Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
I study her face to see if she’s lying. “Really?” I don’t think she is.
“And I got to be the husband,” Mike adds. He and Essie smile at each other. “We made some good memories, babe.”
“We did,” Essie agrees. Then she looks at me. “And it’s over now. But that’s OK. Something new is coming, Steve. None of us know what it is—”
“Oh, I know what it is,” I say. “It’s a shit show, is what it is.”
“Sure,” my dad says. “It’s gonna be an epic shit show, Steve. But you’re a guy who writes his own story, so you’ll find a way through it.”
“An agent offered to sign me,” I say. “And it’s not even romance. It’s sci-fi.”
“Really?” Essie says. “That’s great, Steve. It’s your dream.”
“Yeah. My dream.”
And then we drop it and start talking about other things. Essie and Mike’s new real estate idea, Mom’s new golf group at the culty compound they live on, Dad’s DIY plumbing course online, and Mike’s secret passion for narrating Master Choke audiobooks before he and Essie go to bed.
Which is oversharing, in my opinion. But hey, it’s kind of a compliment too, so I just laugh.
Maybe this will all turn out to be a good thing?
Maybe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THREE DAYS AFTER THE CONVENTION
Britney and I are sitting on the lip of the pool, both of us dangling our feet in. It continues to be hot. And so, despite my well-documented aversion to recreational wetness, I am dipping my toes in the water. Which, in this case, is utterly literal and has no hidden allegory attached.
It’s been three days. Three days since the convention ended in what can only be described as a “catastrofuck.” Ever since #FraudTwins became a thing. (Which annoys me because they’re not frauds, but more importantly because it’s a really lazy hashtag. It’s not even that clever. I mean, for crying out loud, #ImpoSSters is right there. Seems so obvious.)
And in that three days, something sort of amazing has happened.
Cynthia Lear has become maybe, kind of, the next hot thing in the world of romance.
Which is a real kick in the head, I gotta tell ya. I’m as surprised as the next person.
Here’s how it happened:
On the last day of the con, I had just come to the conclusion that ‘success,’ as I had previously defined and wanted it, was not the only definition. I had literally just had this dawning that success is also doing what I want to do, what I love and think is right, and not caring what anyone else thinks or says.
Which is always the way, right? The moment you let something go is when it shows up.
The tricky part is you really have to let it go. You can’t just be pretending. And I had. I had truly and really let it go. And right at the moment I did…
Things blew up.
The day after I got back, amidst the #FraudTwins caterwauling taking up all the oxygen in Romancelandia, there was one little tidbit that broke through the noise. A BookTok post. By a reasonably big-deal BookToker. No, that’s not true. I’m downplaying it because I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it. It was actually a post by the big-deal BookToker.
Lesperia Renée is her name. Or, at least, that’s her BookTok name. (I hope it’s her real name, because ‘Lesperia’ is a triumph.) And, it just so happens, Lesperia Renée is my doppelganger, aka Redhead Polka Dot Hepburn. The one who came over to me on Audrey Saint’s recommendation and walked off with a copy of Filling the Gap.
I had no idea who she was at the time. Which is probably for the best.
Because she didn’t just take the copy I handed to her. Apparently, my other copy, the copy, the one I’ve been looking for, was sitting nearby and somehow I didn’t notice. I must have had it with me when I came downstairs for the signing that morning and left it on the table. So, after I told her to take whatever books she wanted and then had my back turned, silently arguing with Britney about not forcing people to take pictures with me, she scooped it up as well.
And the way I know this is that she threw up a post the day after the event for her… wait for it… five million followers. And it went something like this:
“So, you guys, if you didn’t make it to Sin With Us this year… you. Missed. Out. I’m sure everyone’s going to be talking all about the whole SS controversy for a while, and I’ll make a post about that soon when I’ve had a chance to process it and get everybody’s side of the story—because remember what I always say: ‘It’s easy to believe something. It’s much, much harder to know it.’”