Naive by Charles Royce (world best books to read .txt) 📕

drink on the counter and walks to the bathroom. He closes the door, muting the celebration from the other room. He can still hear them.

“Poor Micah,” Haylee says.

“This is a lot to take in. Fucking Jenna, putting Micah through all this,” Shawn says.

“Imagine losing the love of your life, going through what he went through, and now all of this,” Haylee replies.

“He made it through, though,” Allen adds.

Micah, still listening from the bathroom, puts his hands on the vanity, holds his head down and cries, his shoulders heaving. The sounds grow softer.

“Can you believe how many suspects there were?” Micah hears someone say.

“I know!” someone else adds. “We were seriously on the edge there, going who did it, who did it?”

“Not once but like five different times, we were like, ‘He did it.’”

“She did it.”

“No, they did it.”

“No, he did it.”

“Oh, no, SHE did it.”

They chuckle.

“Hey, guys, it’s over now. We know who did it.”

As the laughing from the other room fades to deafening silence, Micah takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

The affair.

The day he threatened Josh.

The fight.

The secrets he collected.

The last time he saw Lennox alive.

The knife he shoved into his husband’s back.

He rattles his head as if he’s shaking the whole disturbing, awful, exasperating experience off, pulls back his shoulders, and looks in the mirror.

“You did it.”

About The Author

“When you think back to your original passions, the ones you had when you were a child, remember those passions are the ones that are God-given. Innate. Soul-born. They fill you up, they never tear you down.”

—paraphrased from Pete Wilson,

former pastor of Crosspoint Church

Those words. I can’t tell you what they did for me. I was at a crossroads, a place where monotony met discontentment, struggling with what was next for me.  About that same time, a friend of mine Kelly Oechslin released her first book. I saw the light in her eyes, the pure unadulterated joy of presenting what she’d accomplished. Evidently the universe was trying to guide me. It was like my childhood was whispering, “Hey, remember me?”

Ever since I was little, I can remember writing. I wrote my first book when I was ten. Well, “book” is a bit of an overstatement. It’s roughly 20 pages about a little girl with cancer, with the title “In Other Words, You’re Dying” in huge adolescent cursive on the front cover. I don’t remember what was happening at the time, but clearly I was trying to work through something. I devoured hundreds of books as a child and well into high school. Essays were always my favorite test-taking form. Creative writing courses in college led to me being fashion editor of our university newspaper. In the early nineties, I wrote a lost episode of “Friends,” thinking that somehow NBC would pick it up, and I could play Chandler’s long lost brother. I also wrote an original script about a struggling record company called “Off The Record,” a vehicle for Kirstie Alley because I couldn’t bear thinking that “Cheers” would never return.

Then it stopped. Life happened. I stopped writing. I listened to other people tell me who I was, I moved from city to city following pursuits on whims. My mom passed away. I drank. I did drugs. I did manage to start a novel in the midst of a drug binge, but I didn’t finish it. You can imagine why.

I got sober. I began coming back to myself. I moved back “home” to Nashville.

That’s when it happened. Pastor Pete. Kelly Oechslin. I dusted off the novel I began years ago during the drug binge. The memories of where I was and who I was at the time came flooding back. I wanted to give up immediately, but I noticed that the story itself had legs. I shifted the narrative to another perspective and began mapping out the new book. Character by character, chapter by chapter, the ideas started flowing. Then I took a long trip to Italy to help celebrate my two best friends and their milestone birthdays (photo on previous page was taken by my friend Ruben during the trip). It was there that I finally typed the first chapters of this novel. That was 2016. It has been a roller coaster of pure unadulterated joy ever since.

Now as I am writing this letter to you, it is two weeks before I release my first novel to the world. I am nervous. Excited. Sometimes I struggle with getting caught up in the whirlwind, in thoughts of success. But then I have these moments, like right now talking with you. These are the moments I love… the ones of centeredness, of gratitude, of peace, of KNOWING that I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s all the success I need.

If you are struggling with passion, or perhaps wondering “what’s next,” try listening to that childhood whisper. It might just be waiting for you to give it a voice.

An excerpt from TRANSPARENT

book two of the Naive series, aVAILABLE NOW

“Why, Josh Harrison, you son of a gun,” Josh hears someone behind him, mimicking a Southern accent.

Josh turns around. “Why, Miss Hillary Gordon, as I live and breathe.” Josh overtly mocks her mocking him.

‘This is all your doing, right, you handsome Southern devil? 1 knew tonight was going to be amazing when I got this lovely invitation in the mail.”

She reaches into her purse to find it.

“You should see the gift bag,” Josh replies, anticipating Hillary’s “Ooh, aah” moment over the invitation.

Hillary is the 57-year-old wife of Walter Gordon, one of the pioneers of the recent Internet commerce re-emersion. Time had recently awarded him the title “Man of the Future.” In most business circles, he is considered one of the smartest men in the world, a former think tank member under Obama, respected, rich, and indispensable to many Fortune 500 clients who have benefited from his revolutionary tactics that consistently stayed ahead of consumer trends. Whenever Gordon announces a new