3. Cassie
Cassie
C assie spent the rest of her workday in a daze, completely unable to focus on just about anything for more than three seconds at a time.
Thank you, Cassie, he’d said. That was it; nothing more or less. That was soooooo not a reason to stare into space and fantasize about his intense grey eyes gazing down at her for hours on end, but she couldn’t help herself from doing just that.
Thankfully for her sanity, he didn’t make it back to his office by the time she was off the clock at five.
Still, she’d spent most of her afternoon tensing up every time the elevator pinged on the ninth floor, so when she finally made it home, the first thing she did was fill up a decadent bath, full of relaxing oils and salts more expensive than the bottle of Chardonnay she opened up to go with it.
Sometimes, it paid to have a big sister working in cosmetics. Helene sent her so many samples, her small bathroom looked like it belonged in a luxury spa.
Cassie took a healthy sip of wine before firing up her iPad and checking her emails. Her smile broadened like it did every single day; her personal email account had received the fifty-something requisite daily spams, but her attention went straight to her second email account.
There were eleven messages; a few months ago, she only got the occasional one a week, now give or take, she received a dozen every day, and all of them were about her books.
Some were replies from advertising platforms, others, notifications from social media, and of course, there was the occasional email from her readers.
Obviously, the last lot were the best thing ever, but every single one of those emails made her belly tingle with pride and excitement.
They confirmed it in black and white: she really was an author.
Cassie had always loved books, and she’d spent most of her childhood writing stories.
Her parents, like many would have done, encouraged the hobby in her youth, and later, progressively made her understand that writing wasn’t a viable career option.
Wannabe authors are a dime a dozen , they’d say; they made her understand that aspiring writers were just like starry-eyed blondes dreaming to make it big on Broadway because they’d gotten a role or two in their high school musical.
She had to think of a sure, guaranteed path that would secure her future.
It was sound advice, in all honesty. From what Cassie saw in the various forums and groups she’d joined since she’d first thought of publishing her books, the majority of her fellow professionals didn’t make over a hundred dollars a month.
There was a reason for that, though. She didn’t want to be mean, but most starving authors out there wrote books – good books, even amazing ones sometimes – and then, that was it.
They had a great story and they just didn’t understand why it wasn’t taking off.
That was doubly true for those who went the traditional route and chose to have publishers: they expected everything served on a silver platter.
Cassie took a different approach. She decided right away that she wanted to self-publish; that meant more control over what she wanted to write, the look of her covers, the prices she wanted to set…
everything. Having one unpleasant boss had taught her to be wary of having to depend on someone else’s wiles.
She went to all those forums and read on and on, soaking in all the information selflessly shared by awesome indies, studying her market.
Five months later, she had a couple of thousand dollars saved; a quarter went to an awesome cover designer, and the rest went into advertising.
She published her three books simultaneously, making the first one available for free; it wasn’t the only approach she could have taken, but as a nobody, completely unknown in the romance scene, she was willing to offer up a sample to let her potential readers decide whether they wanted more.
To her delighted surprise, an astounding number of people did.
She passed the hundred-dollar threshold one hour in her first day of launch.
Month one, she made five figures; the sales had dropped since, but she was still making a steady amount and more importantly, she’d grown her fan base – thousands of people followed her on various platforms, eagerly waiting for her next book, according to their frequent messages.
She knew she wouldn’t have got there if she hadn’t eaten ramen for a few months to save up for her launch.
Writers, like every other self-employed professionals out there, needed to invest in their businesses.
Hell, they were lucky: there weren’t many careers that only needed a few thousands to start them up from scratch.
Well, that and the ability to write great books – but many authors had the talent, the drive, the patience. They just lacked the understanding, or the funds; often both.
That was the reason why Cassie didn’t resent her parents for deterring her from that path earlier on in her life; they encouraged her to find her other strengths, and for that, she was grateful.
There was a good chance that she wouldn’t have approached her writing in an entrepreneurial manner if she hadn’t gone to school for business.
M ixing water and electronic devices was most definitely not a great idea for someone as clumsy as she was, but somehow Cassie managed to check all her emails without chucking her iPad in her bathtub.
Afterwards, she started reading a romance book, but her mind soon took a different direction; she was yet again thinking of her latest manuscript.
It had been finished weeks ago, but every day she re-read it, dissatisfied. It was missing something.
Her books were set in NYC, around a group of tight-knit friends that she may or may not have based on herself and her four best friends from college.
The first one had been a teacher entangled in a romance with a single father – something sweet and highly amusing – and the second had a thing with her neighbor.
Her last one had been between a Navy vet and the childhood sweetheart he’d left behind.
With all those books, she – or at least her alter-ego, Cassandra Frank – got all of her readers drinking in her words, basking in the romance of it all, and yelping in excitement at the occasional highly explicit, highly arousing sex scenes.
That was what most of the reviews said, in any case.
There were other opinions, though. Of course she got bad reviews; it wasn’t humanly possible to please everyone.
The issue was that most of them said exactly the same thing.
They liked the stories, they liked the style, but the sex was…
tame. Some had gone as far as to say that it was plain boring after a while.
Cassie couldn’t deny it, in all honesty. She’d stayed in her comfort zone, describing the stuff that she found arousing, and, well, she didn’t have enough experience to make it very exciting; hence her struggle on the last story.
This time, Amy, her fourth protagonist, was matched to a billionaire who liked kink. Cassie had never done anything that could even remotely pass as kinky. How was she supposed to make it realistic?
She read hundreds of naughty books on the spicy side, doing her homework before attacking the project…but she still wasn’t sure about the result.
What she needed was a good critic. Her beta-readers always said they liked what she sent, and that was just about as useful as tits on a bull. Of course, compliments were encouraging, but not when she knew something was amiss. She needed someone who said it like it was.
Her mind went to her sister, the most brutally honest person she knew, but helpful as her feedback might have been, it wasn’t an option; that would mean telling Helene that she was writing erotic romance, and well, that wasn’t part of the plan.
Then there were her friends, but as much as she loved each and every one of the crazy girls she hung out with, there was no way that they’d keep their mouths shut.
No one knew she was Cassandra Frank, and she liked it that way. She hadn’t even bothered coming up with an imaginative pen name because, in all honesty, no one would ever guess. Hell, most people she knew would be shocked if they thought she even read anything like it.
She couldn’t help smirking, picturing the shock written on her coworkers’ faces if they ever found out.
Unconsciously, her mind jumped from her colleagues to her boss’s boss’s boss.
“Yes, Mr. Harris. I love to write mommy porn in my spare time.”
She could only imagine his response. If it had been one of her stories, he would have found it incredibly sexy and demanded naughty favors in exchange for keeping her secret, but in reality, he would probably just fire her sorry ass.
Thankfully, he’d never find out.