Invisible string (Robin Le Normand)

Chapter 2

"What do you mean Robin's agent wants to talk to us?"

Leire expected the meeting about the promotion of her newest book to be about that and not about her ex-friend Robin le Normand. Thinking about him still hurt so she tried to avoid it. Tried...and failed very often.

They met many years ago while Leire was in one of the parks near Robin's house in San Sebastián. She loved going to parks in general but she also loved going there to write. Leire was an old soul sometimes and loved handwriting, so being at the park allowed her to focus on that fully. No wifi, no phones, ...just her notebook, her pen and her crazy imagination. It was the perfect setting for her writing, even if she then had to type everything on her laptop as well. Robin just liked to go to parks for walks and he kept seeing the girl who was writing in her notebook until the day he finally talked to her. It intrigued him to see her there on the same days, at the same time. Always writing. Always looking like the world around her didn't exist. That first conversation started their friendship. And her stupidity was what ended it. So better not to think about it too often.

"I don't know if you've been following everything that's been going on with him lately", said her agent Gorka and Leire lied when she shook her head. "Well, it's been a bit of a mess. He needs a public image reset so to speak".

"And what does that have to do with me? Am I a marketing expert now or something?"

"You are someone who could help him".

"How?", she was so confused.

"Your reputation is good, people loved seeing you two together back when you were friends, ...so if you were hanging out again, people would be more likely to forget the messy stuff".

"What are you suggesting?"

Gorka took a deep breath. "Remember when we mentioned moving to Madrid?"

"Yeah. But we decided not to".

"Maybe we should change that decision...".

"I'm not moving to Madrid to be close to Robin. We're not friends anymore".

"Why?"

Leire looked away. "Because we aren't".

She didn't want to think about that. What Leire needed was to concentrate on promoting her new book. The previous one didn't get the great reviews her first book got and that was always worrying. The numbers were still good but it wasn't ideal to hear people say that your first book was the best and the rest were disappointing.

The promotion game was different than it was when her first book came out too. Now it was all about booktook and Leire wasn't the best at filming videos for that kind of social media. She had that drier Basque personality people from her region were known for, which wasn't a bad thing but it wasn't great when it came to social media where quirkiness was favoured. She was also shy, so a horrible combination. Robin always understood her so well because he was shy too.

"Did we get all the reviews from the ARCs we sent?", she asked Gorka.

"Most of them. They're positive for the most part. I'll show you them soon when I collect everything I need for the newsletters and the articles".

"Cool".

ARCs were still important, though. At least some things didn't change. Advance Reader Copies were very coveted amongst literary critics and book reviewers on social media. Leire's team had curated a group of people interested in the kind of genre she wrote so they could be sent the books early in exchange for their feedback and a review on Goodreads and their social media channels.

But booktok...booktok was king at the moment. One good review on that app that went viral could take a book from selling well to becoming the next big thing. One bad review...

Robin didn't know about any of those things, though. He just read a few books every year and didn't care much about what people said about them. He was going to read all of Leire's books too, regardless of what anyone said about those.

"It seems Leire isn't interested in joining our little plan to save your reputation", said Jesús when he saw Robin at the training ground.

"It's almost as if I already told you that was going to be her response".

"What did you do to her?"

"None of your business".

It would have been a lie to say Robin wasn't a bit disappointed about Leire's refusal to meet him again. However, he didn't want Jesús to know that so he didn't push the whole thing further.

"Her agent wants her to move to Madrid. He had wanted her to do that for a while so maybe...".

"Leave her alone".

"So you care about her", noted Jesús, nodding to himself.

"I care about you bothering people just because I messed up. Nothing that's happened to me is her fault so she shouldn't be the one who fixes the problems".

"It was worth trying".

And it was. Because it was a good idea. Maybe not an idea that should be fully forgotten like Robin said it should be. Because we already knew that a good review on booktok could take a book from selling well to becoming the next big thing and so it is easy to guess what a bad review could achieve. And rant reviews were actually quite popular on social media...