Page 2 of Her Trick His Treat

There were two entire shelves for my books arranged by genre. I was currently in my spooky book era. It being Halloween and all, who could blame me?

I was also a fan of those godawful B horror movies from the 1960s all the way through the 90s. It was all over the top gruesome, too much fake blood crap with characters who were too stupid to live.

The kind of movies that would never win an Oscar but had more Rotten Tomatoes than those sparkly vampire movies.

Fun stuff.

Gory.

Campy.

You named it, I loved it. So yeah, promptly displayed on the top row of the ridiculously large entertainment center I owned were rows and rows of DVDs of the kind of movies most people never admitted to watching.

I didn’t care. Who the heck was going to see them? No one came to my apartment. I mean, I hadn’t invited anyone over, and likely wouldn’t.

I wasn’t a hermit. Not exactly. Just a thirty year old virgin with too many scruples and a tendency to overthink every damn thing before I did it. Which usually led to me doing nothing at all.

Shit.

“Please, Camryn, just come out tonight. I haven’t seen you in forever!”

I wanted to argue, to beg off. But Jan wasn’t wrong.

I moved back to New Jersey a few weeks ago after living in Florida for the past eight years, ever since I graduated from college. But she was right. I’d made no move to see her, or anyone, for that matter.

Jan and her folks were the only family I had left. I’d made no efforts beyond coming back to the Garden State to reconnect with anyone from my past.

Sure, we’d kept in touch over the years with her shared mega list of fictional hotties—BBILF: Book Boyfriends I’d Like to Fuck.

This list was a jewel. Filled with fictional men and our pros and cons, some I’d never heard of until Jan or one of the others gushed about them.

Our shared passion for reading kept us connected over the years after I’d moved away. But now that I was back, being reading buddies simply wasn’t enough.

I craved human connection. Contact with real people was not easy for me, though. Introverted and shy by nature, I’d been profiled as a quiet little nerd girl for so long, it was hard to not fall into that pattern.

I supposed it was true on some accounts. I was a total bibliophile and addicted to the written word. Likely why I had the job I did.

I worked as a freelance editor, formatter, and copy editor for authors, both indie and trad published. I’d even landed a gig working with the international bestseller N. Leo and her awesome suspense novels.

Books. Were. My. Passion.

And writing, of course.

In fact, I had penned a few naughty little tales and was working on another, all under a pseudonym I had yet to publish. Maybe, someday soon, I would have the guts to bite the bullet.

It was easier said than done. Imagine putting yourself out there in black and white for the entire world to examine and poke fun at?

The idea was horrifying. And yet, there was also another side to that coin.

What if someone read what I wrote and liked it?

What if they enjoyed themselves?

What if I helped someone escape their lives for an hour or two?

The book world was just as cutthroat as any other. I’d been part of enough reader and writer groups to have seen it firsthand. It could be great though, too. And since I chose not to participate in toxic behavior, the few chats and groups I still belonged to were really positive places.

I just needed to find the courage to click that little publish button. It was just, every time I tried, something stopped me.