The Watcher would have had to admit if asked that she found popular fiction tedious, and much of it an over-dramatization of true lore. Still, she'd seen this particular young man somewhere...

"Have you been reviewed by the Times?" she asked, because he'd knocked her a little off-kilter by his earlier remark about her presumptuousness, and that prevented her from just asking him for his name. "I enjoy their articles, and they have a reasonably good reviewer."

She'd actually been published herself, but it had been in some fairly obscure publications dealing with languages, so she wasn't egotistical enough to think he'd be aware of her non-covert line of work. The warmth was inching back into her expression, albeit a bit reluctantly. She should be working, not chatting up some stranger.

"Planning to be published again, or are you taking a sabbatical?"