Recap from "Delila in the Desert"
https://www.literotica.com/s/delila-in-the-desert
Donald (Donnie) Abravanel, a college professor of literature, met Rebecca Birnbaum on a flight from London to his home in Tucson. Through the course of the flight, they struck up an acquaintanceship, then a friendship before she reveals to Donnie that she is Delila DeLongue, a world famous and highly successful writer of erotic fiction.
Answering an invitation to her rented home in Tucson, Donnie spends the evening with her friends, a wealthy gay couple and a famous Italian clothing designer. After Donnie inadvertently ingests THC edibles micro-dosed with Ecstasy, he ends up in a wild orgy with Delila and her friends.
The next morning, Rebecca professes her love for Donnie, declaring him her "Happily Ever After Guy" and that she intends to retire from being Delila and pursue her original dream of writing science fiction and fantasy as Rebecca Birnbaum.
The story picks up 3 years later.
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"Sah wha do ya fink?"
I peered over my reading glasses at Rebecca. She was standing in the doorway of our master bathroom brushing her teeth dressed in one of my old cycling race shirts, a pair of white knee socks and white cotton panties. Her womanly curves showed as shadows from the bathroom backlighting. Her lustrous hair, which her very expensive personal hairdresser kept tastefully black, framed her fair skinned face and green eyes. Her naturally red generous lips were frothed with toothpaste. At 55 years old, she still looked like a girlish Disney princess.
I smiled up at her. "What was that dear?"
She turned, spit into the sink, rinsed out her mouth and padded over to the bed, perching next to me with an arm around my shoulder.
"Smart ass, you know what I asked." She kissed me on the top of my head. "What do you think of the first draft?" She tapped the folio on my lap.
I was quiet for a moment. Since retiring as "Delila DeLongue", the most famous and successful erotic fiction writer in decades, Rebecca had struggled to find her voice as the speculative fiction writer she originally dreamed of becoming. The draft of the short story I had just finished reading gave no evidence that she had found it.
"Well," I started carefully. "I like the concept."
Rebecca sighed and flopped back onto the pillows. "It's garbage, isn't it?
"No ... no.. not garbage darling. It just feels a little listless and lacking direction."
"But Donnie, that's what the protagonist is feeling! Since she lost her position at SpaceComm, her lover left her and the aliens ..."
"No dear. I understand that. It's ... I mean ... the writing feels that way too. It's all surface, I'm not getting any real depth."
Rebecca curled up next to me and put her head on my shoulder. She grabbed the folio and tossed it across the room. It slid across the saltillo tile and hit our cat who yowled angrily, batted at the papers and bolted out of the room.
"See, even Nimitz thinks it's garbage."
I wrapped an arm around her and kissed her forehead. "It's only been a couple of years. Give yourself a little time."
"It's been 3 years. Three years and four rejections from my publisher. The SAME publisher who literally made millions off of me, the dickhead. You know what the LAST rejection said? Delila ... Come Home!"
I laughed a little. "He just misses those big sales you generated."
"Yeah, he misses them so much he offered me a $15 million advance, 14% on book sales, 40% on eBooks and an option for an audiobook if I would come out of retirement for two more Delila DeLongue books."
"Wow."
"Do you think I should take it?"
When I first met Rebecca on that fateful flight 3 years ago, she had only told me her name was Rebecca Birnbaum and vaguely implied she was a writer and voracious reader. Of course, as a Professor of Literature I was fascinated by the depth and breadth of her knowledge of literature from all periods. It wasn't till later that I found out she not only wrote erotic fiction but was the reigning queen of the genre. And she had lived most, if not all, the wild erotic adventures that her heroines experienced.
I had a hard time reconciling the woman that I shared that flight with as someone who wrote what I saw as simply pornography. But she had professed her love for me, a love that I shared evidently, and had retired the persona of Delila DeLongue to pursue her original goals as a writer. She hadn't had any success.