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Her mortified gaze flew up to mine, our eyes locked, and I knew that now I was in trouble. Hearing her soft gasp as her beautiful blue eyes widened in shocked disbelief, I realized that we both were indeed in deep, deep trouble. Neither one of us could look away; it was as if a lifetime of sharing passed between us in those few seconds as we stared into each other’s eyes, mesmerized. Although I couldn’t place it, I knew I would never forget it, nor would I forget the feel of her in my arms. It was as if she belonged there.
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Title Page
Leading the Moments
Turning Point
Jeremy McHarry
Leading the Moments / 1st of series: Turning Point / By Jeremy McHarry
Published 2023 by Bentockiz
e-book Imprint: Uniochlors
e-book Registration: Stockholm, Sweden
e-book ISBN: 9789198834178
e-book editing: Athens, Greece
Cover Images created via AI art generators
Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Introduction
Through books we come into contact with everything important that has happened in the past, analyzing also current events and putting our thoughts together to predict the future. The book is a window to the world, acquiring valuable knowledge and sparking our vivid imagination. It is a means of entertainment and is generally seen as a best friend, or as a slave that carries together all valuable information for us. The book is a friend who stays together without demands, a friend you call upon at every moment and abandon when you want.
It accompanies us in the hours of boredom and loneliness, while at the same time it entertains us. In general, a book does not ask anything from us, while it waits patiently on a dusty shelf to give us its information, to get us out of dead ends and to travel us to magical worlds.
This may be the travel mission of our books. Abstract narration, weird or unconscious thoughts difficult to be understood, but always genuine and full of life experiences, these are stories of life that can’t be overlooked easily.
This may be the start of something amazing!
Chapter One
Pausing, I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes for a few seconds. I knew...I knew...I knew what?
What did I know? What did I know? What did I know? What did I know?
Even as I played with the question in my head, I realized that it was just another distraction manufactured in the hope of avoiding facing the fact that I was blocked. My writing, like my life, was becoming stale and unimaginative.
Grimacing, I silently questioned...becoming?
Although I’d sold a ton of books with my Agent Jack Knight Series and had watched in amazement as my stories netted millions of dollars at the box office, I’d never deluded myself into believing I was a talented author...I’d just had the right type of story at the right time for the public to eat it up.
I was nothing if not realistic, although I had to admit I’d been—while not exactly hiding from—at the very least shoving to the back of my mind certain undeniable truths about myself over the past few years.
My hand found the disfiguring scar on my cheek and traced the pattern as I, for once, forced myself to look the facts of my life squarely in the face.
Fact number one: I wasn’t getting any younger nor was I handling it well. A few months earlier, I’d turned forty-eight, and I was feeling every single one of those forty-eight years, my body no longer responding quite as quickly or as well as it used to and my daily workout routine leaving me with aches and pains that could only be attributed to my aging body.
How had I gotten so old?
Idiotic question.
Fact number two: I was alone. I had been alone for more years than I cared to remember, and unwilling to examine that particular fact or the reasons for it too closely, I quickly moved on to the next one.
Coward.
Fact number three: Writing novels about the same characters had become tiresome, no matter how popular they were, or how much money they made for me. Although the public was still apparently enamored of my books as well as the resulting movies, I had to wonder how anyone in their right mind could allow themselves to believe, even in a fantasy world, that Agent Jack Knight could get into so many dangerous situations and still make it out alive.
That anyone could be that lucky...that anyone should be that lucky...quite simply boggled the mind.
That’s what I knew, I shouldn’t have been so lucky...I should have been dead many times over, but like the cat with the proverbial nine lives or perhaps the bunny with the batteries, I kept going and going and going...because even though Agent Jack Knight wasn’t real, he was based on reality...my reality.
My life had ironically become a fantasy escape for thousands of people.
Fact number four: I possessed a one-way ticket straight to hell with no layovers or connecting flights.
Fact number five: There was nothing I could do about facts numbers one and four, number two was by choice more or less, although not necessarily mine, and number three’s time was fast coming to a close.
I had already published eight Agent Jack Knight action/adventure novels, and was attempting to finish up the ninth, although that could just be wishful thinking on my part, but they hadn’t accomplished the one goal all but the first book had been specifically written to accomplish. He was still out there...somewhere...looming on the edges of my life like an elusive gray shadow disappearing at any sign of light waiting for me to make a mistake...a fatal mistake.
The frustration I experienced every time I allowed myself to think about him was so overwhelming at times that I...quickly refocusing my attention, breathing deeply, I forced the unwelcome images out of my mind.
There would only be one more book in the series after I finished the one I was writing, the final chapters of Agent Jack Knight’s life...my life. The problem was, as exciting as I could make my earlier life sound—they were based on my life but I had taken poetic license with the action scenes as well as the role he had played in them to make them more marketable—the last twelve years of my life had been spent writing novels about the first 36 years. That was going to be a hard sell.
––––––––
Sitting in my study at the hundred-year-old oak desk, the crackling of the fireplace the only sound, the light from the small lamp throwing the papers splayed across the surface into sharp relief, I could feel my hand cramping from the death grip I had on my pen. Hunched over, scribbling furiously, the deadline staring me in the face, I realized I must finish the novel in time or else...or else...
Snorting at that picture, I shook my head hopelessly. Unless I could come up with some thrilling conclusion to my wretched life, the tenth book’s future was very shaky indeed.
I should have stopped with the eighth one, but I’d idiotically agreed to write ten Agent Jack Knight books when I’d signed with my publisher. Besides which, the eighth book had given closure to my Shun character, but not Jack Knight, the character based on me. Closure of any sort was going to be hard to come by, since I had experienced no closure myself.
One thing was for sure, if I couldn’t even finish my ninth book, I wouldn’t ever have to worry about the tenth one.
My publisher will love that.
Reaching down, I scratched Lady’s ears. She licked my hand and then laid her head between her paws again. I could have sworn I heard a sad sigh.
Do dogs sigh?
I needed to find her another companion. We were both having trouble adjusting to Bullet’s death, which was one of the two main reasons I found myself stuck finishing the ninth book. Losing Bullet had taken the wind out of my sails, and my heart just wasn’t in it.
The second reason I was at an impasse was the fact that I hated reliving my only face-to-face encounter with him, the man who haunted my dreams and controlled my life.
With a disgusted grunt, I threw down my pen, and it went flying off the desk landing on the floor as I glared at the semi-blank page in front of me. I was getting nowhere fast.
With a resigned sigh I got up and walked around the desk to pick up my pen, my favorite pen, my lucky writing pen; the only one I ever used while writing my Agent Jack Knight novels.
Even though the replacement ink was sometimes hard to find, it was worth it. Using that pen was like wearing a pair of old jeans...familiar and comfortable. Once I finished writing the series, if I ever finished, I would retire the pen, perhaps frame it to hang next to my plethora of rejection slips.
