Page 4 of A Cornish Winter’s Kiss

THREE YEARS LATER

There was something incredibly disconcerting about seeing a life-size cardboard cutout of yourself staring back at you.

Jude had never got used to having to walk past his in the foyer of his publisher’s offices, his blue eyes staring back at him and his thick, brown hair looking far more carefully styled than it did these days.

It was one of five cardboard cut outs, a rogue’s gallery of Foster and Friedmann’s bestselling authors.

There was something so creepy about them, and they made Jude cringe every time, except today the breath caught in his throat for another reason.

His cardboard cutout wasn’t there. It had been replaced by one of a woman he knew wrote romantasy, whatever the hell that was, and whose debut novel had only been out for two months.

She was standing in his spot, right next to Sophia Wainwright, whose cardboard cutout was sporting a large straw hat, obscuring most of her face, but he’d still recognise her anywhere.

For the last four years, he and Sophia had jostled for top spot as their publisher’s overall bestselling author.

Now it looked suspiciously like he wasn’t even in the top five any more, and he was almost certain he knew why his editor had asked him to come in for a meeting.

He wanted to address the downward trajectory of sales, and Jude had a horrible feeling he was about to be given some advice he didn’t want to take.

‘Jude, great to see you!’ Marty Daniels had been Jude’s editor for almost eight years, and over time they’d become pretty good friends. Whatever disagreements they might have had about his books, and they sometimes did, he’d always felt they were on the same wavelength.

‘Good to see you too, Marty.’ He shook the other man’s hand before taking the seat opposite him. ‘What have you done with my cardboard cutout?’

‘Ah, you noticed.’ Marty’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘I thought you always hated that thing.’

‘I do, but I know what it means; that I’m selling less than a debut author who writes books about having sex with dragons.’

‘That’s not what romantasy is.’ Marty shook his head. ‘And you know how it goes with debuts sometimes. They can be huge, but it doesn’t always guarantee ongoing success.’

‘Neither does writing fifteen bestselling crime novels apparently.’ Jude was well aware that he was being a bit of a dick, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

‘You said it yourself, your novels are still bestsellers, but I’m not going to lie. The sales are slipping and so are the reviews.’ Marty clearly wasn’t going to pull any punches. ‘And I think we need to look at the plans for the next book in the DCI McGuigan series.’

‘What do you mean, plans for the book?’ Jude was almost at the end of the third book in his new series, and it had been years since he’d had to pitch a novel, or even run the idea past his editor before he started.

Marty trusted him to produce the goods, or at least he had done. ‘Do I need to speak to Adele?’

Adele James was the marketing manager for Jude’s books, and the three of them met at least once a quarter to review how things were going, but when he thought about it now, they hadn’t met for almost six months.

‘I’ve already spoken to her.’

‘You had a meeting without me?’ Jude’s scalp prickled.

It had always felt as if Adele and Marty had his back and that they were a team, in it together to make his career a success.

He’d been offered his first publishing deal with Foster and Friedmann despite being taken on by an agent who’d turned out to be a fraud.

Jude had never felt the need to get another agent as a result.

It meant Marty and Adele were his entire support system, and if they were talking about him behind his back, that couldn’t be good.

‘No, nothing like that. We were at a launch party together, for one of the authors Adele looks after, and we just talked about what we thought might be going wrong.’

‘Going wrong?’ Jude couldn’t seem to stop parroting back what Marty was saying.

‘Look, we’re all on the same side here, we all want Jude Cavendish and the Cole McGuigan series back there in the number one spot, but you have to acknowledge that the series is losing readers, and the reviews give a clear indication of why.

They’re not investing in McGuigan’s story because the character arc has flatlined.

Grizzled cops with a divorce behind them and whose only meaningful relationship is with alcohol are a bit of a cliché.

This is your second series and I think readers expect more of DCI McGuigan than to be a replica of the lead character in your first series.

When you wrote the first book in the new series it looked like they were going to get something different, but his story has stalled.

Readers need to feel invested in his life, not just the murder cases he’s working on.

The feeling is the stories have become what some readers are calling “unrelentingly downbeat”.

We need something to balance all the murders out, and to achieve that I really think McGuigan needs a personal life people care about. ’

‘Let me guess, you want him to fall in love.’

‘The readers do. It’s what most people want in life, Jude, and they want it for the characters they’re invested in too.

They want to see McGuigan finding something to keep him going when everything around him has gone dark, otherwise they’ll lose interest. It’s just one disturbing murder after another.

’ Marty sighed. ‘You’re a brilliant writer, Jude, it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to add that aspect in. ’

‘And what if I don’t want to?’ There was no what if about it; Jude definitely didn’t want to do it.

‘Then I think this will have to be the last book in the series. We could move on to something fresh instead, to see if that re-engages the readers we’ve lost, but…

’ Marty didn’t finish the sentence; he didn’t have to.

There were no guarantees in the world of publishing, and an author was only ever as good as their last book.

Jude was signed to one of the biggest publishers in the UK – it had been a dream come true when they’d offered him his first contract – and yet here he was, seriously considering walking away from them because he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, write his character a meaningful relationship.

‘I’m already most of the way through the story.’ Jude crossed his arms over his chest, defensiveness creeping into his body language as well as his tone.

‘I can look at that with you, see where we could add in this aspect of McGuigan’s storyline. It doesn’t all need to play out in this novel, but there needs to be enough promise of a relationship to keep the readers coming back for more.’

‘No.’

‘Look, Jude, I really think you should?—’

He cut Marty off before he could finish. ‘I mean I want to do this on my terms. If I’ve got to give McGuigan some kind of love interest, I at least need to feel I’ve done it my way. I’ll go back over what I’ve done and see where I can weave it in.’

‘Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, but it needs to feel authentic, and you could do worse than look at the work of some of our authors whose books focus on relationships.

’ Marty pushed his glasses up his nose, an earnest look in his eyes as he slid a book across the table towards Jude.

‘This is Sophia Wainwright’s latest. The most recent book in her Goodwill Cove series has been our number one best seller this year. ’

‘I don’t read romance.’ Jude couldn’t stop his lip from curling slightly as said the word, and he didn’t move to pick up the book Marty had slid towards him.

He only had to see the covers of those kinds of books to feel irritated.

They brought back too many memories of sharing his flat, and his life, with a woman who’d claimed to believe that anyone could live happily ever after if they wanted to.

The trouble was, the characters in those books were never ordinary people; they sold a dangerous fantasy that real people, living real lives, could never live up to.

Jude certainly hadn’t been able to, not in Mia’s eyes anyway.

Now, when he saw someone reading books like that on the Tube, he couldn’t help wondering if they really believed in all that sickly-sweet happy ever after stuff, where love conquered all.

Somehow, he doubted it, and he knew first-hand what a load of crap it was.

Love didn’t conquer all, and it was never unconditional either; there were always caveats. Lots of them.

‘Well, maybe it’s time to try.’ Marty shrugged. ‘Switching up the genres you read might help freshen up your writing. It can’t do any harm, and what’s the worst that could happen?’

‘I could end up splashed across the papers for murdering my editor in cold blood.’ Jude raised his eyebrows, and for the first time Marty’s smile reached his eyes.

‘Oh, and what would your weapon of choice be? We must have seen nearly all of them across your books.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a murder where the victim was beaten to death with a romance novel.’ Jude’s tone was deadpan and he tried not to question what it was about him that made the idea of that storyline so much more appealing than giving his lead character a successful relationship.

‘I don’t think we have seen that yet.’ Marty was still smiling, but then he fixed Jude with another of his ‘this-is-no-joke’ looks. ‘Are you confident you can you still deliver the first draft by January?’

‘Once I’ve read this it should be a piece of cake.’ Jude picked up the Sophia Wainwright novel gingerly, as if it might suddenly grow teeth and bite him. ‘After all, how hard can romance writing be? The plot’s the same in every single one of these things.’