, the author had trouble remembering that in some passages, there were two characters! During one sex scene, for instance, Lynette had not only kissed herself hungrily with lips tasting of strawberries but she had also sucked her own clit to a toe-curling orgasm.

If I could do that, I wouldn’t be looking for a girlfriend.

So, Amy was now feeling like it was her duty to the lesbian community to make sure no gay woman ever read At Lynette’s Place.

Her laptop pinged and a little notification window popped up. A new email had arrived. Clicking the notification, her Gmail account opened and when she saw who the email was from, Amy gasped and hurriedly took the laptop off her lap and placed it down on the coffee table as if the computer had suddenly become too hot to touch.

She sat super still on the sofa, her legs crossed, staring at the machine with wide eyes, hardly daring to breath.

The email was from Jillian Ashley.