Greetings! I, like yourself, am a Laborer in the Trench of Words. You may have heard of my bestselling sci-fi seriesThe Wormhole Galactica, a Top 1000 Amazon Seller in self-published books! Would you like to quaff a libation?
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As Sam closed the apps, she felt as she usually did after a swiping session: mildly beslimed and utterly despairing. Was thereanyoneout there like her? She weighed her phone in her hand. Drishti would scold her for the person Sam was considering calling. Her codependency group likewise. Even her therapist, if he hadn’t retired. But Sam was tired andlonely, and she had nobody to celebrate nor commiserate with, and only one person would get how Sam felt in this moment. She hit the videochat icon for her ex, Hank.
The phone rang and rang, and Sam was about to hang up when the screen suddenly burst into violent tumbling life. “Hang on,” Hank bellowed.
“Okay,” Sam yelled back.
She watched the ceiling and floor switch places as though Hank were on the sinkingTitanic. Eventually the image steadied to show Hank sitting in a recliner on the halfway house porch, beneath a bare light bulb, wearing hisGuggenheimT-shirt and a porkpie hat.
“Heyyyy!” he said happily. “Look at you! You look fantastic.”
“So do you,” said Sam, relieved to see it was true: Hank was shaved, showered, and sober. At least, he seemed to be.
He took out a cigar and lighter. “Where you coming from, all dolled up?”
“I just had the final event for mySodbustertour.”
Hank stuck his cigar between his teeth to clap. “Bravo, Ms. Vetiver! How do you feel?”
“Freaked out,” Sam admitted. “You know how it is after tour.”
Hank nodded. Like Sam, he had the rare public speaking gene, and before rehab he had traveled nationally to showcase his work. Hank was, or had been, a renowned portrait photographer. It was how they’d met, Sam’s publisher hiring Hank to take her new author photo when Sam was nominated for the National Book Award.
“You have tour postpartum,” Hank said now.
“Exactly! I knew you’d get it. It’s so hard to go from the road back to the chair.”
“At least you have the new book to dive into,” Hank pointed out.
“I wish,” said Sam glumly. “But that’s the thing, I don’t. I have five months left until delivery, and I have yet to write a word.”
Hank’s brows rose over his glasses. “That’s not good. What’s going on?”
“I don’t care about the book,” Sam admitted. “I can’t plug in emotionally at all,” and as soon as she heard herself say it, she knew it wastrue. Many writers Sam knew based books on an idea, a storyripped from the headlines!or overheard by chance. Sam’s novels came from an emotional place—her bestselling debut,The Sharecropper’s Daughter, was ostensibly about an itinerant girl and her mother doing seasonal farm labor, but in fact it was about Sam’s childhood with Jill after Sam’s dad died, being dragged from home to home whenever Jill moved on to a new minion, as she called her husbands. Sam’s subsequent novels had been less successful, and Sam secretly suspected it was because each was more emotionally removed from her. The one she was meant to write now,The Gold Digger’s Mistress, was loosely based on her great-great-grandfather Ole Nielsen emigrating from Norway, navigating the deadly Drake Passage to the Gold Rush, finding a fortune, losing it all at poker, and making a reverse trip across the Rockies until he reached Minnesota, whereupon he married and had eleven children. It was a terrific story, and Sam could not connect to it at all.
“I feel like I’m just reheating my leftovers,” said Sam. “What happens if I don’t hit a home run with this next book? Things are tough right now. Hercules could cancel my contract.” This was Sam’s publisher.
“Oh, come on,” said Hank. “That sounds like catastrophizing.”
“Because it would be an actual catastrophe,” said Sam.
“Let’s try some evidence-based logic,” Hank suggested. Sam tried not to roll her eyes; Hank had picked up many behavioral strategies in rehab that were as annoying as they were useful. “How is this recent book doing? Have you asked Mireille?”
“I would,” said Sam, “if I weren’t avoiding her.”
“Thatsounds healthy. Why are you avoiding your agent?”
“Because I already know what she would say.” Sam adopted a French accent. “ChèreSam, Icomplétementunderstand. Making art is not like making vacuum cleaners. But you have a contract, and you must honor it, or Hercules might revoke it. So get yourderrièrein the chair!”
Hank laughed. “Trés bien.”
“Merci,” said Sam. She’d been with Mireille for twenty years, longer than her marriage to Hank. She’d earned the accent.
“Can they actually revoke your contract?”
“Yes sir. And make me give back my advance.”
