It still leaves a lot owed.
But owing one seventy was better than owing two hundred.
After years of listening to Emily talk about publishers with shortsightedness and fickle tastes, Toni wasn’t so foolish as to think that meant that there was a deal, but today, a little bit of hope felt like a lot of reason to rejoice.
Most book deals were closer to ten thousand dollars than anything that people thought. A lot of writers were earning less than a professor—and worked just as many hours. Toni’s childhood desire to be a writer vanished when the reality of low pay, no health care, and no retirement plans kicked in.
Okay, the dream still existed, but she also had to be practical. She wasn’t like her parents, chasing impossible maybes and hopes. The only one who paid her rent was her. The groceries, the utilities, the car repairs? That was all her. So she switched to chasing a career with stability and health care.
Shelve the dream. Focus on theotherdream—teaching.
The good news was that Toni genuinely loved teaching, and maybe once she had secured tenure, she could write, too. That was the evolved adult version of the dream. Writing was a fine side gig, a way to indulge in the love of words and make some money at it. It wasn’t enough to survive on unless she had a well-off spouse or a huge book deal. Lots of writers had the spouse or the day job. The huge deals? Those were pie-in-the-sky dreams.
I’m smarter than that.
Toni had considered self-publishing, which was a perfectly respectable plan, but the pace was brutal, and Toni was afraid that judgmental colleagues would use it to suggest she wasn’t serious about teaching. That left either waiting for tenure or self-publishing and hiding her identity.
I’d hate hiding any part of my identity.
The downside of being out since she was a teen was that Toni was of the “no secrets” mindset. If it looked like a closet even because of dubious lighting, squinting, and the like, Toni wanted no part of it. She had no illusions thatThe Whitechapel Widowwasliterary, but it was a fun detective story—which meant that the name on the cover would definitely be her own. No pseudonym, no hiding, no closets. She didn’t live her life or career in closets, so she wanted to approach this the same way.
If anyone publishes it, of course…
She almost laughed at her swerve toward arrogance. Every aspiring author knew the odds. The lottery was easier than a writing life, and that was a time-honored truth. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s disparaging remark on the “damned mob of scribbling women” still echoed among the literati—cis, straight, white men whose perspective often seemed to be that they had the innate authority to writeanyperspective well. Never mind that the reality of life was different from that seat of privilege. Give a man a pen, and surely, he could tell a more poignant story of a Victorian lesbian’s life.As if.
Not so different from academia, there, if Toni were honest.
Toni flipped her phone onto airplane mode, turned on her travel playlist, and connected her oversized headphones. Pondering the challenges of academia, publishing, or money wasn’t going to do anything but create a spike in arrogance that she had no outlet for in the tiny space of her in-flight seat.
Oh, for a lovely Victorian role-playing woman in historical drawers…
With a shake of her head, Toni shoved that thought away and adjusted her headphones to drown out thoughts of Addie and of debt and of limitations. The headphones were too bulky to want to wear walking in the airport, but here in the undersized space of her seat they were perfect.
Block out the world. Block out everything.
No stress. No anxiety.
Another stray thought of Addie filtered into Toni’s mind, drawing a reluctant smile with it, and she wished they’d had a slightly longer time together. Addie was a lot flakier than Toni’s usual type, and her insistence that she stay in character was strangely charming. Whatever play or role she was exploring meant she’d embraced herMethod acting to the point of convincing a Victorian specialist that she could be the real thing—andthatwas talent.
Idly, Toni thought she could change her main character’s name—which had changed at least five other times—to Addie’s name as a thank-you of sorts. “Adelaine” was a suitable name for a gorgeous Victorian lady detective on the edge of discovering herself. Maybe someday, she’d even see it and know that she was incredibly memorable.
If it sells…
If I get a chance to revise it for a publisher…
Doubts started to bubble, and Toni made a silly promise to herself—the sort she used to use to bribe herself when she was younger. If it did sell, she’d change the name to Addie’s as a thank-you for the strange encounter in The Lady’s Hand.
Chapter 5Addie
“Ads?” Her roommate stared at her in a far-too-familiar judgmental way, one that said all sorts of sentences that Addie could do without hearing. Eric was Addie’s oldest, dearest friend. They were cousins by birth, friends by choice, and roommates by convenience. Currently, that meant a wee flat in Edinburgh, but in a few months, they were headed back to California—not up to San Francisco where her parents now lived, but Los Angeles where she grew up.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” Addie chirped, knowing damn well that no amount of avoidance could head off the inevitable conversation. Her cousin was overprotective on the best of days, overbearing on a few occasions. In fairness, Addie was often more impulsive than a hummingbird on straight sugar, and Eric took their parents’ mandate to look after her very seriously.
“Why are you wearing a nightie?” Eric swept a look from toes to nose, no doubt cataloguing the new blazer she was wearing as well as the somewhat scandalous lack of a bra under her very translucent nightie. “And not much else? In public?”
“Method acting.” Addie sailed past. “Be out in a moment.”
Inside the madness of her bedroom, she temporarily removed the blazer, shucked the nightie, pulled on jeans and a shirt, and then slipped the blazer back on. It smelled like the woman who had been wearing it earlier.
