The write way for love, p.1
The Write Way for Love, page 1
The Write Way For Love © 2023 by Brooklyn Dean.
The excerpt from The Insufferable Adam James © 2023, Brooklyn Dean.
The rights of Brooklyn Dean, as the author of the Work, has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
First published by Wattle Tree Press, Australia, 2023
Apart from use permitted and sanctioned by the author, under Australian Copyright Law, this publication may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without permission from the author. For permissions, contact the author at www.brooklyndean.com
This is a work of fiction. The story described herein is not a statement of fact and should not be taken as such. With the exception of public figures mentioned, who appear in this novel in a purely fictitious manner, any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. The characters, settings, dialogue and incidents are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real.
The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author's.
The Write Way For Love
Cover: Melody Jeffries Design
Editor: Sue Copsey
ISBN: 978-0-6456910-2-3 (print)
ISBN: 978-0-6456910-3-0 (ebook)
For all the quirky people with a
wonderfully cheesy sense of humour
Content Warnings
Dear Reader,
The Write Way for Love was inspired by my love of puns, cheesy rom coms, and my friend Rachel’s intense dislike of feet. You will find food puns and foot fetish jokes within.
While this story is intended to be a light-hearted, feel-good romance (usually soft and fluffy by the mere nature of the genre,) it does contain some potentially sensitive topics you might like to be aware of.
Please be advised that The Write Way For Love contains:
instances of familial violence and bullying (on and off page), crude humour and language (AKA Australian English) and clowns. Also ‘open door’ scenes, sexualised talk, and the word ‘moist’.
Authtor's Note
This book is best paired with beer and snacks, or a white wine and cheeseboard selection. Unless you’re lactose intolerant. In that case, please – for the love of everyone in your immediate vicinity – DO NOT EAT THE CHEESE!
For a holistic reading experience, I have created a Spotify playlist for you to listen to as you read. Scan the QR code to start listening.
Lastly, thank you for being here. You are intelligent, very good looking, and have an excellent sense of humour if you’ve made it this far. I hope you enjoy Sam and Anita’s story.
I’ll meet you back in Moonshine soon!
Contents
Prologue
1. The Witch
2. Dirt Perve
3. Cirque de Feeling
4. Homework
5. Dealing with the Devil
6. The Knight’s Court
7. S.O.S.
8. Family is ...
9. The Ringmaster
10. Truth or Dare
11. Driving Me Crazy
12. Jump Rock
13. Four Small Words
14. Anatoli’s
15. White Picket Fences
16. Boo
17. Best Laid Plans
18. Wishes
19. Team Romeo
20. Where The Heart Is
21. Fast Cars, Fast Women
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Sneak Peak
Free ebook
About The Author
Review
About the Publisher
Prologue
Dear Diary,
Shit. Do people even write that anymore? Dear Diary. Bleh. It feels so cliché. Who cares though, right? This is my journal, so I’ll do what the damn doctor suggests and just get the words out.
Dear Diary,
Wanna know what’s hard to do? Write a novel. An even harder thing? Cook up a sequel. My first book just spewed out of me. Writing ‘Heat in the Kitchen’ was so organic, and I never looked back to my old job at Beauford’s Catering. The Covid lockdown meant I lost that job anyway – not that I enjoyed the hospitality industry. I spent more time daydreaming about the food and nibbling its edges into immature phallic shapes than priding myself on customer service and cleanliness.
Writing was the only job I’d wanted since I was five, so when old Marty Beauford gave me the flick, I decided to sample the creative lifestyle. Writing that novel (with a healthy side of daytime cooking shows) made me feel something deep. Something I hadn’t felt before. Pride or some shit, maybe? Like it was ‘my calling’ or whatever? Predestination? I don’t know. But it was good. Like, drunk on love and whiskey good. Writing ‘Heat’ was organic.
Flagpole Publishing – a major player in the romance world – signed me. A publicity wizard started a TikTok account under my pseudonym, Sammie Hart. The world was still reeling from the global pandemic, so in-person meetings weren’t on the table. That was fine by me. It made hiding my identity easy. I did a few online interviews using a blurry, sexless silhouette figure, composed text responses to predetermined questions, and a filtered voice-over to disguise the fact that I am, in reality, a dude.
Somehow, I went viral. Not in a gross, sexually transmittable way, but in the New Age Internet-Famous sense. Like, people recognised that silhouette and went, “oh, that’s Sammie Hart!” How weird is that? It was a blob. Nothing like me. Not at all.
The amazing corner of the internet known as #BookTok rapid-boiled ‘Heat’ until it skyrocketed into a hit. Like, how did that even happen? People actually ENJOYED my spicy food-pun-riddled word vomit? Shit yeah! My dream manifested into a delicious reality.
For the past year, no one’s seen my face, or knows my real identity. Except for my publisher. And my best mate, Reece. Oh, and Grandma Edith, bless her. Keeping a low profile as a penis-packing romance writer has been pretty easy … until now.Now, they want book #2. And I am FREAKING THE SHIT OUT!
Last time, it was like a jack in the box. It just popped out. The book I mean, not my dick. It was like an ejaculation I couldn’t control. Now, I have no jack. There is no box. I have diddly squat happening in my creative brain. I need a muse. I need … shit, I don’t know. Something.
Reece says I need to get a life, have a wank, get a girlfriend. Whatever. I’d prefer to do ‘homework’ by watching those sappy daytime dramas and MasterChef. They inspired my writing and got me through it last time. Well, that and Sandra. She was there too, obviously. Until she wasn’t. Just like everyone else, she left me. Not that I have abandonment issues or whatever, but it hurts a little less when you expect the same old rejection. I can’t really blame Sandra. Not entirely. All that build-up, all through high school, then WHAM! Orgasmic sexual awakening. The world tilted on its axis. Sex and watching MasterChef became my life. And when I wasn’t engaging in those activities, I wrote about them. Our time together was … well … It’s like escargot – you never forget your first. But I ended up spending more time at my laptop trying to describe sex than I did actually doing it. Then, one day:
‘Bye, Sam, it’s been fun, what with the pandemic and all, but now we’re allowed out in society again, I’m moving out of your dingy one-bedroom flat and in with this burly, tattooed biker I met last night at the bar while you were preoccupied with fiction.
P.S. You’ll never get another girlfriend if you keep wallowing in your underwear, Samuel. Stop torturing yourself by eating cheese and then fart-bombing the flat. Lactose intolerance is not attractive’.
Yeah, I know right? Ouch. She’s kind of right, I suppose.
I don’t know for sure that he was a burly biker, but in my head, the dude she’d chosen over me was my opposite in every way, so the biker image comes pretty close. Who wants a gangly nerd with ‘olive-oil’ hair? Not Sandra, who coined that not-so-delicious description. Not anyone else in Moonshine. I’d never had luck fishing this pond.
At least she left before ‘Heat in The Kitchen’ went from ‘manuscript’ to ‘millions of copies sold’. Before the mysterious silhouette, before those page-flipping quote reels, before the frisky food-and-book-loving cyber world exploded.
Sandra never saw the fruits of my labour. She knew I spent an inordinate amount of time scribbling in notebooks, on napkins, and covering faded receipts with new ink. That was her sum knowledge of my ambition. She hadn’t even cared WHAT I was writing, just that the scratch of my pencil – I know, I’m old school – kept her up at night. Cohabitation in small spaces, with a guy who wrote about food rather than eating it, shrunk the apartment.
Thinking back, numerous red flags waved, signalling relationship doom. If my passion irked her, that wasn’t an indication of long-lasting love. Whatever. I’m nobody’s first choice, I get that. No one sticks around for losers who prefer love stories to real life and overuse food-related puns in everyday dialogue.
I spent lengthy periods inside my head instead of inside her, and it put me on the outer. So, she hopped on that mountain of hairy muscles and roared away on his Harley. Ironically, it was at sunset. I hope they’re happy. Really. Maybe.
With Sandra gone, I was in a weird situation. I had no lover, but the love story I’d worked hard at was my life, and it demanded more from me than she ever had. Within what felt like moments, I became the ‘hottest debut author of the year’.
They all assumed I was a chick. Probably because I’d penned a sweet pseudonym. And I’ll admit it to you, and you alone, Dear Diary. I’m drunk. Really, really drunk. And I hate how I’ve turned out like my dad, drinking nightly.
But not only that, I have to admit it – I am Sammie Hart. Samuel Harthrup is Sammie Hart, the romance writer of your wet dreams. And I need to vomit.
I need to write a sequel.
I need the cash.
What kind of dude writes romance novels anyway?
Shit.
The Witch
Sam
“It is my professional opinion, as your doctor and best friend for life, that you need to leave this flat. And shower.” Reece’s nose crinkled as he clinked beer bottles with Sam, shimmying to the other end of the couch. “Dude, you need to get out of your own head. You’ve been trying to write this book for, what, a year now? A change of scenery would do you good.” Reece took a long swig before retreating to the other brown leather sofa. “Seriously though, shower.”
Since Doctor Dickhead had started enforcing the ‘we only drink socially’ rule, Sam’s productivity had improved, if not his mood. Huffing the air from his lungs, Sam launched his pencil toward the wall.
“Why isn’t this working?” The beer slid cool and heavy down his throat. Ah, that’s the stuff.
“What? The romance thing? I dunno, maybe because you haven’t had a date since high school?”
Reece was technically right. It had been a long time, and the date he referenced hadn’t gone so well. Sam had been seventeen and sweating like a mountain goat in that darkened cinema. Wait, do goats sweat? The way they clung on to sheer cliffs, hundreds of feet off the ground, they had to, right? If not from a fear of extreme heights, then surely from the exertion of gripping onto inch-long ledges with only hooves and teeth? If I was a mountain goat, I would have been shitting bricks in that situation. Sam mentally scribbled out that analogy.
Regardless, Sam had been seventeen and sweating – profusely – when his anxiety-induced vomiting struck Breanna Henderson’s new Doc Martens suddenly. The mellifluent splash – and the horrified shriek that followed – drew embarrassing, unwanted attention. It had been chunked with popcorn and alarmingly red from the raspberry Fanta bubbling in his gut from too-fast consumption. The night had ended in tears (his), reflexive gagging (hers) and a mutual agreement that their evening had never happened. Breanna was the bubbly, outgoing sort of girl who spoke to anyone and everyone like they were long-lost best friends, but Sam and Breanna had never spoken again. To this day, Sam insisted he’d never been to the Moonshine City Cinema, or seen Star Wars. Which one? Sam had no idea. The whole franchise had been off-limits since The Unfortunate Date. Reece couldn’t even convince him to sit through that scrolling, shrinking text intro.
Then there had been Sandra. She had swept him off his feet the week after graduation, admitted to long-time pining, introduced him to alcohol, despite his insistence that he didn’t want to drink it, then kept him in bed for weeks. They’d never ‘dated’, as such, but Sam had been so inspired by the experience that she’d moved in. He winced now, thinking of it. The faster the fall into bed, the harder the fall out of it, it seemed. Sex with Sandra had been a total inspiration though, his writing increasing tenfold. Lockdown happened, and he completed an entire novel.
“Also, maybe the romance genre is just a chick thing, you know,” Reece continued. “Last time I checked, you were a dude. Not that I’d judge if you went another way.” He threw his hands up in defence as Sam threw the blank notepad at his face. “Just saying, I’d love ya no matter what. BFFs for life.”
Sam raised his beer in a toast, mumbling thanks.
Reece resumed. “It’s just that women seem more medically pre-disposed to writing romance books. Not being sexist or anything, you can do anything you set your mind to. I think it’s just an uphill battle, you know? I mean, you do already have one book. Isn’t that enough?”
Ah yes, the one book. The worthless 81,356 words, bound forever in the pages of Heat in the Kitchen, Sammie Hart’s debut novel. The book inspired by sex. The surprising hit to which, for whatever reason, he’d been unable to add a sex scene. Not because he completely lacked inspiration – Sandra had been very inspirational at the time – but because he’d cringed through all the descriptions and synonyms for body parts, and describing the act was just too … icky. That wasn’t a particularly masculine word, but it was how it felt. He’d cringed when writing intimacies, so had shied away, covering the awkwardness with MasterChef-inspired sexy food puns and humour.
Readers had gone wild for Heat, labelling the ‘heat’ of the book with fanciful food-related terms like ‘slow burn,’ ‘sizzle’ and talk of ‘spice,’ despite its lack of actual sex scenes. It had been excellent PR, according to Flagpole Publishing. Sam and Reece had laughed for hours at the reviews, preferring the more masculine, cinematic descriptions of ‘fade to black’ over the rest of the romantic guff. That was then. Now, instead of praise from the publisher, there were only increasingly short emails from the Flagpole Publishing editorial team who passive-aggressively requested updates on his latest manuscript. Just thinking about the long list of unanswered emails in his inbox made Sam sink further into the couch.
“But if you want it, you can do Book Number Two! Specific goals, man,” Reece said. Sam watched his best friend wander into the kitchen, the most impressive space in the dingy little flat, ticking off words on his long fingers while searching for snacks. “Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Relevant. Timely–”
“Thanks, Doctor Smartarse, I do know what SMART goals are. I went to school, same as you, remember?”
“What I remember is a little dweeb a few grades below me, who desperately wanted to bang my little sister.” Reece picked up a life-sized plushie of Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjolnir, from the marble benchtop and threw it at his friend’s head. Sam ducked, the full force of Reece’s homebrew hitting behind his spectacles. The room swum and shifted. He felt the familiar guilt rise in his gut, mingled with the underlying anger that always accompanied a hangover. I am not my father, he affirmed, pushing the feelings down and grinning wickedly at Reece, desperate to distract himself.
“Yeah, well, grades and ages don’t matter so much when the school’s so small that everyone ends up lumped into the same classes. Plus, your sister’s hot. Everybody wanted to tap that.” Sam knew he was pushing a big red ‘Do Not Go There’ button.
“Dude, she’s got three kids now.”
“There’s an acronym for hot mothers, you know–”
“Don’t,” Reece warned.
“I think it’s spelled … M –”
Reece left the kitchen, eyes thin as sugar snaps.
“I –” Sam grinned, adding “L” as he retrieved Mjolnir from the floor, tapping it into his open palm a few times, testing it’s plushie weight. For a heartbeat, the world froze. Time stopped. “F!”
The room exploded into action. Reece jumped the sofa, his long legs swooping, knocking Sam to the floor. A tan-cotton-clad knee pressed into his chest, pinning him to the crumb-infested carpet. Kneeling over his prey, Reece pulled Thor’s mighty hammer from Sam’s grasp, pounding him repeatedly until he got an, “I give!”
Reece slid off, just as Sam released the wind that had been gurgling in his stomach. A loud fart echoed through the flat.
“RANK!” Reece’s hand flew to his mouth and nose as he jumped backwards across the room, trying not to laugh but failing miserably. “Dude,” he cried, chuckling and attempting to hide a rather impressed expression. Sam felt like patting himself on the back. “Lactose intolerance is not a joke! Stop it with the dairy!”
“Pretty funny to me.” Sam settled, arms hanging wide across the couch cushions, basking in the stench. Within seconds Reece was at the door, yanking it open to flood the room with fresh air and light. Sunlight bounced off the grey walls and took a little depth from the stale flat. Sam hissed like a vampire at the sudden brightness. Mjolnir zoomed through the air and struck his temple. Somewhere in the distance a kookaburra laughed, and Sam felt betrayed by nature itself, mocking him.
