Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Jake sat on the couch in the living room next to Colin, arms folded over his chest, reluctance written all over him.
And, of course, Cas came running out of their room and joined Jake and Colin on the couch.
“Please, please, please, please,” Casper pleaded. “And you know we have the best idea in the whole world!”
I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my mouth, and I exchanged a glance with Jake. We were understandably on the fence; Colin wasn’t even ten yet, and at this rate, Casper might start first grade in a couple weeks on a freaking computer. We’d crossed all our fingers for the damn pandemic to end, but it seemed unlikely this year. Everything was shut down.
Nikki coughed on her end. She and Russell were on their second week of being sick with Covid. “Jake, gimme your thoughts again.”
Jake shrugged and scratched an eyebrow. “They can still count their ages on both hands, and they can’t take something like this back. Once it’s out, it’s out. Doesn’t matter if it’s ‘just a YouTube series.’ They’ll be exposed to all our followers.”
“Until we get our own channel,” Colin added smugly.
Slow your roll, buddy. We haven’t agreed yet.
Yet.
I suppressed another sigh, wavering a whole lot. It wasn’t as if the boys were gonna do anything that might embarrass them in the future. It was a nature documentary for children, shot in our own backyard. But even so…they were incredibly young, and the internet wasn’t always a friendly place. If we eventually agreed, we would have to protect them from all the interactions. Plus, Colin came out strong but tended to fade quickly when it came to being in the spotlight. He could be just as introverted as Jake.
“It’s only ten episodies.” Casper flashed seven fingers. I wavered some more. My boy still thought it was fun to say episodies, for chrissakes. “It’s little.”
“And short!” Colin chimed in with. “Like, maybe twenty minutes long.”
Nikki chuckled through a cough. “Boys, can you excuse Dad and me for a moment? And get the good-cop daddy?”
I laughed. “I’m right here.”
“Why am I the bad cop?” Jake frowned.
As the boys scurried back to their room, I sat down next to Jake.
“How you doin’, hon?” I asked.
“Eh. Getting better, but it still sucks,” she replied hoarsely. “You can stop sending us Panera delivery, though. We have a fridge full of soup now.”
I grinned.
“I’m waitin’ for my answer here,” Jake pointed out. “Am I the bad cop?”
“No, you’re not.” I put my hand on his knee. “Thing is, if it weren’t for this damn lockdown, I would’ve stood firm way longer. But the boys are running out of things to do.”
The other three were easier to entertain. Between our backyard and the pool at the Condor Chicks house, they were having a great summer. We were teaching Sam how to swim, and the two youngest goofballs couldn’t get enough of being in the water.
“It would be a nice project for them,” Nikki agreed. “Jake, honey, I think it might be time to let them do this. They wanna take after you guys. It’s sweet.”
Jake furrowed his brow. “I don’t have any problem whatsoever with them running around with their cameras. Hell, I’m proud. It’s the whole taking things public that concerns me.”
Valid point; couldn’t stress that enough. But I had to mention something to Nikki, because I was so impressed by Colin’s mind. “We actually told them we could go camping and do a documentary just for us, and Colin was like, but we wanna do this in the backyard because lots of kids can’t go anywhere during the lockdown, and we can show them there’s wildlife at home.”
“Aww.” Nikki went into the “I’m melting” momma mode and looked to Jake. “Let them do the damn docuseries, Jake. I have all the faith that you and Roe will edit it into something they’ll look back on one day with pride.”
Jake was caving. He missed editing too. Right now, there wasn’t much we could do. We did have work waiting—and a larger project in the researching stage, though that was mostly my job. I was reading a fuckload this year, which, of course, had triggered our work brains. Everyone today was looking to books, TV, and movies to make the days go by faster. Seth had barged into the office one day and just exclaimed, “Push content! Push content, push content, push content!”
We needed content.
Our numbers were ridiculously high on our podcast and whatever we put on YouTube.
“Can we compromise?” Jake proposed. “Five episodes, fifteen minutes long, and we’ll see how it goes. It’ll take about a day to put together one episode, editing included—okay, maybe two days—so we can continue on short notice if we don’t run into trouble.”
“Absolutely,” Nikki coughed. “What does Haley think?”
“She’s on board,” I replied. “She suggested we could dedicate one day of the week to the boys on our Insta. None of us is ready to consider them having their own channels and accounts—”