Don't Move Your Desk: Chapter Thirteen
In which it's best to avoid eye lasers
A summary for you on what to expect in this edition in case you want to scroll down to the interesting bits: TikTok shop; a vote for Serial Investigations; Chapter Thirteen of Don’t Move Your Desk; and the progress report with an update on my week-on-week sales and writing progress.
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I have a couple of things I’ve been thinking about.
The first is about the TikTok Shop. I’m close to being able to go live when I hit 1000 followers, and I’ve also been getting invites from TikTok to a) work with Shops to advertise their content and b) sell my own books on the Shop.
I’ve costed it up, and I actually think I could manage to create a special edition cover-foiled paperback of Don’t Move Your Desk (and possibly other titles) that would be not prohibitively expensive. I actually could make a small amount of profit from each sale. However, the risk involved is nothing like the risk on Amazon - which is sort of risk-free - because with TikTok Shop, you actually have to have the stock ready to send out. I’d have to print the books myself, which means an upfront payment. If I didn’t sell every single one, there would be no profit. I also have to figure out what happens when someone returns a delivery or asks for a refund with TikTok, as that could be a profit-wiper as well. I have plenty of disheartening experience with running a print magazine, and I know how tenuous it can be to exist when you have such a slim profit margin; one bad actor can push you to the brink of going out of business.
So, like I said, I’m thinking about it.
The second thing is about my progress report. I’m tempted to add in comparative figures for Serial Investigations, my previous series, buuut… I’m also worried the progress report is long enough as it is. There are 12 books + 2 novellas + 2 boxsets, so I’d be adding 16!!! lines to the report. Then again, I could also do a simple series summary with details for sales across the whole series (I wouldn’t be able to convert KU reads into full-book equivalents, but I could still record them).
I figured it could be interesting to compare my series before Substack and after Substack; gay romance mystery vs just gay romance; and eventually, when we’re far enough into series 2 that series 1 isn’t so important for weekly deep dives, I could shrink the whole of Crowhill Cove 1 into a series summary as well. Serial Investigations never sold as well as Crowhill Cove has, so the other part of it would also be showing off just how well, comparatively, each new series does.
It’s more work, so if no one cares, there’s no point in me doing it. As always, I thought I’d ask you!
As a quick reminder: this chapter will go behind the paywall 60 days after publication. Don’t miss the chance to read the next chapter for free by subscribing for email updates! Chapter four is now officially behind a paywall, where it will stay, so now is a great time to upgrade in order to avoid missing out. Plus, I may have something new coming this week for paid subscribers…
Okay, that’s it! On with the chapter!
Keaton
I adjusted my glasses, pushing them further up my nose, and stood outside the office doors. For the first time since starting here, I felt real fear about going inside. Not just nerves – fear.
Because we’d spent the entire day yesterday trying to get ahead of and fix the PR disaster that was Ridley Angus stumbling out of a club drunk, and I’d been sweating the entire time, absolutely sure that someone was going to figure out I had been there.
Once they figured that out, they were surely going to ask why. And if anyone got any kind of sense that I had been filming Ridley, then I was not only going to be fired. I was probably going to be sued.
It didn’t matter that the footage was filmed at a slight angle to mine: anyone with half a brain cell could figure out that I could have set up another phone on a tripod or simply held it out from my body at an angle to capture two videos at once. That was how close the shots were. Whoever had filmed Ridley and then leaked it must have been stood right next to me. Or, at least, maybe somewhere slightly behind and to my left. I hadn’t seen anyone – I’d been so focused on filming it myself.
Now I was kicking myself for not paying a lot more attention.
I swallowed and reached for the door handle, then hesitated again. I didn’t have to go in. This job was a fake, anyway. I didn’t really want to work here, not for the job itself. Being a secretary wasn’t on my list of dreams. I could just turn around and leave. Filming in secret was beginning to feel like too much of a risk, and if I wasn’t filming, I had no reason to be here. I could have been out there applying for real film jobs.
Although, it was pretty satisfying to insert things into Mr. Harvey’s calendar and make everything fit, like working on a puzzle. And it was fun organizing presentations and printouts for him so that everything was where he needed it. I didn’t even mind taking calls and emails for him. It made me feel useful. Being out of work so often as a filmmaker, that was kind of an unusual feeling. And this was a steady-paying job.
Simply being around Mr. Harvey, for all his surliness and one-syllable words, even felt like a treat.
I shook my head. The fact that my boss was hot as hell was not a good enough reason to stay working for him. But, still…
The whirr and click of the elevator behind me made me spring into action. Someone was about to see me just standing there staring at the door, and it wasn’t a good look. I instinctively reached out, pushed the handle, and stepped inside the office.
Well. Decision made, at least for today. It looked like I was staying.
I nodded and managed to fake a smile at Mr. Harvey, whose eyes went straight to my glasses. The corner of his lips…
Twitched.
Was he about to smile?
He looked back at the papers on his desk and I turned to close the office door, only to be confronted with the sight of the man who had stepped out of the elevator.
I looked straight into his chest – and then had to adjust my eyes to look up higher. And higher.
I didn’t need an introduction to know who I was looking at.
Caleb Coleman had played football for longer than Mr. Harvey had, and he’d grown more famous as a result. For a while, it had been hard to avoid news reports of how successful he was. Then, his retirement shocked the nation when it came so unexpectedly, making even more headlines. The injury had cut him down in his prime.
I’d know he was tall. I’d known he had one of the widest sets of shoulders I would probably ever come across. I’d known he was handsome, with close-cropped black hair that, like Mr. Harvey, he had never quite grown out.
I hadn’t realized he would be quite so imposing in person.
He wore a black suit with grey pinstripes and a pocket square that exactly matched the shade of his dark skin, and the overall impact was striking. More than anything, though, the thing that really struck me was the glare on his face – and the fact that it was aimed at me.
“Uh, sir,” I said, spinning around and hating the fact that my voice had come out in a squeak. I deliberately lowered it. “Caleb Coleman is here to see you.”
“I can see that,” Mr. Harvey said. There was a light hint of amusement in his voice still, but his face was completely flat. Coleman stepped into the room around me, almost pushing me aside, and I stumbled slightly to get out of the way.
“Harvey,” Coleman said, his voice rough, and then he took a breath – but hesitated. He looked around at me, sidling back to my desk, and frowned.
“Meet my new secretary,” Mr. Harvey said. There was an almost pleasant tone to his voice, but I had no doubt it had to be sarcastic. The rivalry between these two men was legendary, and I would have rather gone to hide than have to witness them interacting. Ace facing off with Brody Driver in the lobby had been enough. Now that both men’s bosses were doing the same, I was wondering if I would need to duck.
It would have been exactly the kind of thing that would be great for my secret footage, but after yesterday, I couldn’t work up the nerve to actually film it.
“He sits in your office?” Coleman asked, glancing back at me again as if he couldn’t really believe it.
“He does,” Mr. Harvey said. There was a kind of odd tension in his voice. Like he was hiding some extra meaning behind the words only for Coleman, a meaning that I couldn’t grasp. Were they hiding something from me because I wasn’t at their same level?
The idea of them having some kind of secret together sparked a strange jealousy to burn within my chest. So what if they did? They had known one another for a long time. They probably had all kinds of history together. It wasn’t anything to do with me.
But I didn’t have any in-jokes or private looks or memories I could draw on with Mr. Harvey. I hadn’t been working here that long, but it felt like maybe I wouldn’t get any no matter how long I worked here. I hadn’t had the impression that he was the type to let anybody in.
The fact that Coleman obviously had something with him, even if it was just years of mutual hatred…
I needed to stop caring so much. The idea of that shouldn’t hurt. I was just his secretary, and besides, I was on my way out of here already.
“Well,” Coleman said, turning to face Mr. Harvey with his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants. “I just came to make something clear to you. It looks like you can’t handle Ridley Angus. You’re making a mess of his image and ruining his earnings in the process.”
Something strange flitted over Mr. Harvey’s face – again, the ghost of a smile. Like he wanted to laugh but held himself back. “Is that so?” he asked. His tone gave nothing away.
“It is,” Coleman said. “And if you and that Ace Park can’t handle him, you should hand him over to us. The Coleman Group will be more than happy to take over his management. My star agent, Brody Driver, has already written up a proposal for him.”
Something else meaningful passed between Mr. Harvey and Coleman in the tilt of a head, the blink of an eye. I watched them with my mouth open. It was like watching an intense telenovela, but if your first language was Russian and you couldn’t even make a blind guess at what any of the characters were saying. Something was going on beneath their words, but I had no idea what it was.
Was it just posturing? Or something more?
“Get out of my office,” Mr. Harvey said, managing to sound bored.
“Yeah, yeah,” Coleman said, shaking his head as if this was the worst tragedy he had ever seen. “Whatever you say, Harvey. But one day I’m going to buy your little firm and make this my office, just to spite you.”
Mr. Harvey waved. Coleman snorted and sauntered out of the room, but not before shooting me a glare.
A curiously furtive glare, as if he was trying to figure out whether I’d understood the subtext.
All of this was starting to seem stranger by the minute.
The doors banged shut behind Coleman and Mr. Harvey went back to focusing on his screen as if nothing had happened at all. I thought, though, that I had seen a slight strain around the corners of his mouth, his eyes. Like he was worried. Maybe he really did think we were at risk of losing Ridley to the rival firm.
“Um,” I said. “Did you hear back from the sponsors, in the end?”
Mr. Harvey looked up at me in surprise. I wondered if he had forgotten I was here. “I did,” he said. He shook his head with disgust. “They called me just before midnight. As if to choose the most personal possible time.”
“Did you answer?”
Mr. Harvey sighed. “Of course, I answered.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
He stared back.
“What did they say?” I prompted at last. Clearly, he wasn’t going to give me anything unless I actually worked for it.
“The contract is hanging by a thread,” he said. “We need to come up with proof that Ridley was targeted.”
“How are we going to find that?” I asked.
Mr. Harvey gave a noncommittal grunt and turned back to his screen.
Great. So, he didn’t actually know. We were floundering in this – I could feel it.
And I could probably help, except I couldn’t admit it. As an actual eyewitness, I had a better vantage point than anyone in this office. I just couldn’t ever speak up about it.
I opened up my email inbox and started to see whether there were any urgent calls for interviews or things I needed to add to Mr. Harvey’s calendar. My phone buzzed against my desk and I looked down at it. A message from Clara.
Where were you last night? Did you actually come home?
Yes, sorry, I wrote back. The last couple of nights, you’ve been asleep by the time I got back and still asleep before I left. Lots of work stuff.
I was starting to think you were sleeping at the office!
My mouth quirked up in a smile in spite of myself. Clara was the best little sister anyone could ask for. She sounded more like my Mom with the way she worried about me. But since our Dad had done what he did, and Mom had taken his side instead of making him leave…
Well, it was just the two of us. And it was nice to know that I still had someone who would worry about me the way a Mom would, even if it had to be my little sister instead.
I’m not. I sneaked a furtive glance at Mr. Harvey, who wasn’t paying attention to me at all. But if he offered… I followed it up with a tongue-out-eyes-googly emoji and pressed send.
Across the miles between here and home, I could almost hear Clara snort and giggle.
I finished adding a meeting to Mr. Harvey’s calendar and then flipped to the next email.
“Sir, I’ve got a meeting request for next week, but it’s a bit late in the day,” I say. “It says eight in the evening.”
“Who is it from?” Mr. Harvey asked without looking up.
“It just says Crowhill Crows. Isn’t that your college team?”
Now he did look up, blinking at me. “You did your research.”
My phone buzzed on my desk and I resisted the urge to look down at it. “I wanted to know who I was working for.”
He snorted. “Reply that I’ll attend,” he said. “It’s a personal meeting.”
I nodded and went back to it, checking my phone quickly to see what Clara had said: Is Fernando at work? Have you seen him?
I saw him yesterday for about a minute but that’s it. We don’t really cross paths at work. Why?
I RSVP’d yes on Mr. Harvey’s behalf to the mysterious email address behind the calendar invite, then added it to his calendar.
I don’t know. He’s being kind of weird with me.
I picked up my phone to examine Clara’s last message closer. Was there trouble between them? I hadn’t seen her much this past week or so since I started working at the Harvey Group, but the last time we’d spoken properly, she had seemed loved-up.
“Are you looking for evidence of our saboteur on your phone?” Mr. Harvey asked.
I looked up at him, feeling like a startled deer in the headlights. I could feel heat creeping up my neck and onto my face. “Um, no.”
“Then put it down and do your work,” he growled.
I swallowed, made a show of very quickly turning off my phone screen and putting it face-down on my desk, and then glanced up at him.
He was still staring at me.
I opened the top drawer of my desk, threw my phone in, and closed the drawer.
He grunted and went back to his work.
I breathed a very-carefully-not-loud sigh of relief that he was no longer liable to fry me to death with his eye-lasers, and tried to focus on the press queries that had come in.
Not that it was easy. Every single one, without fail, was about Ridley Angus. Every opening question made me cringe.
Do you have a statement to make about reports that Ridley Angus is an alcoholic?
Will Ridley be dropping his sponsorship?
Are you expecting there to be any penalties from the NFL?
Does Angus have a drinking problem before or during games, or just on his off-time? Has he ever been drunk on the field?
I replied to all of them with a blanket statement, refusing to give specific comments and asking them to wait for announcements in due course, reminding them that Ridley was still one of the top athletes in his field and he would continue to concentrate on his sport. Mr. Harvey had carefully and expertly worded it to remind them that there was nothing wrong with Ridley’s age and that he was still a champion player, without actually giving any real hint of a response yet, given that we still didn’t know what our official response would be.
It took me a couple of hours to reply to them, with more coming in thick and fast as I tried to cover them all. By the time I was done, I felt like I’d climbed to the top of a pile of sand in an hourglass to haul myself into the top half.
Of course, tomorrow morning the hourglass would be tipped upside down and I’d have to start all over again.
“Keaton,” Mr. Harvey said, and it was such a precise pronunciation of my name that I found myself sitting straighter in my chair as I looked at him, like I was snapping to attention. “Go down the hall to Ace’s office. I want you working with him for the rest of the day.”
And just like that, everything seemed to crumble.
What had I done wrong now?
Here ends this week’s chapter! What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts below. I really appreciate your comments - what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’d like to see next.
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Progress Report
Note: Changes are in bold.
TOTAL SALES:
Don’t Move Out: ebook - 735, paperback - 7, KU pages read - 323,714 (238 pages = 1,360 equivalent full-book reads), free downloads - 2,324
Don’t Go Outside: ebook - 88, paperback - 6, KU pages read - 121,508 (222 pages = 547 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Fly Home: ebook - 52, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 74,863 (224 pages = 334 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Leave Town: ebook - 59, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 52,536 (299 pages = 175 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Check Out: ebook - 50, paperback - 2, KU pages read - 28,248 (192 pages = 147 equivalent full-book reads)
CC 1-5 Boxset: KU pages read - 11,540 (1,068 pages = 10 equivalent full-set reads)
WRITING:
Don’t Move Your Desk - written and edited fully, serialisation underway, all chapters queued up ready (7 ‘spare’ chapters with no set date)
Kiss The Cook cover revealed, ebook formatted and final draft done
Cook Up A Storm: loose plot done
(Books 8+): 8 covers, themes, and titles done, Crowhill Kitchen release schedule and titles announced, all Kitchen characters created and romances/interpersonal relationships between books set up
Subscribers: free - 48, paid - 2
Followers: 182 - Is it me or did it get much harder to find your follower count this week?
By the way, please like this post if you enjoyed it and would like to see more! This helps me decide what to do for future content.
XO Rhiannon
Eye lasers!!! Love it. This installment left me wanting more. Lots of questions, too. So much going on, looking forward to the next installment!