Yarrow Read Online Free

blocked," she said at last. "I haven't written a word worth keeping in three months."
    Melissa said nothing for a long while. The silence intimidated Cat, and she moved restlessly in her chair.
    "It's not like I haven't been trying," she said into that silence. "It's just not working."
    "Why didn't you say something sooner? We're supposed to deliver the manuscript in November. That gives us only three months and—"
    "I know how long I've got to the deadline. It seems like mat's all I can think of— that deadline looming up, getting closer and closer. I have visions of them sending men in pinstriped suits to get back their advance."
    "Now don't be—"
    "I've got a royalty payment from Yarthkin coming at the end of this month. I was planning to live on that money over the whiter, but I suppose I could give them that and get a job or something."
    Melissa shook her head. "We'll get an extension on the deadline. That won't be a problem. What's more important is getting you back on track."
    "It won't work, Melissa."
    "It just feels like it won't work. Everybody runs into these kinds of things."
    "You don't understand," Cat tried to explain. "They're gone."
    "They…?"
    "Ah…" Now was not the time to start blathering about ghosts and night visits. But she had to say something. "I… I get my inspiration from dreams, and I've stopped dreaming."
    Worry lines creased Melissa's brow. "You're a craftsperson, Cat," she said. "Writing's a craft, just like any other creative activity. You have to stay in practice. We both know there's more hard work involved in writing than any mystique."
    "But I have to have something to write in the first place."
    "Have you started anything?"
    "I've started a million things, and they're all shit."
    She wasn't going to mention the manuscript sitting beside her typewriter. Melissa would expect her to finish it, and she couldn't. Not without Kothlen, because it was Kothlen's story. Only he was gone. All the ghosts were gone.
    "What you need is a change of environment," Melissa said. "You have to get away for a while. When was the last time you took a vacation?"
    "I'm not sure. I was down in Vermont for a weekend last spring."
    "You need more time away than that. Ottawa's a very pretty city, but there's something about it that leaves a gray film on your mind, don't you think? Too many civil servants all in one place."
    "That's a typical Torontonian attitude."
    Melissa smiled. "I still think you have to get away from this city for a while and scrape the fog from your mind. Do you have someplace you can go? Friends that live out of town, or even out of the country?"
    "Correspondents in the States. A couple in Europe. But I can't just drop in on them."
    "Why not?"
    Cat shrugged.
    "I'd invite you to stay with me, but knowing you, I don't think you'd find Toronto all that conducive either."
    "I'll think about it," Cat said. "About going away. I'm just not all that sure it's the right answer. The problem's in here." She tapped her head. "This is where it's empty. Going someplace else isn't going to change that."
    "Don't be so sure. Something you writers tend to forget is that you need outside stimuli to get those creative juices flowing."
    A small smile tugged at Cat's lips. "The voice of experience?" she asked.
    Melissa shook her head. "Those that can't, teach," she replied.
    As the waitress in Noddy's was bringing Cat and Melissa then lunch, Peter Band was just finishing up a stock check on the Del Rey backlist and wondering if he'd ever be able to keep Piers Anthony's Xanth series in stock. The damned books sold so fast, and what with Ogre, Ogre due in October and a sixth in the series to be released in January, he might have to call the store the House of Del Rey if the sales kept up.
    Twenty-two blocks north on Bank Street, between Gloucester and Lisgar, Rick Kirby was in his own store, trying to sell a computer to Henri Cuiscard, who owned the shoe store down the block, and wishing he had a pert little