Love Literary Style Read online

  Praise for Karin Gillespie

  Books by Karin Gillespie

  Sign up for Henery Press updates

  Copyright

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Books by Karin Gillespie

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  GIRL MEETS CLASS

  BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR

  BLOGGER GIRL

  A STATE OF JANE

  Praise for Karin Gillespie

  GIRL MEETS CLASS

  “Funny, empathetic, and wise. Gillespie shines a light into dark corners we need to examine, but somehow manages to entertain us at the same time. A fantastic read.”

  – Susan M. Boyer,

  USA Today Bestselling Author of Lowcountry Bordello

  “Gillespie’s Girl Meets Class is a delectable page-turner with twists and turns at every corner.”

  – San Francisco Book Review

  “Filled with humor and a happy ending, I highly recommend this to anyone looking a humorous read with just a dash of romance!”

  – The Southern Bookworm

  “Gillespie knocks it out of the park…[her] humor is as tender as it is sharp. At first, Toni Lee’s figures of speech zip by like jerky ducks in a shooting gallery; but as she orients herself her aim improves. By the time you fall in love with her, bells are ringing all over the place.”

  – The Augusta Chronicle

  BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR (#1)

  “In a first novel that is guaranteed to please Fannie Flagg and Bailey White fans, Gillespie introduces the Bottom Dollar Girls with a flair for timing and a cheeky southern turn of phrase…Brace for a wild ride chock-full of Southern wit and down-home advice from a clutch of quirky characters you will hope to see again soon.”

  – Booklist

  “A winner of a first novel, filled with Southern-style zingers and funny folks.”

  – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “The characters are the kind of steel magnolias who would make Scarlett O’Hara envious.”

  – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  A DOLLAR SHORT (#2)

  “Laugh-out-loud antics as...Gillespie continues her entertaining Bottom Dollar Girls series…Certain to please women’s fiction fans of all ages.”

  – Romantic Times (Top Pick)

  “As tart and delectable as lemon meringue pie...a pure delight.”

  – Jennifer Weiner,

  Author of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes

  “A fine romp of a book, well-written and thoroughly entertaining.”

  – The Winston-Salem Journal

  DOLLAR DAZE (#3)

  “Each character is lovingly crafted in Gillespie’s hilarious, heartwarming, and often irreverent look at senior living in small-town America. The third book in the Bottom Dollar Girls can also be enjoyed as a stand-alone.”

  – Booklist (starred review)

  “Readers will be chuckling over crazy man-getting antics, sighing at the complexity of life, love and matrimony and maybe even shedding a tear over the heartbreak and tragedy. This novel is charismatic and replete with poignancy.”

  – Romantic Times

  Books by Karin Gillespie

  GIRL MEETS CLASS

  LOVE LITERARY STYLE

  Books in the Bottom Dollar Series

  BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR (#1)

  A DOLLAR SHORT (#2)

  DOLLAR DAZE (#3)

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  Copyright

  LOVE LITERARY STYLE

  Part of the Henery Press Chick Lit Collection

  First Edition | November 2016

  Henery Press

  www.henerypress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2016 by Karin Gillespie

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-085-2

  Digital epub ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-086-9

  Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-087-6

  Hardcover Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-088-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Converse MFA program

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the wonderfully supportive and professional team at Henery Press: Erin George, Art Molinares, and Kendel Lynn. Special thanks to Rachel Jackson for her keen editorial eye, good-natured spirit and endless patience.

  Thanks also to Midtown Market for hosting my book parties and Tricia Hughes for tirelessly supporting them.

  Always ever grateful to my dear friend and supportive beta reader Laura Spinella. Thanks to supportive writing friends: Rhian Swain, Joann Appleton, Kim Romaner, Laurie Merill, Ann Beth Strelec, Margaret Williams, Jim Garvey, Leonard Todd, John Presley, Rick Davis, Tom Turner, Joseph Barry and Wally Evans.

  Great thanks and love to my family: David Neches, Brandon Skelton, Magda Newland, Ken Gillespie, Tim Gillespie and Ed Gillespie.

  None of this would be possible without my readers. I hope you enjoy the latest.

  One

  It was too bad that, as a college professor, Aaron Mite was expected to be approachable. Approachability was contrary to his nature. Thus, when a swingy-haired tanned blonde female barreled toward his podium, he steeled himself against the encounter. Students rarely lingered after composition class to say, “What an enthralling lecture.” Particularly since the day’s presentation covered misplaced and dangling modifiers.

  The blonde was one of hundreds who prowled the grounds of Metro Atlanta University, usually in perfumed packs of four or five. Her name was Megan or Chelsea or perhaps Payton. Aaron could tell by the determined set of her jaw that she wanted something from him, and it was probably a grade change. If so, she was wasting her time. Aaron’s grades were as permanent as the polar ice caps. Well, as permanent as polar ice caps were before the dawn of global warming.
>
  “So,” she began.

  This was a new habit of students, starting sentences with the word “so.” It wasn’t as distressing as misusing the word “literally,” as in “I’m literally starving to death.” It did, however, grate on Aaron every time he heard it.

  “What does this say?” She rattled a paper in front of his nose and pointed her finger at a comment he’d written in red ink. Some of his colleagues had switched to less threatening ink colors—blue, purple, and even hard-to-read orange—but Aaron still preferred the authoritative power of red.

  He squinted at the scrawl. He often had trouble reading his own writing, but not in this case. Aaron recognized the phrase as one he frequently wrote in the margins of student composition papers: “This essay is not worth the papyrus it was penned on.”

  He read the comment aloud and the girl—Leslie, Brittany, or Taylor—wrinkled her nose. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s simply another way of saying, ‘this essay isn’t worth the paper it’s written on,’ but that would be cliché. As I’ve said several times in this class, clichés are the enemies of good writing.”

  Her previously benign features turned cross. “You think I wasted paper writing my essay?”

  “Yes. But, happily for you, paper is plentiful.”

  She stared at him. Aaron stared back. For a moment they were engaged in a standoff, but the girl looked away first. “Whatever,” she said.

  She wandered off, eyes fastened to her phone, poor grade seemingly forgotten. Not a surprise. Young people’s minds flitted about like gnats.

  Another student remained in the classroom, Sabrina, a woman in her early thirties who’d recently gone back to school. She worked part-time as an administrative assistant in the English and Foreign Language department at Metro Atlanta University.

  Sabrina’s appearance in Aaron’s class at the beginning of the semester worried him. What if she was a terrible writer and he had to give her poor marks? Would she ever make photocopies for him again?

  But she proved to be a competent writer and would likely receive an A for the semester. In fact, he was so impressed with her narrative essay, he urged her to take a creative writing class as an elective.

  Sabrina was still gathering her things. Unlike the younger students, she didn’t start packing up her belongings ten minutes before dismissal time in anticipation of a hasty getaway.

  She glanced up at him and said, “Professor Mite, I wanted to tell you how much I’m enjoying your class.”

  Aaron was slightly taken aback. It was unusual for him to receive praise from students. In his teaching evaluations, he usually got comments like: “If Professor Mite ruled the world, a comma splice would be punishable by fifty lashes,” or “Dude hates the word ‘very.’ Use in essays at your own risk.”

  Sometimes the comments were more personal: “Kind of cute, but needs a major wardrobe rehab. Wears the same jacket every day. Also, what’s with the limp?”

  “Thank you very much, Sabrina. I’ve enjoyed having you as well.”

  “I admire your fervent love for our language and excellent writing. You’ve inspired me to write a novel of my own.”

  “That’s ambitious, and I wish you the best of luck. Do you have any idea what themes you want to explore? I can recommend some novels as inspiration.”

  She thought for a moment and said, “Death, I guess.”

  Her answer surprised Aaron. Sabrina was a chipper soul, continually smiling, always greeting everyone who came into the English department office suite and offering them candy from a seemingly bottomless dish on her desk. (Aaron was partial to the butterscotch disks.) Her desk was also littered with photographs of twin toddlers smashing their chubby faces into birthday cakes or cavorting in a kiddie pool. Death was the last thing he’d guessed she’d want to write about.

  “Bravo to you for tackling such a challenging theme. You may want to consider reading Death of Ivan Ilyich, Slaughterhouse Five, or maybe even White Noise.”

  “Are those mysteries?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I want to write a cozy.”

  Cozy? A cozy, when used as a noun, referred to a padded covering for a teapot.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You’ve never heard of cozies?” Suddenly Sabrina was very animated. Her curls bounced on her shoulders and her cheeks flushed. “They’re a category of mystery novels set in a small village, and the amateur sleuth is usually a female. There’s always a murder, but it’s never gruesome, and the victim tends to be a mean person who deserves to die.”

  Aaron was momentarily taken aback. “Are you saying you want to write genre fiction?”

  “Yes. I love to read cozies.”

  “I see.” Aaron noisily cleared his throat. “What was the last…cozy you read?”

  “It was called Dread and Breakfast. The sleuth is Abigail Appleworth, the owner of a bed and breakfast called the Pleasant Dreams Inn. One of her guests—a developer who wants to cut down the hundred-year-old oak tree in the town square and put up a parking lot—is bludgeoned to death with an overcooked crumpet.”

  Aaron took a moment to absorb the highly improbable particulars. Then he said, “I’d like to know how you felt after you read the book. Did it change you?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Were you affected by the themes? Did it prompt you to think critically? Did you spend time considering the underlying issues?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Or did it pass through you like cheap fast food?”

  Her expression was quizzical. “I hadn’t really thought about it like that.”

  Aaron smiled, preparing himself for a lengthy discourse on the superiority of literary fiction over genre—a pet subject of his—but an unexpected male visitor interrupted him. The man fixed his steely gaze on Aaron. “Stop by my office when you’re finished here. I’d like a word.”

  “Yes, Father,” he said without thinking.

  Once he was gone, Sabrina stared at him, her mouth open so wide he could have chipped a golf ball into it.

  “Your father’s Dr. Horace Flowers?”

  Aaron nodded. He rarely mentioned the relationship to anyone, especially to the people who worked in the English department.

  “You’ve had dealings with him, I’m sure,” Aaron said.

  “Yes, I have. He’s so…”

  Churlish? Stern? Ill-mannered? Pompous? Demanding? There were dozens of negative adjectives that could describe Dr. Horace Flowers.

  “Accomplished,” Sabrina said. She was being kind.

  Aaron’s father was extremely accomplished, which allowed him to get away with all of his other less pleasant traits. He was the author of a definitive book on fiction writing called Craft as well as seventeen books on literary criticism. His favorite subject was the renowned author Nicholas Windust, and he wrote extensively about him.

  “My husband gave me the latest Nicholas Windust novel for my birthday,” Sabrina said. “I stayed up all night reading it. Are you as big a Nicholas Windust fan as your father?”

  “I think he’s a genius at the sentence level. My only quibble with his work is that his endings tend to be too upbeat.”

  “Are you saying you don’t care for happily-ever-afters?”

  “I don’t believe in them. To me, the most important quality in fiction is authenticity. One only has to watch a few minutes of a twenty-four-hour news channel to know real life is a series of child abductions, school shootings and tsunamis. You’d do well to remember that when you begin writing your own novel.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. By the way, I never would’ve guessed you and Dr. Flowers were related. You don’t have the same last name.”

  Aaron heard her comment but he was distracted. He to
uched his tie as if to remind himself it was still there. His fingers raked through his hair; they came back a shade too oily. When was the last time he had a haircut?

  “I’m sorry,” Sabrina said. “That was too personal. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s fine.” He didn’t like to discuss his history with Horace Flowers. “Please excuse me. I don’t want to keep my father waiting. He can be prickly.”

  “I know.” Sabrina blushed as she caught herself. “I mean…Rather—”

  “No worries. I know exactly how my father comes across. Good luck with your writing. I do hope you reconsider your plans to write genre fiction. You’re quite talented and perfectly capable of tackling something more challenging. I’d be glad to look at your work even after the semester is over.”

  “That’s so generous of you. I’d be happy to do something in exchange…Do you have any decorating needs? Everyone says I have a flair.”

  “Not necessary.” Aaron rented a one hundred and fifty square-foot room in a boarding house with a hot plate and a communal bathroom. His decorating needs were nonexistent.

  He left the classroom. The elevator was being repaired, so he climbed the stairs to Horace Flowers’ corner office, his bad leg dragging slightly behind. His loafers were loud against the tile flooring. The closer he got, the more gingerly he walked. By the time he arrived at his destination his stride was nearly soundless. He and his father worked at the same university but it’d been over a month since Aaron saw him last. Usually the only time Horace Flowers summoned him to his office was when he was miffed about something.