The Sequel by R. L. Stine

1
    Witness one Zachary Gold, 33. Youthful, tanned, long and lean, tensed over his laptop in the back corner of the coffee shop, one hand motionless over the keyboard.
    Casual in a white Polo shirt to emphasize his tan, khaki cargo shorts, white Converse All-Stars. He grips the empty cardboard latte cup, starts to raise it, then sets it down. Should he order a third, maybe a grande this time?
    Zachary Gold, an author in search of a plot, begs the gods of caffeine to bring him inspiration. He is an author in the hold of that boring cliché, the Sophomore Slump. And his days of no progress on the second novel have taught him only that clichés are always true.
    Not a superstitious man, not a fanciful man. Practical. A realist.
    But today he will welcome any magic that will start him writing. An angel, a muse, a shaman, a voice from beyond the grave, enchanted beads, an amulet, a scrawled message on a crinkled-up paper napkin.
    Today … perhaps today that magic will arrive.
    No, Zachary Gold does not live in The Twilight Zone . He lives in a brownstone in the West 70’s of Manhattan, a building he bought with the abundant royalties from his first novel.
    He tells interviewers that he never reads reviews. But he did read the piece in the New York Times that declared him the “once-and-future king of the new American popular literature.”
    Does the once-and-future king have a future?
    Zachary succumbs to a third latte, skim milk with a shot of espresso, and resumes his throne in front of the glaringly blank screen.
    The first book wrote itself, he recalls. I practically wrote it as fast as I could type it. And then I barely had to revise.
    A sigh escapes his throat. The hot cup trembles in his hand. If the first book hadn’t crowned him king, he wouldn’t be under so much pressure for the second one.
    A lot of kings have been beheaded.
    And then he scolds himself: Don’t be so grim. A lot of authors have had this problem before you.
    Zachary has a sense of humor. His wife Kristen says it kept him alive several times when she felt like battering him over the head with a hot frying pan. Kristen is a redhead and—another cliché—has the stormy temperament that is supposed to come with the fiery hair.
    Two teenage girls at a table against the wall catch Zachary’s attention. They have their green canvas backpacks on the floor and their phones in front of them on the table.
    â€œMrs. Abrams says we don’t have to read War and Peace . We can read the Spark Notes instead.”
    â€œMrs. Abrams is awesome.”
    At the table behind them, a woman with white scraggly hair, round red face, a long blue overcoat buttoned to her throat, two shopping bags at her feet, slumps in her chair as if in defeat, jabbering to herself. Or is she on the phone?
    Zachary tells himself he needs the noise, the chatter and movement, the distraction of new faces, to help him concentrate. He wrote most of the first novel in this very coffee shop. He can’t stay at home. Not with the baby crying. And the nanny on the phone, speaking torrents of heated Spanish to her boyfriend.
    He tried an app that a friend told him about. It offered background coffee shop noise to play through your home stereo. Like those sound machines that play ocean waves to help you sleep. The app had an endless loop with the clatter of dishes and low chatter of voices. But the sounds weren’t stimulating enough to force Zachary to beam his attention to the keyboard. He had to get out.
    And now he sits gazing from table to table. Studying the faces of those chatting and those caught in the glow of laptop screens. And he thinks how carefree everyone looks. Because they don’t have to write a book. Most people leave school and never have to turn in another paper. And they are so happy about it.
    Why did he choose to be a writer? Was it because he couldn’t think of anything else? Was it because his parents begged him to