A summary for you on what to expect in this edition in case you want to scroll down to the interesting bits: special edition book thoughts; Chapter Seventeen 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 am currently losing my mind while trying to do calculations for how I could sell special edition foiled books and actually make money.
It’s been a long journey full of a lot of maths, which is my least favourite kind of… well, anything. I just really hate working with numbers. This doesn’t really make sense because I have OCD centered around numbers and spend almost all of my time counting things, which means I should probably love maths. But I don’t. Instead, I have dyscalculia. Go figure.
Anyway, I think I’ve just about managed to figure out a way of doing it that would be profitable. It wouldn’t be *very* profitable, unless I sold a huge amount of books, but it would be a little bit profitable. Right now, I’m deciding whether a) a little bit of profit is worth that much time and effort and b) whether I can afford to throw away the initial investment cost needed to set this up, in case I end up never selling a copy.
All the while as I’m deciding this, TikTok keeps throwing me livestreams and packing videos from a certain author who is doing VERY WELL on TikTok shop. This morning, I watched her sign the books for 150 orders. Some of those orders were for single books, but the vast majority were for a series - 3 books, 5 books, 6 books, or more. I figured after watching it that the average sale covers 3 books, allowing for both the extreme highs and lows of what I saw. That means she sold 450 books. Today. I’m not sure when her last live signing event was, but at the latest it was last Monday because I saw her live then. 450 book sales in a week would be… well, it would be enough profit to sustain my entire household, from the numbers I’m looking at right now. I could actually stop doing any other work whatsoever and just write books for TikTok shop if I was making that level of sales.
With my son starting nursery in a couple of months, thus giving us a couple of days a week when my husband would be able to help with things like packing orders and taking them to the post office, it’s getting to be quite tempting. But, of course, I need to be somewhat cautious about the fact that someone else’s success in a certain medium is not at all any guarantee of mine.
The thinking continues.
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Okay, that’s it! On with the chapter!
Keaton
“Jesus,” I said as I peered closely at Ace’s busted lip. It looked seriously painful. Blood was still oozing out of it, albeit at a snail’s pace. “He got you good.”
“No, he certainly fucking did not,” Ace snapped. He took the ice pack off me and pressed it against his lip, blood and all. He immediately winced at the press of the cold surface against his tender skin, but considering he was still clearly burning on a hot temper, I didn’t have as much sympathy as I might have.
I sighed. “What is it with you two? I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type to rise to someone like that.”
Ace groaned. “I’m not,” he said. His voice was slightly muffled by the ice pack, and he winced again as he spoke. “It’s just… Brody fucking Driver. I don’t know. He must have super asshole powers.”
I snorted.
He glanced at me. “Shut up,” he muttered. “You know what I meant. Not like that.”
“No, no,” I agreed, holding my hands up in surrender. “I just thought that a super asshole might be, you know…”
“If you add one single word to that joke I will make Harvey fire you,” Ace said sourly.
That dropped the smile from my face. I had to remember who I was talking to. Ace was my superior at work, after all. “Sorry,” I said quietly. I preferred to apologize and be humbled instead of losing my job. Not getting to work with Mr. Harvey anymore would be a fate worse than not being allowed to make jokes.
Not that I was supposed to want to work with him anymore. Damnit. I kept forgetting that I’d decided to try to get out of here.
“He wants you back with him,” Ace said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Mr. Harvey’s office.
Back with him. The words almost sent a shiver down my spine. I couldn’t deny that seeing Mr. Harvey wade in there and physically pull the fighters apart was… very masculine. Stirring, even. But I couldn’t think about that – especially not right now, right before I was about to go and see him again. I had to try and keep that out of my mind as much as possible. Locked up inside a separate room inside my head.
If I was ever going to look Mr. Harvey in the eye again without turning into an actual tomato, I needed to not think about how strong and powerful he was.
“Great,” I muttered, realizing Ace was still waiting for a response.
He gave a short laugh. “That bad, is it?”
I glanced up guiltily. There I went again, making myself incredibly fireable. “Oh, it’s not… I just…”
Ace shook his head with a wry chuckle. “I honestly thought you two would be a good fit for each other. Not just because you were the last candidate, but because you have things in common that he’s never had with a secretary before.”
It was my turn to laugh – incredulously. “We have nothing in common,” I told him. “I have very little knowledge of sports and certainly haven’t ever played any, I live with my sister in a tiny apartment which I’m sure is the exact opposite of his living situation, and I actually speak in sentences of more than five words. Plus, I don’t ever grunt when someone asks me a question.”
Ace shot me a sideways look. “Still,” he said. “You’re both gay. And you both have a thing for each other.”
I blinked at him. What? No. That was… “Are you sure Brody didn’t hit you in the head at any point?” I asked. “You might have a concussion. You’re the gay one.”
“We all are,” Ace said. He tilted his head at me. “All three of us. Why do you think he’s allowed me to carve out this niche with gay athletes? He supports them being able to play while out because he never got the chance.”
“But – he – but the – no, he…” I felt like my brain was short-circuiting. “That’s not right. He’s straight. I did a lot of research before I took this job. He’s straight.”
“The media says he’s straight,” Ace replied. “I’m saying he’s gay. Who are you going to trust, the internet or the person who has been working closely alongside him for years?”
I gaped, my mouth dropping wide open. “But… if he’s not out, then…”
“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have told you,” Ace said. He looked off to the side, out of his window. “I just hate to see two people throwing away a perfectly good opportunity.”
My brain wasn’t just short-circuiting. It was soup. I couldn’t make out a thing of what Ace was saying. “What are you talking about?”
He shrugged lopsidedly. “Don’t tell him I told you, alright? I like my job.”
Two people… an opportunity? Did he mean that I would be able to work for him better if I knew the truth? That we would gel and I wouldn’t be trying to quit or work for Ace directly instead?
Or… what was it he had said? That we both had a thing for each other?
“I don’t – I mean, I’m not…” I laughed nervously, though it came out so strangled that it probably wasn’t convincing anybody. “I don’t have a – a thing, whatever a thing even means, I mean, that’s just…”
“Sure,” Ace said, arching a single eyebrow. “I believe you.”
His flat tone implied the exact opposite.
I shook my head. All of this was too much of a revelation to deal with. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I have to go back and sit in an office with him, now.”
“Yep,” Ace said. “That’s the idea.” He leaned back against his chair, arm up over the backrest, one hand still pressing the icepack against his mouth. I couldn’t make head nor tails of him. Maybe he really had taken too hard a hit to the head.
I was starting to think that maybe I had, for all the sense this was making.
But Ace was clearly unrepentant about dropping such a huge bombshell on me and then letting me walk away to deal with it. There was nothing left for me to do but go where I was called – and, apparently, I was being called to Mr. Harvey’s side.
I sidled into the office with a sincere wish that he didn’t have such huge double doors and that they weren’t closed all of the time. If it had been a trip through a single open door I might have gotten away with being unnoticed, but there was a certain level of drama that came with opening a double set no matter how much you wanted to be invisible.
Mr. Harvey looked up at me, fixing me with an ice-clear blue gaze that almost had me stopping in my tracks. “Ace is icing that lip?”
I nodded quickly, dropping my head and looking away, focusing on getting to my chair. “Yes, yes, he’s fine.”
“Good.” There was a long pause during which I almost tripped over every single wire near my desk, finally seating myself in the chair with no small sense of relief. “We’ll be here late tonight.”
I almost choked. Why did everything sound so much more loaded now that I knew the truth? I wished Ace had never told me.
Then I glanced up at Mr. Harvey again shyly, and…
I was so glad he had.
Because now my fantasies were able to run riot. Mr. Harvey was gay. As in, he was actually playing for my team. There was a sports metaphor I actually understood.
Then I had to glance away with my cheeks furiously burning and remember that, no, this was a terrible thing. Having my fantasies able to rampage unchecked was a terrible thing. I was never going to be able to look at Mr. Harvey straight-on again.
Those thick arms, straining the fabric of his jacket. Those wide shoulders that could probably serve as a seat for my bony ass with room to spare. That chiseled jaw that just begged me to –
Nope.
I blew out a deep breath, trying so hard to focus on not getting hard in my workplace.
Of course, the problem with that was that it was like trying not to think about elephants. As soon as you tried to stop yourself, it was the only thing on your mind. With no clear task set out in front of me, I couldn’t find a way to stop myself from circling back again and again to his stunning eyes, his huge hands –
I needed a distraction – any kind of distraction.
“So,” I asked, my voice higher than usual until I cleared my throat. “Are you going to talk to Caleb Coleman? You know, about Brody Driver fighting with Ace?”
Mr. Harvey looked up and made a brief snorting noise. “We’re not parents calling each other in to see the principal,” he said.
I nodded and looked down at my desk. Right. No tattling on each other’s kids. But…
Caleb Coleman.
There had been a very weird energy between them on the one single occasion that Coleman had been in this office. And there had been that secret call that Mr. Harvey had me set up and tell no one about. And when Coleman spoke, he seemed to do so in code – as if they had known each other for long enough that they could understand each other perfectly.
They had known each other for a long time. But they were supposed to be rivals. Enemies.
Were they… secretly dating?
It could explain a lot. And now that I knew Mr. Harvey was gay, it seemed to be the only explanation that could join all of the dots I had been seeing.
I slumped a little in my chair.
All those fantasies, dead in the water. Mr. Harvey was taken.
It was just my luck to endure the torture of an incredibly hot, successful, wealthy, gay boss sitting in very close proximity to me through the whole of every extra-long working day – and for him to end up being taken.
“We need to catch up on our other clients,” Mr. Harvey said. “We’ve let things slip while we dealt with Ridley. We need to start damage control.”
“Okay,” I nodded. I was eager to have some puzzle to work on, something to think about that would take my mind off Mr. Harvey and his very large, very strong, clearly handsome boyfriend. Oh, god. Now I was thinking about them together. I prayed the next words out of my boss’s mouth were something that would distract me completely and for a very long time.
“Let’s schedule meetings with all our existing clients and sponsors,” he said. “Come sit at the coffee table. We need to work closely on this.”
I almost choked.
But I scrambled up from my seat and managed to grab a notebook and pen, as well as my phone with its connection to Mr. Harvey’s digital calendar, almost knocking over a glass of water on my desk but saving it just at the last minute.
I hurried to move around my desk and join him, carefully stepping over the wires this time. He was already seated at the table and I needed to hurry and get over there before I looked incompetent as well as –
I tripped on the leg of the chair closest to me before I could make it to the coffee table to dump my armload of things. One second I was walking like normal and the next I was flying through the air, everything I had been holding onto soaring up with me.
I was flying through the air –
Until I wasn’t.
“Watch where you’re going,” Mr. Harvey said gruffly.
But his arms, supporting me over his lap so that I didn’t crash right into his knees, holding me carefully and gently as if I was a porcelain doll, didn’t feel gruff at all.
“Oh, god,” I said, knowing my face was flaring up with heat as I tried to scramble to stand up without touching him anywhere else. He calmly ignored my efforts and instead tilted me bodily, setting me back on my feet and upright as if it was nothing. “Oh, god, I am so sorry, I – I didn’t mean – I –”
“Sit down, Keaton Dunbar,” Mr. Harvey said evenly, his voice a steady rumble that neither chastised nor mocked.
I did as he told me to.
Mr. Harvey cleared his throat lightly as he began to leaf through his own notebook, full of names and contact details – I’d noticed that, much like me, he enjoyed writing things down and having physical references even though all of this could be done digitally with more ease.
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I just – tripped, and –”
“I know,” he said. That, it seemed, was the end of the conversation as far as he was concerned. “Let’s start with the longest-standing clients and sponsors first. I’d also like to meet with a few team managers who may be concerned.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, taking a deep breath and pulling out some sticky notes so we could make a mess of the plan before finalizing it – hopeful that neither of us would ever have to mention that embarrassing incident again.
And that I would soon forget the lingering sensation of his huge, warm hands and steady arms, which I could still almost feel pressed against me in all the places we had touched.
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.
If you don’t have the energy to leave a comment today, please hit the heart button below and show me that you like what you’re reading. And if you want to really, seriously help out, hitting the reshare button is an incredible boost that will get this story in front of more eyeballs, for which you will have my undying gratitude.
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Progress Report
Note: Changes are in bold.
TOTAL SALES:
Don’t Move Out: ebook - 738, paperback - 7, KU pages read - 330,085 (238 pages = 1,386 equivalent full-book reads), free downloads - 2,324
Don’t Go Outside: ebook - 92, paperback - 6, KU pages read - 125,646 (222 pages = 565 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Fly Home: ebook - 53, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 79,228 (224 pages = 353 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Leave Town: ebook - 59, paperback - 4, KU pages read - 55,164 (299 pages = 184 equivalent full-book reads)
Don’t Check Out: ebook - 50, paperback - 2, KU pages read - 30,399 (192 pages = 158 equivalent full-book reads)
CC 1-5 Boxset: KU pages read - 12,145 (1,068 pages = 11 equivalent full-set reads)
Serial Investigations full series (Pre-Substack releases: books 1-12, 2 bonus novellas, 2 boxsets): ebook - 483, paperback/hardback - 68, KU pages read - 365,546, free downloads - 546
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: full plot done, 7k words written! - I don’t have long to focus on this one before the end of the month, and there’s a lot of other things demanding my attention - and from Aug 1 I’m going to be super busy with other work, so I guess we’ll see when I get a chance to finish this. But I’m still ahead of schedule, so no need to panic!
(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 - 55, paid - 2 plus 1 temp comp - hi, new friend!
Followers: 205
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
I received a foiled sprayed edge SE from an author who only did it via preorder. I guess that’s how she managed expectations of how much would sell. Another author posted her first box on patreon this week. It’s also preorder she’s never done a box but has had her book in other boxes by those romance box companies.
Oh wow! Great chapter!!! I like how it is building, and that Keaton finally knows. 🤭 Can't wait for Olly's POV. He secretly loves it when Keaton's a klutz.😉