So I thought to myself: ROMANCE NOVEL WRITING NATE! HOW GENIUS. Warning: crack.
Nate started writing under the pseudonym Natalie Edgewood when he was twenty-three. His sister had gotten the Idiot’s Guide to Writing Romance novels as a joke gift and Nate had wound up reading one night when he couldn’t sleep. Frankly he’d found he could probably write a better Idiot’s Guide, but it gave him a few ideas.
When his fifth novel won a RITA, it was a problem. Natalie Edgewood didn’t exist. Her bio on the inside flap was a complete fabrication. It said she lived in Portland, Oregon with her two cats, their temperamental parakeet, and her husband Jesse. Well, there were no cats, no Jesse, no parakeet—temperamental or otherwise, and Nate lived in Boston. The publishers didn’t want to unmask him, so they sent a hired actress in his place and said he could pretend to be Jesse.
He stayed up the night before puzzling over his acceptance speech, possibly longer than he had the night before he submitted his dissertation, before finally giving in and going to bed. The actress, her name was Sarah, was going to have to say it, not him.
They hired Sarah a bodyguard. It was a little silly, but apparently there was some cause for worry at these events. Nate wouldn’t know, he’d never gotten to do a signing. This was, in fact, going to be Natalie’s first public appearance. Nate sighed, looked down at the fake wedding band on his hand. It was perhaps getting a bit too complicated.
And it all went horribly, horribly wrong. The bodyguard got shot right outside the hotel after Sarah accepted Nate’s award and Nate and Sarah got stuffed into the back of a speeding van. His grandma had always said romance novels were purveyors of vicious disgusting filth and said that God was disappointed in his sisters when they read them. Nate supposed that God felt even worse about writing them. He sighed and tried to avoid being handled to roughly.
Sarah was a sobbing mess. Please, please, she kept whining. It was completely useless. Either they were dealing with insane people who wanted them dead and could not be deterred or they were dealing with insane people who wanted something specifically other than death and could not be deterred. He tried to tell her it was going to be okay. Which, all right, he knew that was a lie, but she was likely to give herself a heart attack and thus render any decision their attackers had in the matter completely null.
For two days, he endured being carted around as Jesse, Natalie Edgewood’s wooden husband, having his wrists tied to various things and being spoon-fed soy yoghurt which he hated while their attackers waited for whatever it was they wanted. At this point Nate was pretty sure it was not death. Somebody at the top seemed to be hoping to force the publishing press to publish their stuff by kidnapping one of its bestselling authors. It was all very strange.
Nate, the romance novelist
Nate started writing under the pseudonym Natalie Edgewood when he was twenty-three. His sister had gotten the Idiot’s Guide to Writing Romance novels as a joke gift and Nate had wound up reading one night when he couldn’t sleep. Frankly he’d found he could probably write a better Idiot’s Guide, but it gave him a few ideas.
When his fifth novel won a RITA, it was a problem. Natalie Edgewood didn’t exist. Her bio on the inside flap was a complete fabrication. It said she lived in Portland, Oregon with her two cats, their temperamental parakeet, and her husband Jesse. Well, there were no cats, no Jesse, no parakeet—temperamental or otherwise, and Nate lived in Boston. The publishers didn’t want to unmask him, so they sent a hired actress in his place and said he could pretend to be Jesse.
He stayed up the night before puzzling over his acceptance speech, possibly longer than he had the night before he submitted his dissertation, before finally giving in and going to bed. The actress, her name was Sarah, was going to have to say it, not him.
They hired Sarah a bodyguard. It was a little silly, but apparently there was some cause for worry at these events. Nate wouldn’t know, he’d never gotten to do a signing. This was, in fact, going to be Natalie’s first public appearance. Nate sighed, looked down at the fake wedding band on his hand. It was perhaps getting a bit too complicated.
And it all went horribly, horribly wrong. The bodyguard got shot right outside the hotel after Sarah accepted Nate’s award and Nate and Sarah got stuffed into the back of a speeding van. His grandma had always said romance novels were purveyors of vicious disgusting filth and said that God was disappointed in his sisters when they read them. Nate supposed that God felt even worse about writing them. He sighed and tried to avoid being handled to roughly.
Sarah was a sobbing mess. Please, please, she kept whining. It was completely useless. Either they were dealing with insane people who wanted them dead and could not be deterred or they were dealing with insane people who wanted something specifically other than death and could not be deterred. He tried to tell her it was going to be okay. Which, all right, he knew that was a lie, but she was likely to give herself a heart attack and thus render any decision their attackers had in the matter completely null.
For two days, he endured being carted around as Jesse, Natalie Edgewood’s wooden husband, having his wrists tied to various things and being spoon-fed soy yoghurt which he hated while their attackers waited for whatever it was they wanted. At this point Nate was pretty sure it was not death. Somebody at the top seemed to be hoping to force the publishing press to publish their stuff by kidnapping one of its bestselling authors. It was all very strange.