Play Maker(77)

Maybe I should get a street team.

I bet Bethany Bonafont has a street team. Note to self: get a street team.

I chug my glass and one-click the stupid “book” to see what this one is all about. It’s called Taken by the Amorous Gay Velociraptor’s Mouth. Like, how is that even sexy? How are people reading this filth? It sounds painful and stupid, not sexy and funny.

Fuuuucckkk this guy. In the butt, with a velociraptor.

Darvet Sandscone is an average bartender by day and a superhero sleuth by night. After a hard day on the job, a young triceratops asks him for help, and he finds himself in the darkest part of the city: No Man’s Land. The police moved out months ago and left the dinosaurs to fend for themselves.

When hunting for the purse snatcher, he finds himself cornered by a tribe of rabid velociraptors hungry for one thing, and one thing only: his dick.

Of course I’m going to f*cking read it. I’m part of the problem.

I pour another glass of wine and open up the book, no doubt twenty pages of ridiculous gay-on-raptor action that probably took him a whole ten minutes to write. He probably spent more time Photoshopping his ridiculous book’s cover than he did writing it.

Hell, he probably spent more time uploading the damn thing to Amazon than he did writing it.

Did I mention he’s my archenemy? I hate him.

I’m too drunk to stop reading. I make it through the whole thing in less than fifteen minutes, and it’s the most appalling garbage I’ve ever read in my life. Well, next to the other filth he writes that I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve read. I’m also embarrassed to admit it’s kind of really funny.

Like I said, I’m part of the problem.

At least, it’s funny until I check his rank again. In the fifteen minutes it took me to read, he’s shot up to number 155. Overall. On all of Amazon. Fuck. Me. Sideways. I click over to another tab and look up my latest, Life and Love in the Texas Desert, and see that it’s only ranked number 825.

Me, 825. I spent weeks working on that book, churning through edits and countless free bottles of wine from next door. I poured my soul into that book and my heroine. Sleepless nights were spent in this very room, typing up a storm, obeying my muse and everything she demanded of me, and I’m freaking 825.

This fool spends, what, ten minutes? An hour? And he’s number 155. He just barely settles underneath Bethany Bonafont’s regency romance from a six months ago, because the damn thing is still selling like it’s crack.

It doesn’t belong on Amazon. It belongs in the bowels of the dark web, where people hide their shame.

I look at the antique letter opener on my desk and consider lopping off an ear and mailing it to him. Van Gogh was a genius and everyone remembers him because of that ridiculous ear stunt, so why not Randi Rose, romance author? “Put this in your butt,” the enclosed note would say. My fingers close around the dagger, but I drop it and grab my mouse instead.

If this is how he wants to build his way to the top, fine.

But those at the top can’t remain there forever. Look at Rome. Look at…that other place that fell apart after reaching the top. Atlantis? Look at…a bad mountain climber…or something. Drunk analogies aren’t the best.

The point is he can’t keep his shiny five-star ratings forever, and it is my personal mission in life to destroy every last one. Muahahahaha!

RIP, five-star rating. R-I-f*cking-P. One star for you!

I crack my knuckles and scroll down to the review box. For the first time in twenty minutes (okay, four minutes), I smile. To the death, Shivers!

How quaint. Another Charlie Shivers “original” about preposterous objects having sex. The book, if you can even call twelve pages of senseless and impossible “sex” a book, is thoroughly unimaginative. Charlie Shivers is as much a real author as my foot is an author. And my foot, mind, can’t write a book. Oh, look, neither can Shivers! Don’t waste your time or energy on this book. There are so many other talented authors, real authors, who can evoke a sense of wonderment, sex appeal, and emotion with their pinkie than Shivers could ever hope to evoke in his entire life and body of work.

My only regret, after hitting the submit button, is that the review sort of admits I read his work. Maybe people will think it’s just this one. I hope. Well, no one can prove I read anything, anyways. No one except Amazon, and even then, they can’t prove I pushed the button.

“My silly cat has an extra thumb and spends all his time on the computer buying stupid books. Silly, silly cat.”

Never mind I don’t even have a cat, because that would be one more thing to take very poor care of. But if I did, his name would absolutely be Grawlix, the name for the symbols used to replace swear words. That’d be my kind of cat. Or maybe Aglet, because why not? Or Potato, because I always wanted a pet named Potato.

It’s probably for the best I will never have children.

Satisfied with my launched torpedoes towards Shivers, I swallow the rest of my wine and shut down the office. So, I’m going to bed alone, again. At least I have the entire thing to stretch out in and there is zero chance of me being molested by a velociraptor.



Read the rest of TOPPED here!





MAN CANDY by Melanie Harlow



He’s back.

Not just back in town, but living in the flat right beneath mine. And he looks good enough to eat, which is just one more reason to stay away from him.