With a hand clamped around the back of my neck, I ground it back and forth and gave myself a short and to the point pep talk. “Let’s do this.”
The wooden steps creaked as I climbed them up to the porch. They weren’t spongy and I couldn’t see any obvious rot or broken boards, so that was reassuring. The wood porch was tiny, but then from what I’d seen in the photos, the door I was approaching was the rear entrance. The true front door faced the ten-acre lake.
Lake something. I couldn’t remember what it was called.
Not that it mattered. Since I owned it from shore to shore, I could name it whatever the hell I wanted.
Lake Leave-Me-Alone had a nice ring to it.
I dug out the key the agent had overnighted to me from the front pocket of my jeans. I had never met him since everything had been done virtually. Even the closing.
As I went to slide the key into the lock, I realized the door wasn’t completely closed. It was open barely a crack. Did one of the workers leave it open? Or had it already been open and nobody cared enough to close it? They probably did the work they’d been paid for and left as soon as possible.
The hinges creaked as I pushed open the thick, rustic wood door.
Mental note: Grab a can of WD-40 next time you’re in town. If that doesn’t work, a can of gas and a lighter will solve the problem.
Standing before the threshold, I sucked in a few deep breaths of the warm, clean mountain air. So different from where I just came.
The air wasn’t the only thing different. I paused to listen.
So was the quiet.
No traffic. No voices. Pure fucking bliss.
The only sound, besides the birds and small mammals scurrying in the underbrush, was the one in my head telling me on an endless loop that I was crazy to buy this place.
Maybe all the silence wasn’t the best idea. My own internal voices might become amplified, maybe even deafening.
On the trip here, I’d listened to a couple of long audiobooks since my thoughts tended to drown out music. With audiobooks, I was forced to concentrate. A good, well-written mystery was able to pull me from those dark, wandering thoughts and into someone else’s story. One other than my own, both the crime thriller I needed to write and the depressing Nicholas Sparks story I was currently living.
But it also reminded me that I needed to rediscover my creativity. I sure as hell hoped this place would help with that.
That was the whole point of moving to this remote area.
When I stepped over the threshold, I had to stop myself from turning around and escaping as fast as possible. The pictures didn’t make it look this bad. Now I wondered how long ago they were actually taken and why the agent hadn’t provided a virtual tour. But in truth, the agent hadn’t been lying. It certainly was an old hunting cabin that was, at this point, not much better than camping.
Unfortunately, I knew nothing about roughing it or living off the grid. Even though it was debatable whether this cabin was actually considered off-the-grid living. Mainly because it had a well with a working pump, as well as water already tested and deemed safe. It also had electricity and soon would have satellite internet so I could get back to being productive.
If that was actually achieved, my literary agent might do some backflips. So would my reader base, who’d been clamoring for the past two years for the next book in my bestselling series.
When it came down to it, so would I, since writing was my sole source of income and my royalty payments had been slowly dwindling every month I went without a new release.
While I currently had a nice cushion in my bank account, it would be quickly eaten up by getting the cabin and its sparse amenities into shape.
No matter what, I’d have to actually write a book first. And with all the endless work that came after the first draft—editing, cover art, marketing, and more—it wasn’t like it would be published soon after.
I was giving myself six months to write the next book in my popular crime thriller series. By the time it hit my readers’ hands, it would probably be a year and a half from now. If not longer.
I didn’t want to think about it. I might be dead broke by the time I received my first royalty payment on a new book, depending on how generous the publisher’s advance was.
My publisher had been hesitant to give me one this time after I’d spiraled into a dark place. They told my agent Randall that once at least three “well-written” chapters landed in their hands, they’d consider sending an advance.