Chapter 21
twenty-one
. . .
Thursday, Early December
Abnormally early snow was falling outside of my bay window. Cambridge—with its old houses and windows lit up with fake candles—looked especially magical right now. Between the Christmas season quickly creeping up on me and the gift sitting in my inbox, I was abnormally jolly.
I kept reading the Publisher’s Marketplace announcement in disbelief.
I closed the tab, then reopened it, then closed it again. I knew it was coming, but up until now it wasn’t official. It wasn’t there for the world to see. Dani Grant, soon to be published author.
Andrea, Caroline, and I celebrated last weekend.
Maybe it was too early, but we found ourselves cheers-ing in a bar and ordering every dessert on the menu in celebration.
Andrea obviously found out at the same time I did, and she texted me as the email from Kimberly landed in my inbox.
I lost count of the number of exclamation points she used.
We stumbled home arm in arm, Andrea yelled to every person passing on the street “my best friend is going to be published!” Caroline had to pull her away from rowdy college kid crowds more than once.
It was like a damn Christmas miracle.
This process was unnaturally quick and easy, Kimberly reminded me of this on many occasions.
The internet reminded me too. I lurked on social media and Reddit threads, absorbing all I could about the steps, the timeline, the end outcome.
There was no right answer, and as someone who craved predictability and black and white binaries about how things worked, it was torture.
The torture was short-lived. I was on a lucky streak, one that had been honed by tears at two in the morning when I was stuck on a scene or suddenly hated a piece of dialogue. I wondered if there was a karmic punishment waiting for me on the other side.
Now I was basking in the outcome of it all. Well-aware that this high might be fleeting, as good things always tended to be.
I half brought up the book to my mom when she had called me a few days before asking some asinine question about problems with “her Facebook,” as if I had a direct line to Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Weirdly ashamed and guarded about what should have been the greatest accomplishment of my life, I spewed out the information at the tail end of the call. When she was silent on the other end, I wondered if she only heard gibberish and I could pretend I didn’t say anything.
Then, for a few brief seconds, the conversation went as one would expect such discussions should go between a mother and daughter. There was a pleased hum from her and maybe a mumble of “congratulations.”
She immediately sucked the air from me when she said, “don’t go and quit your real job or anything. Success isn’t guaranteed, Danielle.”
I was acutely aware of this fact.
Most days I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t getting published at all and everyone would change their minds, despite agents and contracts and a paper trail. I checked my email constantly, verifying that the offer stood, that this wonderful thing hadn’t been pulled out from under me.
Hearing my mother say it was a reminder that my imposter syndrome and self doubt seemed to share a voice with her.
She mentioned something about her book club and how maybe once it’s published they can read it together, but spoke as if this book is still some sort of half baked idea that will never come to fruition.
Then she said she was running late to drinks with a friend and promptly ended the call.
I reread the announcement one more time, still in disbelief that it was real. That it featured my name and my book title.
Dani Grant's FIRE ON THE LAKE, a genre-bending debut about a group of friends discovering supernatural forces—and each other—at a wilderness camp, has been sold in a very good deal to Elenor Broadbent at Easterner, in an exclusive submission for publication in September 2027, by Kimberly Cho at Milk Street Literary Agency.
I had a deal. I had a fucking book deal.
Some real life editor wanted to pay real life dollars for my words.
Kimberly told me I could post the announcement everywhere, I could buy a banner if I wanted to.
The next few months would be filled with edits and marketing campaigns and every waking moment centered around this book, but it didn’t matter.
The dream I’d been craving had finally been laid out before me in pixels on my laptop.
There were already murmurs—so I’d been told—about this being the traditionally published version of “Ice on the Turret,” despite it being nothing close to the plot of my book.
Thorndown and book forums alike were building discourse around it.
I’d deleted all of my social media accounts, save for my Instagram with a few hundred followers consisting largely of college friends, colleagues, and Boston micro-influencers who told me what places were new and cool.
And Evan.
I opened my most recent messages with him.
This morning he’d asked about some Boston neighborhoods, which led me to believe the movie might begin shooting soon.
This afternoon he’d sent a meme of a woman dancing around a fire in a forest with Bigfoot and captioned it “Sue.” I then reminded him of the Bigfoot erotica by re-sending him my highlighted passages.
Evan should know about this before the rest of the world does. We’re friends, it’s only right. With inexplicably trembling hands, I took a screenshot of the announcement and sent it to him.
It happened.
It’s real.
Maybe: Evan:
I’m so fucking proud of you.
You’re googleable now!
Welcome to the club.
He replied instantly. He rarely left me on read for longer than a few hours. That fact baffled me, wasn’t he supposed to be one of the busiest people in show business? Didn’t he have more important people to text or things to do?
It didn’t matter, and it wasn’t the kind of thing I should waste my time ruminating on. I beamed at my phone, staring at his message saying he was proud of me.
He would’ve been just as proud if I printed out the word document and stapled it to a bulletin board in Harvard Square, I knew that. Something tugged inside me at the thought.
I hadn’t been trying to prove anything to anyone but myself, but a strange pang of validation signaled in the back of my mind.
He and I inched closer to being of a similar caliber.
Both professionals being recognized by these fickle industries for the work we’d put in.
An Emmy was different than a singular book deal, but it was something.
I told him when Kimberly took me on as a client, I’d gotten an email from her two days after we met. Her closing line to me was “hope those ghosts haunt you for a while, I’m going to keep you busy.”
The first thing Evan said when I told him I was officially agented was that he’d only communicate through our respective agents now.
“My people will call your people.” We joked at the end of phone calls. It was cheesy and an in-joke that wasn’t all that funny to anyone else but us.
Evan—whose net worth sat solidly at eight figures—made quips about me buying a yacht now that I was about to find crazy success thanks to my agent.
He said I could anchor in the center of the lake at camp and he’d paddle out to it.
I told him based on his canoeing skills I’d doubt he’d make it.
And I doubt I’d come close to having yacht money.
Though, the money I was going to be receiving as an advance was certainly nice.
It wasn’t “quit-your-job-and-buy-a-writer’s-retreat-on-the-coast” money like I so badly craved, but it was a not insignificant amount of money.
Conversations about earning out, royalties, foreign rights, and audiobook rights all blurred together.
Kimberly understood the minute details of all this so I didn’t have to.
My phone buzzed with another message.
Maybe: Evan:
Send me a pic.
I wanna see what an author with a deal looks like.
I FaceTimed him instead. Calling him had become an easy habit, and selfishly, I wanted to hear his voice right now.
He blooped onto the screen, sitting in what looked like a hotel room. A lazy grin on his face when I appeared on his screen.
“East Coast or West Coast?” I asked. I was always curious.
When he was on the East Coast, I wished I could take the short train ride down to him.
When he was on the West Coast I fantasized about seeing Palm Trees and the Pacific Ocean.
We’d talked on the phone a handful of times since I broke the ice.
I called on my commute home from work, he called when he was cooking dinner.
We talked about nothing, and it was oddly nice.
“West coast,” he said, and a hand dipped into the frame to powder his face.
I watched my eyes grow into saucers in the corner of the screen. “Oh, shit, I can go if you want—”
“I’m getting gussied up for the premiere tonight,” he chuckled.
Right. Sword of Thorndown, the reason why I knew who he was in the first place.
When the new season was announced I had lost the same kind of rabid, uncontrollable excitement I used to feel.
I felt nothing at all. It had only been eight months since I’d seen an episode of Thorndown, but that’s a lifetime by deep fandom standards.
There was a past version of myself that craved being beside him on that red carpet, arm in arm with him.
I’d have a chance to meet the show creator, Carl Loudon and see his signature black baseball cap and gray beard up close.
The show had originated from a series of short stories he had published in the late nineties, and he had been acting as the overseeing God-figure throughout the show’s run.
I owned paperback copies of those short stories that had tattered edges and ripped spines from how often I read them.
Thorndown used to be the closest thing I had to a religion. I was a devout follower, I’d read the Bible, and now it was nothing more than my friend’s job.