The Internet Told Him to Leave Me, but He's Still Holding Me novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: The Offer
I called her from the back room of the shop, in Knox's socks, with my tea going cold.
The editor talked very fast and very warmly.
"Your diary is honest," she said. "That's the magic. Every woman has been that girl. And then the arc, you know? Day 1, needy. Day 100, fixed. Readers want the transformation."
"I'm not sure I'm fixed."
She laughed.
"That's what the book is for! Oh, and your little drawings, every chapter. And we're talking to Chad Brixton's team about a foreword. He's moved so many copies for people."
I almost dropped the phone.
"Chad," I said.
"I know he's a lot. But his audience is the audience, Annika. Think about it. Sixty thousand dollars. A tour. Your name on the cover, not inside it."
That's the part that got me.
Not inside it.
On every book I've ever made, my name is on the copyright page in small type. Illustrated by. Under someone else's name.
I'd wanted to be on the cover since I was seven years old drawing horses on the backs of my mom's grocery lists.
"Can I have the weekend?" I said.
"Take till Monday. But Annika? Strike while the moose is hot."
That night Inga came over after her shift with a bag of tacos and a softball bat.
"For the trolls," she said, and leaned it by the door like an umbrella.
Knox was at the stove doing something with peppers.
I told them both at the kitchen table.
Sixty thousand dollars.
That's a year of rent and groceries and heat, with money left over.
That's a year of not taking every sad otter book that comes in the inbox because I'm scared of February.
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