“Who’s Nathan, Daddy? What does that mean?”
But I don’t answer her. I don’t say anything. I just pass the card to McKay.
Because that card says…
Nathan St. James is not your father.
I am.
Love,
Carter
I’d like to say I was surprised, but it would be a lie. So I just concentrate on hiding my smile and enjoying that feeling in my gut.
The one that says…
We’re back, motherfuckers.
We’re back.
Carter needed to learn that I could take from him just as easily as he could take from me.
And now he knows.
FREE BONUS SCENE
READ NICK TATE’S POINT OF VIEW
(For the very first time ever)
CLICK HERE
WANT TO CHAT SPOILERS WITH OTHER READERS?
JOIN the Creeping Beautiful Discussion Group HERE
Are you ready for book two?
Read the description below and then pre-order it HERE.
PRETTY NIGHTMARE
INDIE
I have them all now. Just the way I want them.
McKay, the one who loves me deepest.
Adam, the one who protects me fiercely.
Donovan, the one who tells the truth.
They are my friends, they are my lovers, they are my world.
And Maggie belongs to all of us—no matter who her father is.
This is the family I’ve always wanted.
This is the family I deserve.
And I will do whatever it takes to keep them.
McKAY
I have a secret that could ruin everything.
But I’m not keeping that secret to hurt her.
Nathan St. James needed to go.
ADAM
I made plan that could ruin everything.
But I did it to save us in the end.
The Company needed to come back.
DONOVAN
I told a lie that could ruin everything.
But I didn’t tell the lie to them—I told it to myself.
Carter is closer than we think.
There is something truly wrong at Boucher House on the Old Pearl River.
Some hidden evil lurking deep inside the woods.
Nothing about their blissful life is what it seems.
Because just when they think they have it all—he shows up to take it back.
PRE-ORDER HERE
END OF BOOK SHIT
FREE BONUS SCENE
READ NICK TATE’S POINT OF VIEW
(For the very first time ever)
CLICK HERE
WANT TO CHAT SPOILERS WITH OTHER READERS?
JOIN the Creeping Beautiful Discussion Group HERE
Welcome to the End of Book Shit where JA Huss gets to tell you all her rambling thoughts on the book you just read.
This is the EOBS. And if you’ve never read one of my books and just stumbled into Creeping Beautiful out of nowhere, I’ll have some tips for you at the end on how this new series ties in with most of my other books.
But for now… let’s get to it.
I have written a LOT of End of Book Shits by this time. Eight years. January 2020 marks the eight-year point in this fiction writing career and I’ve been writing the EOBS for seven of those years. So… lot of EOBS’s.
Here’s what I want to talk about this in this one:
First of all, there are fourteen years of memories in this book and all of them are “relived” over the course of ONE DAY through different points of view. It’s a complicated story. I’m not gonna deny it. But if you keep that one thing in mind it should all make sense. This story is ONE DAY in the life of Adam, McKay, Donovan, Adam, and Indie. The timelines jumps all over (though it IS linear, for the most part) because I needed a way to tell you ALL THE THINGS in one book before we move forward. This story has barely started. That’s the most important thing to take away from this EOBS. If you think of a superhero story arc, then this would be called “the origin story”. How they all came to be in this one place, at this particular point in time, and THEN—THAT is when the story really starts.
Also, even though a lot happens in this book, not much really happens. Indie shows up on McKay’s doorstep, Donovan joins them, they go home, Adam joins them, Adam leaves, Adam comes back. End of story.
Obviously there’s more to it than that. This book is 110,000 words long (and that’s before the EOBS which adds another 3700 words to the book). But that’s the basic plot outline.
The theme of Creeping Beautiful is called “Coming Clean”. Not making up for past mistakes, just OWNING them. And I think this is important in the context of the real world we live in. Because listen to me. This is important.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PERFECT PERSON.
I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. No one is perfect. Everyone fucks up. And once you realize this it’s a lot easier to cut people currently in the middle of fucking up, some slack. (And, conversely, maybe they think you’re the one currently in the middle of fucking up and they cut you some slack, right?)
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has regrets. Even if they eventually learn to accept those regrets and no longer regret them because mistakes are how you learn and become a better person, they have to accept them.
I have no problem with changing my worldview about things. This goes for everything. Every controversial issue you can think of, I’ve been on one side, then another, then another over the course of my life. Abortion is bad, abortion is good, abortion is sad. I think the death penalty rocks, I’m not sure it works, prison suck, we need prisons. I love zoos! I think zoos are cruel. I’m a democrat, I’m a republican, I’m an anarchist, I’m a libertarian, I’m a nothing. I like being informed, I like being ignorant. I want to be a scientist, I hate being a scientist. I want to write non-fiction, no fiction, no TV scripts, no really, fiction. I have no idea what I want to be. There is definitely a God. There is maybe a God. There is probably no God. Hell, there has to be something, let’s just call it God. I want kids, I don’t want kids. I want to get married, fuck marriage. I love this man, no this one, no, really, this one—you know what? I don’t need a man. I believe in the happily ever after… but really you make your own future, and then no again, you really just need a team. It’s all luck, it’s all fake, it’s all real, it’s all lies.
At some point in my life I’ve had all these thoughts. And in the moment when I had these thoughts I was convinced.
And then I wasn’t. Something happened, or I read something, or heard something, or fucked something up and I changed my mind.
It’s as simple as that.
So the truth is--It’s all just… learning.
You start out with nothing. Your brain is just neurons firing billions of time over the course of a day. And each time they fire, you make a connection. You learn to recognize things, you learn to feel things, you learn what you like and what you hate, who you trust and who you fear.