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Romantic Friction Excerpt

ROMANTIC FRICTION by Lori Gold Excerpt

Chapter 1

About the Author

It’s a commonly held belief that in order to be a good author you have to be drunk or

tortured. To be a great author? Both. I am a great author. I am occasionally drunk (though not at

present). But I am not prone to sprawled-on-the-bathroom- floor bawling. I have not, nor will I

ever, utter the phrase: “Please don’t make me adult today.” And I am not the least bit disturbed

by crawling into a king-size bed alone.

All that’s to say, I am not, nor have I ever been, tortured. But there truly is a first time for

everything.

The bookstore buzzes like an active hive. Beyond these rolling partitions masquerading

as shelves, cushioned folding chairs cradle bums of all shapes and sizes and stages of cellulite.

They are here for me. As I am here for them. This is my home- town. And this is the bookstore in

my hometown that Jocelyn and Torrence and Callum and little Vance built, word by word, page

by page, chapter by chapter, book by book. That I share with no one.

I am not a charity.

My coattails are not for riding.

Tell that to Lacey, my publicist for the last ten years. I already did. Multiple times and

with only one expletive. (Which honestly is the definition of restraint.) And yet, I am here.

Because Blaire, my agent with a heart mushier than a ripe peach, intervened on Lacey’s behalf

and asked me to be.

Listen, that this industry is harder to navigate than Gen Z slang is not lost on me. I’m not

completely averse to the idea of paying it forward, even though when I was starting out no one

gave me so much as a linty nickel. But you can be damn sure that if a bestselling author who

helped to define my genre had invited me (via said publicist) to a bookstore’s celebration of their

blockbuster series, I’d have been on time.

Not late. By twenty minutes—and counting.

I reach for the partition cordoning off this back room, my rose gold bangles clattering as I

wiggle free a chapter book—a tale about monsters hiding in school cubbies that must be the bane

of every kindergarten teacher’s existence. A ghost of a smile plays on my lips, affection for my

kindred spirit of an author who came up with this. I set the book aside and peek through the slim

gap.

Heart-shaped helium balloons kiss the ceiling, “library” candles that smell of old books

and lavender flicker on the windowsills, and my favorite cushioned armchair beckons from

behind my usual signing table, an old desk with legs fashioned out of stacked books. Hanging

above the register is a poster of the first nine titles in this series I nearly gave a kidney to make

happen (don’t ask).

The dozens who have traveled from as close as Boston and as far as Iowa wait with more

patience than me alongside half the residents of this small seaside town.

With so many bodies, the room temperature rises. The air turns electric. And I come

alive. I wriggle my head out of my introverted shell and gorge myself on the energy of the

crowd. I’m no longer a little girl with debilitating stage fright, convincing my teachers I’d been

bitten by a squirrel or had a seven-foot-long tapeworm in my belly to get out of an oral report.

Turns out I’ve always been good at lying.

Lies, fibs, fabrications, tall tales. That’s all writing is, really, being good at making things

up, convincing others that a little boy with freckled cheeks and a mop of carrot-colored hair can

bend universes in one breath and giggle at fart jokes in the next. Ah, little Vance—everyone’s

favorite character. Which is why he had to die. My socials will be flooded with heartbreak emoji

and death threats when fans get their hands on this last book.

My god, do I love my job.

“Sofie, our little Sofie.”

I would take these words as a slight, given my five-foot-stature, if they weren’t coming

from a woman slipping behind the partition with arms outstretched, a half dozen tiny pencils

poking out of her salt-and-pepper bun, and a “Roxanne (as in Bel Canto!)” name tag on her

ample left breast (the right is ample too, but there’s just the one name tag).

“Tell me,” Roxanne says, wiggling her phone and pressing the side button to shut it

down. “And not even Instagram will hear. Will Vance be able to restore the cosmic balance in

time for Jocelyn to choose Torrence? Because she will, naturally. It must be Torrence.”

My face remains hard as steel.

“Sofie,” Roxanne coaxes. “It’s me. We did this together. We built this store as a team.

This is ours.”

Roxanne also has a penchant for hyperbole.

Still, these days, my fantasy romance series—what this Gen Z, grammar-phobic world

now calls “romantasy”—is a New York Times bestseller, and I have more than half a million

followers on social media. But fifteen years ago, I was a thirty-five-year-old woman with mousy

brown hair, clear plastic-framed eyeglasses, and self-made bookmarks rolled off my laser printer
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Romantic Friction Excerpt

in need of a yellow cartridge. A self-published author without the financial means to promote

myself. That’s when I met Roxanne.

When I walked through the door of Harbor Books with my sack of sad-looking

bookmarks and shoddily glued-together manuscripts, Roxanne didn’t even wait for me to finish

my plea to support a local author. She was already slapping price stickers on the back and

arranging them in a three-foot-tall window display.

Roxanne bats her eyelashes. “I can better serve you and the book if I know how to

respond to customer inquiries.”

She gives me that syrupy smile we both know is exaggerated. “Truly, there were no

advance reader copies printed? Not even for Jenna? Reese?”

“Not a one,” I say, firmly, though of course there were. Stripped of the cover with

confidential and sharing prohibited upon penalty of death written across the front (though, as I

think about it, no one ever confirmed the use of that perfectly reasonable suggestion).

A ding announces the opening of the front door. Roxanne peers around the partition to

confirm it’s her.

“Break a spine!” Roxanne says, whooshing out.

Instead of following, I pause to peer through that tiny gap on the bookshelf.

My “invited” guest, the author who will ask me a few questions and then moderate ones

from the crowd, hovers at the front of the store, seemingly unsure, eyes scanning the room.

Silver hair past her shoulders, flowy cotton skirt, well-worn canvas tote bulging with what can

only be useless buttons and cheap pens and glitter tattoos she paid for herself. She has no

marketing budget for swag or anything else. She’s only here because of me.
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Romantic Friction Excerpt

No one had heard of Hartley West until a month ago. As happens (usually thanks to a

hefty Venmo transfer), an influencer “discovered” Hartley’s self-published debut, Love and

Lawlessness. That influencer gushed about it and set off a trend among her fellow movers and

shakers—leaders of the “next wave” of how books are found, the whole cadre featured in an

article in The New York Times. Like a snowball, more and more readers “found” and

recommended Hartley’s book. Said it reminded them of me.

The next Sofie Wilde. That’s what they’re calling her. Over my dead body.