The Hell You Say by Josh Lanyon Read Free Book Online Page B

at home with her parents, so maybe there was a lead there.
    I realized Jean had stopped reading. The group was ready for discussion. The Finches have been working on this monsterpiece for the past two years. The latest revision had to do with turning a relatively minor character, Avery Oxford, into the protagonist. I had a lot of problems with Avery, not so much because he was a gay stereotype, but because I feared he was based on me. True, he was a Hollywood gossip columnist, but he was thirty-three, five-eleven, slender, had black hair, blue eyes, and a friend on the police force named Jack O’Reilly -- and he kept showing up in my clothes. In the scene I’d just read, he was wearing
    “a favorite pair of faded Levi’s and a black lambswool sweater over a crisp, white T-shirt” --
    pretty much what I’d worn to last week’s meeting.
    I said, trying to be tactful, “I could be wrong, but I don’t think turning Avery into the protag is a good idea, Jean. I think you should stick to the original plan. Kill him off in chapter seven. Or even sooner.”
    “I don’t know,” Max mused. “He’s an amusing twerp.” Max was a rugged forty, with yellow shaggy hair and yellow shaggy beard. Attractive, I guess, if you don’t mind a guy who 34 Josh Lanyon
    sees deodorant and razors as a threat to his masculinity. He was aggressively heterosexual and made a point of dating every unattached woman who joined the group. Since his regular pillow pal was Grania Joyce, another of our partners in crime, it made for an interesting dynamic.
    Ted turned to Jean, whose face had fallen at my words. She faltered, “We’ve already rewritten those first nine chapters to reflect the new character dynamic.”
    “I don’t think he’s a strong enough character.”
    “You could go with the cop,” Chan suggested. “O’Reilly’s a strong character.”
    “If you don’t mind the testosterone overload,” Grania sneered. Grania was tall and rangy, with an unruly mane of sorrel hair: your basic warrior princess model.
    “I got no problem with it,” said Chan.
    Their gazes locked. They did this dueling lightsaber thing, which I hastened to interrupt. “But you see, that makes more sense,” I said quickly. “It’s more believable that a cop would get involved in solving these murders. I mean, you’re talking about writing a series. How believable is it that this Hollywood gossip columnist is going to keep stumbling on all these murders?”
    “That’s the problem with the amateur sleuth in general,” Grania pointed out. Grania, naturally, wrote about a kick-ass female PI. “It’s totally artificial.”
    Chan said reasonably, “I don’t know. A lot of kinky shit goes down in Hollyweird. A gossip columnist could get sucked into that.”
    “Hey, you’re writing about a gay Shakespearean actor solving mysteries,” Max pointed out to me. “You sold the series to some lunatic fringe publishing house.”
    Ted said, “How believable is it that a bookseller and mystery author would get involved solving mysteries? But you’ve been involved twice in murder cases, Adrien.” Jean nodded eagerly. “You’re like a real-life amateur sleuth. So it does happen. Truth is stranger than fiction.”
    “Let them write what they want to write,” Max said irritably. “What do you care?”
    “I don’t think that Avery’s…likeable.”
    Jean looked like she was going to cry, like I’d insulted her precious prune of a newborn.
    “You don’t like Avery?”
    Ted glared at me.
    The entire circle stared at me.
    “Not a terribly constructive comment, Adrien,” Grania observed.

    * * * * *
When the group at last broke up, I cleared the chairs and crumbs, made sure the side and front doors were secured, and climbed the stairs to my flat.

    The Hell You Say

    35
    I poured myself a drink and tried to think of an entertaining way to fill the rest of the evening. I don’t think of myself as a loner, but it’s a fact that my friends generally