(Now that  I am mostly recovered from a ghastly cold, and have managed to finish the notes for West Toward the Sunset, I am back to work on Luna City. Herewith part of a chapter called Fame, wherein Joe Vaughn becomes a literary sensation. For all the wrong reasons, of course.)

“I thought you should know, cher,” remarked Richard’s boss, Lew Dubois, the C-suite level manager who had become at least a much of a friend over the years of their acquaintance, “That Anne’s good friend – you will recollect Madame Creighton Doyle, who writes the novels most romantic and amusing? Her newest novel is to be launched upon her millions of breathlessly waiting fans tonight. Alas, the formal party sponsored by her publisher will be in New York, and not here.”

“Oh, the best-seller. Yes, I recall – and I honestly I can’t say that I mind in the least,” Richard replied. When he cast his mind back to the previous year, he remembered briefly encountering Trish Creighton Doyle on several occasions. She was a woman of certain years, given to wearing flowing, chiffon-laden garments. The customary dreamy expression on her countenance suggested that her mind was most usually occupied somewhere other than the here and now – unimaginably far, far from the mundane here and now. “We are simply full up with guests at the moment! Even with forewarning…”

“This is in the nature of a forewarning,” Lew replied. “But not as it concerns the Cattleman or the Crystal Room, but rather some of our dear friends. First, I am nearly certain that many of Madame Doyle’s readers will fall upon her latest like famished wolves on a tasty piece of filet mignon … and decide that they simply must see for themselves the enchanted circle of stones … that real circle which was made so many years ago. Madame Doyle has put the pictures which she took of the pagan monument on her website as part of the advance publicity…”

It was mid-morning at the Cattleman Hotel, the hour when Richard and Lew could both be found in Lew’s office, confabulating over what to expect in the near future, about any foreseen and unforeseen events affecting management of the ornate boutique hotel which had dominated the western side of Town Square for more than a century.

“The stone circle at the Age of Aquarius? ‘Strewth – I had better warn the Grants,” Richard considered the prospect with a shudder of horror. “It was bad enough the last time that they were mobbed by visitors; treasure-seekers, ghost-hunters and UFOlogists all converged on the place a couple of years ago. It was a mob scene, culminating in a riot, and then in their old place burning to the ground, although the all-hands brawl had nothing to do with the fire. I couldn’t get a decent nights’ sleep for weeks. At least this time, they have a pleasanter place to live in… and Judy will be thrilled no end, having oodles of imaginative visitors to listen to her tales of New Age this and that…”

“Oh, most definitely, my friend,” Lew agreed. “Tell M’sieu and Madame Grant to expect any number of visitors to their magnificent stone circle…”

“Which, alas, looks much more impressive with the aid of artful photography and the cooperation of nature,” Richard replied. “The marker stones aren’t anything like Stonehenge or Avebury, being about a quarter the size. I’m afraid the baying fans will be quite disappointed…”

“But not in another aspect,” Lew was fiddling with his computer, and the printer across the room whirred and clanked into life. “My wife has sent me a copy of the news release regarding Madame Doyle’s book … the cover was embargoed until the very last minute…”

“So, the Grants will get a boost in visitors to the Age,” Richard mused, as Lew collected a sheet of paper from the printer tray. “And likely the good Colonel Walcott’s reenactor group … I do recollect that the Doyle woman was taking pictures of their encampment and costumed reenactors at the 4^th of July celebration in the square … what is the plot of the book? I know someone told me once, but I can’t recall. Something about a woman going through the stone circle and traveling into the past…”

Lew nodded in grim agreement. “A woman of the most modern American times … and discovering fulfillment and love in the arms of a fearless Comanche warrior chieftain of almost two hundred years in the past…”

Richard snorted with rude laughter as Lew handed him the paper. “According to some of the stories I’ve heard from the reenactors, that would have been about the last … oh, f**k me running! Has Joe Vaughn laid eyes on this… this … Oh, my god. He will absolutely lose his mind when he sees this, let alone what Jess will think…”

“I suspect that Madame Vaughn will be amused,” Lew observed. “To discover that her husband has been made into the bare-chested hero on the cover of a best-selling romance…”

“Joe will die of embarrassment,” Richard replied. “And he will most definitely do gross bodily harm to the first person who ventures a jesting remark…My god, I suppose I shall have to tell him. I can only hope that he will not reach out and slaughter me, once I show him this abomination!”

“You will be most tactful, revealing this information, of course,” Lew appeared to have been relieved of a dangerous burden. Someone else would take on the fraught chore of telling Joe Vaughn that a casual picture of him, snapped as he came from a turn in the civic dunk tank the last 4^th of July and briefly embraced and kissed Jess, had been utterly transformed by a cover artist … transformed every possible detail save Joe’s clearly recognizable dark, hawklike countenance. He was recognizably on the cover as a bare-chested, dark haired Comanche warrior embracing a slender woman with flowing hair and a diaphanous drape of some kind. Now Richard recalled Araceli’s description of Trish Creighton-Doyle’s output – always the studly romantic hero, embracing a woman clad in something flowy … only the period details and setting distinguished one of the Creighton-Doyle oeuvre from another. Lew appeared to have handed off that dangerous assignment to Richard – a case of discretion being the better part of valor.

“Lew, I will be the very soul of diplomacy,” Richard assured his boss, while taking a good long look at the full-sheet picture of the book cover.

A Time-shattering Romance, from the best-selling author of Those Bolyn Girls.

Richard’s heart sank, right down to the level of his kitchen clogs. For a long moment, he wished that he could hand this off to his redoubtable Aunt Myra, she who was unaccountably adept with blades, small arms, and the physical martial arts, ostensibly a traveling international journalist but most likely an operative for a secretive governmental agency designated M-something-or-other.