Enter The Antagonist
Innovation Is the New Inspiration: Hartley West, a Writing Prompt Puppeteer.
Art Is in the AI: Love and Lawlessness , a Delightful Debut.
Who Will Be the Next “Next Sofie Wilde”?
Doomscrolling, that’s what this is, apparently. Roxanne says I need to stop. But Lacey keeps sending links to me. My text
chain with her is going to max out the storage capacity on my phone.
“Sofie,” Roxanne says, sliding me a cup of chamomile tea that I slide right back to her.
This is not what I asked for. She shakes her head, and one of those tiny golf pencils tumbles out of her bun, landing safely
in her bounteous cleavage. She leaves me in the pink tufted chair in the window of her living room above the bookstore and
returns to the kitchen.
I pick up my phone, feeling the strain in my eyes that I nicknamed Not Today, Reading Glasses as I return to my texts.
Lacey: It’s been two days! The trolls are asleep at the wheel! I’ve never seen a publishing scandal so, well, unscandalous.
Me: How can that be? What about integrity?
Lacey: Did you seriously just ask about the integrity of trolls?
Me: No, in general. General integrity.
Lacey: We all can’t be Torrence.
Me: I’m serious!
Lacey: So am I. You’ve been living in your own book world too long. The truth has Jell-O for legs.
Me: But my fans... why don’t they care?
Lacey: They do. They’re psyched to have more Sofie Wilde books to read.
Me: They’re not my books!
Lacey: Semantics.
Me: And my publisher? When will they have a response?
Lacey: You didn’t just ask that of an industry that moves slower than a tortoise on a molasses sled. Which is why we need to get
in the game. Better: define the game.
Me: Blaire wants to lay low, let it unfold before we say anything.
Lacey: So very Blaire. Sometimes she’s an agent without agency. We’re going to miss out. We could proclaim it a dialogue opener,
at the very least. Other authors are, you know.
Me: Let me guess... Grace Chang.
Lacey: For one.
Me: She’s always hated me.
Lacey: You’ve always hated her.
Me: Fiona Finley. Loose morals, that one.
Lacey: Manipulating bookstore reporting to hit the list remains a rumor.
Me: Uh-huh.
Lacey: Moving on... There’s also—
Me: No.
Lacey: Yes.
Me: Rosie Gardens is okay with this? She’s actually good.
(Better than me.)
Me: And we talk. Sometimes. About things.
Lacey: The definition of BFFs. Told you being a lone wolf would get you eviscerated.
And yet, one can also be eviscerated by a BFF.
Me: Rosie really supports this?
Lacey: No. She’s sidestepped. But she wants to talk to you. United front, Sofie.
Roxanne reappears, a bottle of bourbon in hand. She pours a splash into my tea. “I don’t condone this.” She then does the
same to her own.
“Right, I can see just how much.”
“You have a flight in the morning and a convention to headline. Me? I’m just here. Watching my bookstore sink into the sea.”
“Melodrama doesn’t suit you.”
“Nor jealousy you.”
I grit my teeth as texts from Lacey fly in.
Lacey: You need to come to grips with this.
It’s happening.
We have to strategize.
Approach it the right way.
Could bolster sales.
If you don’t screw it up.
I’m sending you a statement. Sound bites. For Romance US. Memorize them. Don’t deviate.
Me: Sound bites? Shit.
(Shoot. I mean, shoot.)
Roxanne dumps her tea into the jade plant coiling over the arm of her chair and pours in straight bourbon. “Still, I agreed
not to stock Love and Lawlessness . And you don’t even consider me a friend.”
My head snaps up. “That’s not true. I never said that.”
“Nor the opposite.” Roxanne swirls her cup and tilts it toward me. “You come here for this. Industry talk. Occasionally you’ll
look at my grandkids photos and we commiserate over creaking knees and our inability to start a movie past seven. But I’ve
never even been to your house. Your work comes first, I know that. I support you. This whole town does. Your fans love you.
But I do wonder if it’s asking too much to expect them to love only you.”
“That’s not what this is. Hartley is a fake. She’s making a mockery of me. Of you. Of all of us.”
My phone buzzes.
Lacey: Be nice when you see her.
Hartley’s going to be at the convention? I didn’t get invited to the convention until book four.
Me: This is bullshit.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Fuck the crossover readers (no offense).
I gulp down my bourbon-chamomile tea, burning my tongue and throat, and tears spring forth and I refill it with more bourbon
that I swallow in a single sip.
“Sofie, hun, slow down,” Roxanne says.
I close my eyes, but all I can see is Hartley West. That ugly flowered skirt. That tragic crocheted cardigan. Fingers with unpainted nails and ragged cuticles tapping my book. She unwrapped Roxanne’s prop after her confession, and the internet was flooded with images of her holding my final book.
I pour more bourbon.
Lacey: Advance copy of the BuzzFeed article is in.
Me: Tell me or don’t. I don’t care.
(Liar.)
Lacey: Direct quote: “My novel is an homage to the incomparable, iconic Sofie Wilde. Creating it made me whole again. And I guess,
well, I started to feel like it was a gift I could give to others. I could share this with those in need and they could experience
the same. I wanted them to have this joy and love it as much as we all love her.”
Me: Let me comment.
Lacey: No. You’re too close to this.
I am this!
I slug back the bourbon in my teacup and pop to my feet. I need air. I race through Roxanne’s nautical-themed living room,
past bowls in the shape of fish and a giant wooden crab on the wall, and bound down the stairs.
I am the top-selling fantasy romance author in the country. We’re fielding offers from television studios right now. My books will become three-dimensional. My words will exit the mouths of famous actors with smoldering eyes and high cheekbones. They will snap selfies with me and praise my work, even though we all know that in the early days, they would have let me and my scorpion-loving peasant die of thirst or dysentery or zombie disembowelment without a whisper of regret. I did all of this. Me . Not some goddamn machine.
In the middle of the bookstore, all the air leaves my lungs. It was here where Hartley admitted to my “loyal” readers that
she used artificial intelligence to “write” a book that would feel like mine. I expected them to wage a war on my behalf and
renounce Hartley West as a charlatan. Brad and Roxanne (as in Bel Canto !) and Amy (as in Little Women !) and the woman in the Team Torrence T-shirt—I expected them to defend me, my art, my life, which are all one and the same.
Instead, by the time we regrouped, every single person in my signing line held not just a blue sticky but a yellow one too.
Traitors.
The bottle of bourbon is still in my hand. I upend it and guzzle.
Roxanne startles me. “Easy there,” she says, appearing in front of me.
I hear a ringing in between my ears, and there’s no “easy” here, there, or anywhere.
I’m circling the store. Pulling books off the rolling partitions. Muttering to myself because Hartley West is a complete and
utter imposter and no one cares. In fact, everyone loves her. In just a couple of days, she dismantled everything I spent
years building. She’s made a farce of my life’s work—and Grace’s and Fiona’s and Rosie’s and that of every other author who
actually uses their minds and hearts and souls despite overdrawn bank accounts and advances that wouldn’t even buy a Dyson.
But it’s fitting, isn’t it? Laughter bubbles up my throat. “Why should this be any different from everything else about this industry? It’s all an illusion. At least this time the readers are in on it. At least Hartley West admitted the truth. That’s something. Can you imagine any of these authors actually telling the truth about their success? Like this one?”
I hold up a book and point to the fleur-de-lis stamp on the front: A Riley Read. Some actress turned literary expert by way
of Instagram. She’s rivaling Reese and Jenna and all the rest for dominance in the book recommendation space. She’s never
featured one of my books. Ever. But this one? This drivel about a woman trekking across the country to forage for mushrooms
with her dachshund, Wiggles? “A Riley Read. For her debut. And do you know why?”
Roxanne’s eyes leave mine, float to the other side of the store, as if she’s contemplating making a run for it.
“Her husband’s a producer,” I say. “Rights were sold, Riley Moore attached to star, before the publisher even signed on. This
Bill Bryson rip-off will be trending on every poor sucker’s Netflix, and they’ll have no idea it was all rigged.” I drop the
book on the floor. Snatch another. “And this one?” On the cover, two people lock lips on the bow of a cruise ship. With my
hand to my forehead, I mimic one of the influencer blurbs on the back. “‘So dreamy.’ Christ. I was on a panel with the author
and she went on and on about how word of mouth led to her book becoming a hit out of nowhere. An organic reader-fueled sensation.”
I toss the book on the floor. “Horseshit. Her publisher paid those influencers. Each and every one. She bragged about it after.”
I reach for another with a forlorn-looking woman stroking a piano on the cover. “And this? Every interview, the author waxes
on about her inspiration—a musician mother with paralyzing stage fright. Lie. Outright. Packager all the way from story idea
to story beats to character arcs. They hired her to write it. And no one knows.”
Roxanne stands. “Sofie, these are interesting insights, but I think—”
“Interesting? It’s fucking criminal!” My hands dart out, grabbing book after book. “At least political ads have to tell you
who paid for them.” I fling a book to the ground. “TikTokers paid for by Big Five, or is it four now? Three?” And there goes
another. “Instagrammers, paid.” One more. “Celebs, paid, paid, paid.”
I seize another book and pause. It’s a title I’ve never heard of. “Oh, Roxanne, you truly are ‘salt of the earth,’ aren’t
you?”
She does this, stocks the books that have less support than a bra from the dollar store. The books that aren’t projected on
billboards in Times Square. The ones that aren’t “coincidentally” reviewed everywhere from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Cosmo in the same week. The ones whose advance reader copies aren’t printed in the thousands and sent to influencers and celebrities
in special boxes that spew glitter and nestle the book amid eye serums and cashmere throws and bubble baths in the character’s
favorite scent. The ones that aren’t granted all of these marketing efforts upon acquisition, preordained as bestsellers before
the book even hits the shelves. Roxanne does what she can to support the books that get dropped in the publisher’s next season
catalog with as much fanfare as an advertisement for hemorrhoid cream. Just waiting for someone to believe in them.
I clutch the book. “From the land of misfit toys. An unsupported book. A single copy ordered by a bookstore owner with a soft spot. It will linger here, gathering dust, until it finally makes its way to the seventy-five-percent-off bin where some old lady will find it and use its pages to line her parakeet’s cage. The author to be shit upon once again.” I balance this sad sap of a book on the shelf, face out. “Here’s your chance, little one. Godspeed.”
“Yes, well,” Roxanne says, her voice tight. “Lessons for us all. But I need to close up shop. It’s after hours, and you need
some coffee, maybe some Advil.”
She starts walking toward me, and I bolt to the bestsellers’ table at the front of the store where the first nine of my Weight of Feathers and Stone books are artfully displayed among a handful of others.
“Paid,” I say, tapping the nearest and then each one in succession, including my own. “Paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, and,
oh... right, paid. The same goddamn books at the front of every single store because the publisher paid for them to be.
And yes, my books are here too, so am I as guilty as the rest of them? No!” Roxanne winces, but I can’t lower my voice any
more than I can stop. “I worked for this. I have a bathroom closet full of craft-fair penguin candles that make me nauseous every time I grab a roll of toilet
paper. Writing a book using AI? A coward’s move. A brainless coward’s move. And yet readers are too stupid to see it. They
have murdered us one and all.” I bring my hand to my chest and bow my head. “Here lies the remains of a breed of human we
once called Author. They are no more. Extinct. Rest in peace. Rest. In. Peace.”
In one fluid motion, I sweep my arm across the table and send bestsellers flying.
Roxanne gasps in front of me. And someone else does from behind.
I turn. A cell phone looms high in the air, filming my every word.
The middle-aged woman who wore the “Team Torrence” T-shirt at my event stares at me, jaw open. “M-my mother-in-law,” she stutters. “She hasn’t started the series yet, and in all the fuss, I forgot to get her a copy of the first book, so I thought I would just come back and . . .”
I swipe the first book in my series off the floor and hand it over. “Here.”
“Would you mind signing it?”
“Yes, I would.”