Chapter Nineteen
Needing to get her mind off Luke, she took her phone out of her pocket and held it up. Still no signal.
“How long do you think the cell service will be out?” she asked.
Luke shrugged. “You never know. It’s a good thing one of Christmas Camp’s mottos is, ‘Disconnect to reconnect with what matters most at Christmas.’”
“Well, right now, what matters most to me is getting ahold of my agent,” Riley said. “I’m supposed to be checking in with updates so we can get some posts on social media”
Luke walked over and picked up the old-fashioned phone and held the handset out for her. “Here you go,” he said, smiling. “Call anyone you’d like. I’ll go see if I can hook up the new router and get our Wi-Fi back up.”
“That would be great,” Riley said. She eyed the phone. “But in the meantime, I’ll just use this relic again.”
“Be thankful we have it,” Luke said.
“Oh, believe me, I am,” she replied. “I bet we’re already getting tons of people saying what they want me to write about in this Christmas novel. I want to start writing everything down and see if anything inspires me.”
“So basically you’re going to let our Christmas Campers write your story for you?” Luke asked.
Riley tilted her head while she studied him. “Why do you make it sound like I’m doing something wrong when we’re trying to include what my fans want to read?”
“No judgment here,” Luke said.
Riley put her hands on her hips. “Really, because right now you’re sounding pretty judgy to me.”
Luke laughed. “Then I’m out of here. Good luck with your call.”
“Thanks.” Riley watched Comet start to follow Luke out of the room. “Alone at last,” she said quietly to herself as she sat down to make her call. But apparently, she had spoken too soon because when she looked up, she saw Comet hadn’t actually left the room yet. He was standing in the doorway watching her.
“What?” she asked, feeling guilty for some reason. “I’m only making a call. That’s it. Nothing fun. You’re not missing anything. Trust me. It’s just a call to Margo.”
When Comet heard Margo’s name, it did the trick and he trotted out of the room. Riley couldn’t help but laugh.
Margo’s phone rang four times before she picked up. Riley had almost hung up.
“Margo Meyers,” Margo answered.
When Margo’s voice sounded a little off, Riley wasn’t sure if it was Margo or the connection. She tapped the headset several times.
“Margo? It’s Riley. Is everything okay? Can you hear me all right?”
“Clear as a bell,” Margo said with a bite to her tone. “What number is this? Where have you been? You were supposed to call last night.”
So far, Riley thought, this was shaping up to be a typical Margo call where she shot a lot of questions at her but never gave her a chance to answer any of them. When she tried to sit back in the chair and get comfortable, the phone cord pulled taut and the entire phone almost fell to the floor.
“You stupid thing,” Riley muttered, scrambling to save the phone.
“What did you just call me?” Margo snapped.
Riley’s eyes grew huge. “Sorry! Margo, I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Then who are you calling stupid?” Margo asked. “I hope not one of your Christmas Campers.”
Riley stared at the handset, annoyed. “Like I would ever do that. I was talking to the phone.” She took a deep breath to regroup. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’m calling from a landline at the lodge. The cell service isn’t working.”
“Good to see you’re taking this whole disconnect-to-reconnect Christmas Camp theme to heart,” Margo said.
Riley knew if she heard that phrase one more time she was going to lose it. She fought to keep her cool. “Look, Margo, I’m calling to see if you have any social media feedback for me yet? Has anyone sent in ideas yet of what they’d want to see in this Christmas book? I haven’t been able to get online since I got here.”
Margo laughed. “Do we have feedback yet? It’s been incredible. We’ve gotten more than thirty-two thousand responses so far with all kinds of ideas. They’re all using the hashtag we created, #ChristmasCamp. I’m having a couple of my interns pulling everything together, getting rid of the duplicates, and then we’ll send you a list.”
“Wow,” Riley said, stunned. “And we haven’t even started the camp yet.”
“I know,” Margo said. “The response has been amazing, and your publisher team is calling Mike a genius.”
“Oh, great, just what we need, for him to have an even bigger ego,” Riley said.
“If that ego ends up saving your career, then I’m all for it,” Margo said. “How far are you on your outline?”
“What outline?” Riley asked. “If you’re talking about the outline for this Christmas book, I haven’t even started. I’ve been waiting to see what kind of feedback we get and what people want to read about.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Margo? Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” Margo said, her voice icy. “I’m just trying to figure out why in what world you think it’s okay that you haven’t even started on an outline that’s due in a just a few weeks.”
“I told you,” Riley said, getting frustrated. “I’m waiting to get the fan feedback. That’s what you wanted. That’s why I’m here, right?”
“You’re there for the publicity, for some positive press. You still need to create your own original Christmas story. Sure, you can use a few generic ideas from people, like including a snowball fight or making a snowman, things like that, so when people read it they’ll think it was their idea, but it’s up to you to figure out how all these Christmas activities tie in to your characters
