The Serpent King(52)

“But,” Gary said, “that’s not the whole story. Lydia clearly did her homework and discovered an obscure interview I did before any of you were born, in which I talked about what a special place I have in my heart for my rural fans who dream of a bigger world than the one they inhabit. And I know this because Miss Lydia had at the ready for my agent the population statistics for…” He snapped his fingers.

“Forrestville,” Lydia said.

“Ah, yes. Forrestville. And my agent would be in big trouble if I weren’t at least given the opportunity to spend some time with one of my small-town readers who made the trip all this way. So we changed my flight to the red-eye so I’d be able to spend some real time with you.”

“I can’t even tell you both what this means to me,” Travis said. He wanted to cry. This was already the best night of his life.

“My pleasure,” Lydia said. “I had to go big.”

They arrived at Five Points Creamery and got in line.

“Mr.—Gary, please let me pay for you,” Travis said.

Gary laughed. “My boy, it’s no secret to you that I have sold many books. I am a millionaire many times over. I will be buying the ice cream this evening for all of you, thank you very much. Buy Deathstorm when it comes out if you must repay me.”

“Oh, I will. You better believe I will.”

Gary approached the young man behind the counter and pulled a fat, intricately tooled wallet from his pocket. “I’ll be paying for my young friends here. And whatever they order”—he leaned in with a conspiratorial wink—“make it a triple. All around.” He drew a circle in the air with his finger.

They all sat down with their ice cream.

“So, Travis, what house are you?” Gary asked, spooning ice cream into his mouth and grunting with delight.

“Oh, Northbrook. Definitely Northbrook,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation.

Gary pointed his spoon at Travis. “Indeed! I had you pegged as a Northbrook, but I was prepared to talk you out of whatever other ideas you may have had. House Tanaris? House Wolfric? Who knows how people think.”

Travis beamed.

“All right, then,” Gary said. “Let’s put your friends in their rightful houses, shall we?”

“Yeah! Dill’s a musician. So…”

“Minstrels’ Brotherhood,” Gary and Travis said simultaneously. They grinned.

“All right, Lydia…she’s supersmart and she loves to read and write…so…House Letra?” Travis said.

“Yes, yes,” Gary said, rubbing his chin. “Or…The Learned Order?”

Travis considered the proposition tentatively, not wanting to contradict his idol, but realizing he might have no choice. “Only thing is that there’s a lifelong chastity vow.”

“I forgot about that,” Gary murmured.

“Nope,” Lydia said. “My chastity vow extends only to high school. I’ll take the other choice. Hey, I don’t want to interrupt the Bloodfallery, but Gary, how did you become a writer?”

He finished a bite of ice cream. “I grew up on a farm in Kansas. Wheat. Corn. We had some animals. We worked from dawn until dusk. I loved the books of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Robert E. Howard. As I worked, I would create worlds in my mind. Characters. People. Languages. Races. Battles. It was my escape. Pretty soon, I had too much for my head to hold and I needed to put some on paper.”

“I do that!” Travis said. “I work at a lumberyard and I imagine stuff while I work. What did your parents think about you becoming a writer?”

A wistful smile. “My father…was not a kind man. He drove me hard and he thought writing was foolishness. And maybe he was right. But you couldn’t have told me that then and you couldn’t tell me that now.”

A moment of quiet. Gary finished another bite of ice cream. “Are you a writer, Travis?”

“Oh no.”

“Why not?”

“I mean…I can’t write.”

“Well, have you ever tried?”

“No.”

“Then of course you can’t! Writing is something you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don’t yet do, but should.”

“Don’t you need to go to college to be a writer?”

“Not at all. Listen, we live in a remarkable time. There’s free advice everywhere on the Internet. Have you ever read Bloodfall fanfic?”

“Yes,” Travis said, hesitating. “But I’ll stop if you want me to.”

Gary laughed. “Nonsense. Start there. Write some Bloodfall fanfic. Borrow my characters. I give you permission. Get practice writing. And then begin to create your own. I sense something special in you. A great imagination. I sense that you have a story to tell.”

Travis glowed. Something began to grow inside of him. Something that might be able to grow through the rocks and dirt that his father had piled on him.




He and Gary spent an hour and a half discussing the Bloodfall series while Dill and Lydia sat outside and talked. Travis told Gary about Amelia. He borrowed Lydia’s phone and they took many photos together. The time came to leave. They returned to the airport.