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 shoot Luke and Terry an incredulous look that says, Really?
“I don’t know,” Leslie says, barely managing to get her words out past her stupid sobbing. “His fans don’t seem to care.”
She’s kinda right about that. My fans are still there, sticking up for me, even. Both Essie and me, actually. They don’t seem to be falling for the lie, but the social narrative has not yet turned. The Twitter war is blazing like a raging fire. And I had to make all my social accounts private because the hate comments just got overwhelming.
Other authors are… well, some of them are taking my side. The ones I know well from back in the day are. Audrey is. Raven, Winter, Mercy. Hell, even Eden Le Fay, which surprised me because she usually just keeps to herself online.
But there are a lot of up-and-coming authors on Team Raylen. And most of my general acquaintances have just decided to sit it out and say nothing.
I can’t blame them. To speak up for me is to invite the cancel campaign upon themselves. Isn’t it better to stay silent than to poke the bear, so to speak?
Being a self-published author has perks. Aside from losing Gary Pritchard’s predatory offer of representation, it’s kind of impossible to cancel SS over something like this. I write the books, I narrate the books, I publish the books, and Essie markets the books. We’re kind of a self-contained entity.
However, you don’t need my exceptional imagination to envision a day where that changes. Could they get me booted from Nile? Could they force my editor to stop working with me? Could they shut down my bank accounts? Will my barber have to stop cutting my hair? How long before the bloggers, ’Tokers, and ’Grammers give up on me too?
Because if anyone goes against the popular narrative—i.e. Raylen Star’s narrative—they will be a target.
So I don’t ask anyone to stick up for me.
Of course, Luke, Terry, and Shawn are speaking out. But they don’t live in Romancelandia. They live on Planet Sci-fi. They have no influence in my sphere.
Still, they are good moral support.
“Oh, my God!” Shawn laughs. “You’ve gotten fifty-seven one-star reviews for Master Choke since last night, dude!”
“Shawn!” Terry bellows. “Stop it! You’ve gonna give the Ro-Bro a panic attack, OK?”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Steve”—Shawn beams a smile at me—“Master Choke is number seven in the Nile bookstore. Sev-en. That’s what? Six grand a day for a book that’s ten years old?”
I let out a long sigh.
“You’ve got five audiobooks in the top ten on NileAudio too,” Luke says.
I sigh again. I get that for some authors it’s about the money. Hell, for most authors it’s about the money. But money is not why I do this.
I don’t care about the money.
I just like to write stories.
And all during the convention I was coming to terms with things. My social life—lovely Cordelia, who I hope to reconnect with, but not yet. I can’t have her reputation sullied by my mistakes. My professional life—I had this inner narrative kind of going. Building characters, and plotlines. Just basic rudimentary stuff, but it’s more than I’ve done in a year. It was kind of a breakthrough.
And I could feel this whole SS thing coming to a head. I was maybe even coming to terms with that too.
But Leslie truly pulled the rug out from under me. She took away my opportunity to out myself.
And it sucks because now what? Do I quit? Will anyone want to work with me in the future? Will I just be a running joke forever? Will I have to start all over with a fake name?
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
The doorbell rings upstairs. Essie and Mike have a new project now. They bought a piece of land up in the Malibu hills with an old falling-down house on it. That’s not their new investment, it’s their new home. Or it will be once they spend a few hundred thousand dollars fixing it up.
That’s how our last night with the parents ended. Essie and Mike’s dreams.
I’m glad she’s free now. I really am. She’s always had a life outside of the one I forced upon her, and now she can forget about me and my problems and put her family first.
Anyway. I go upstairs to answer the door because Essie and Mike will probably never stay on my top floor again, and this is just another thing to be sad about, but more importantly, I’m the only one here responsible for answering my door now, so… that’s what’s going through my mind when I open the door and find a middle-aged man.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Steve Smith?”
“Yes.”
He holds out an envelope and says, “You have been served.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TEN DAYS AFTER THE CONVENTION