“But you need a hook,” he said. “A platform.”
acclaimed literary fiction that no one wanted to read, and then what happens? He comes up
audience loved it. They stayed silent as the proverbial grave while he read. Not a whisper,
“As you know, I’ve made a fortune telling stories about the occult and its practitioners,
evidence of a real-life, secret cult, a sinister organization which has preyed upon the young
plan to expose that cult and its leaders to the world.”
shaking. I glanced up. His round face was white, perspiring; he looked terrified.
a best-selling book. At the back of the room, however, stood a small group of young women.
Elvira: the Early Years. They appeared to be hissing at Savant.
The first Saturday of each month I had brunch with my mother, at the ancestral ruins
(an initial attempt to make a break for it). I’d learned to drive in the quiet surrounding
the fake open beams and poster of a boyishly grinning Robert Redford in The Natural.
“Darling,” Lisa gently protested when I could breathe again. “You shouldn’t talk with
The “why nots” were so many that I was speechless. The worst part of it all was that for
Seeing my moment of weakness, she moved in for the kill.
challenges of running a small business. “And when you talk about needing to expand, I
darling. Whereas this house is paid for free and clear.”
give in to whatever she wanted for me.
“Actually, I’m thinking of getting married.”
In the silence that followed her words, I heard one of the Christmas ornaments fall
through the branches of the ten-foot noble fir taking up a quarter of the dining room.