Excerpt: Three Typewriters

“Beware the nicely dressed ones.

The geeks are harmless. The shabbies are socially inept, but polite. And the cosplayers? They’ve got passion, and they love you.

But never, ever forget this: the nicely dressed ones are evil.

Evil.

They’re the ones who will cause you the most pain.”

As a slim hand calmly rose somewhere in the fifth row, this warning from an fellow writer was all Danielle Sharp could think about. Callum Fairley had said it at an after-con party five years ago, over drinks; an old hand giving a then twenty-one-year-old newbie a bit of sage advice. Sharp had laughed with the rest of the group in the crowded hotel bar.

But, she had also noted their knowing nods.

It was the watch that tipped her off now: a woman’s tourbillon with a loosely-fastened black leather strap, its gold-plated case catching the lights of the auditorium. In a half-second Sharp had noticed, even from this distance, the immaculate nails, and the snugness of the moss-brown sweater. Her eyes then frantically searched the room for other raised hands; the eager-looking shabby in the pink sweatshirt, perhaps, or the one who had come dressed as Paladin Eamonn Dunbloom, complete with matching (styrofoam) flintlock pistols.

But none would save her.

‘Forget it, forget it,’ Danielle thought. ‘Put it out of your mind, Dan.’ She always referred to herself as Dan, though she tolerated Dani and sometimes even let Dee slip by unpunished. Never Elle, however. The last person who called her Elle had to move to another city. Or so Dan liked to tell herself.

Shrugging past the sudden descent of ice on her shoulders, Danielle Sharp leaned forward and, gesturing to the fifth row, said, “Yes?”

The hand with the expensive watch, slipped into the expensive sweater, belonged to a tall woman in her thirties with tightly-coiffed blonde hair, who stood, adjusted the scarf around her neck, and fixed Danielle Sharp with her watery blue eyes.

Dan knew that look. She’d most often seen it at book signings -- both for her own books and at signings for others, where it was masked by over-egged grins and compliments -- but rarely at conventions such as these.

It said, ‘You don’t deserve this, and I do.’

Callum had, in his rousing bar-side address on con-goers half a decade ago (Jesus! Had it been that long?), talked about just that look, and the people who carried it. These were the people who had read your book -- read all of your books -- but made damn sure they didn’t enjoy even a minute of it. All of them had been to college. Several times, in fact, and they had the paperwork to prove it. These were the only people in the world knew exactly what was wrong with your work, baffled by your continuous success.

They were the best writers in world who had never written anything. All of them, Callum had said, were well-dressed.

And they had that look.

The look that also said, ‘...And now I’ve got you.’

“Danielle,” the woman said.

Dan’s fingers clutched at the leg of her chair, irked by the cold familiarity with which the woman tossed out her name.

At least it wasn’t Dani.

And then the question: “How’s your novel going?”

Dan was quick with the answer, a pick-and-mix of things she had been saying a hundred times over the past few weeks of publicity. “Well, this one went quite well; it’s a very rich world and I truly fell in love with the characters -- a little too much, I think!” She rolled her eyes and paused for a smattering of laughter from the audience. “And of course there are always chances for a sequel, or even a trilogy. I would love to revisit the world of Spellchancers.”

Dan finished with a smile that had never failed to melt all who beheld it. A couple of people in the audience applauded. But the woman was still standing.

“You misunderstood my question,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about this current book. I was asking about your novel -- you know, the one you’ve been working on for two years now?”

Dan’s mouth went dry. For a second she just sat there grinning, the infant in her baffled at how its weapon of choice had failed. She shifted in the chair. “Oh,” she said with a forced chuckle, “that one.”

Dan had done several things in her life she considered mistakes: the picnic she had taken at age four with Mr. Panoply the bear, which had ended in rain and tears and the police car’s light painting her mother’s harrowed face in a ghoulish light; the person she shared her first kiss with; the person she’d shared her second kiss with; her tattoo -- god, that tattoo -- and several minor embarrassments.

And to that long and irksome list, Dan could now add blogging.