As soon as she finished her first book, she should have had publishing houses falling all over themselves to sign her. Instead, she’d been reduced to working dead-end jobs that barely paid her bills. Eventually, she was left with no choice but to take jobs editing for self-published authors delusional enough to believe that they had what it takes to make it in this industry.
They didn’t, but every time she was forced to rewrite their books for them, they fired her instead of thanking her formaking them better. That was followed by two years working at a gas station, a year working at a bowling alley, and an assortment of jobs that were better left forgotten about until she realized that everything that she needed was less than an hour away.
That’s when she discovered K.L. Haven.
She saw post after post about this novel that people just couldn’t seem to put down and decided to find out why. When she saw that the book already had over five thousand near-perfect reviews and it had only been out for a week, she saw red, knowing that there was absolutely no way that this book was as good as hers and she was right. Within the first thirty seconds of reading it, she was shaking her head in disgust, and by the second page, she was digging through her desk looking for a notebook.
For the next month, Amber tore that book apart, rewriting every sentence, fixing the plot, strengthening the characters and making the ending better and when she was done, she decided to publish it, knowing that it was so much better than the original.
If K.L. Haven could make the best seller’s list with the drivel that she wrote, Amber knew without a doubt that her book would do so much better. So, she created a cover, re-wrote K.L.’s book blurb, and hit publish only to have the book immediately get hit with bad reviews and accusations of her copying K.L. Haven’s latest book, leaving her with no choice but to remove the book.
Furious, she decided to take a closer look at K.L. Haven and what she found had her seeing red. While Amber spent a fortune to get her degree and took class after class to perfect her craft, Kristen Haven, also known as K.L. Haven, apparently always dreamed about being a writer and simply wrote a book one day and hit publish.
The rest was history.
It wasn’t fair and it definitely wasn’t something that Amber could let go. After she wrote a lengthy letter letting Kristen know just how bad her book was, Amber found her address and realized that she was less than an hour away and decided that it was time to take a different approach.
She started following K.L. Haven online, made sure that she liked every post, gushed over every comment, and let K.L. know just how much she loved her books while she bided her time, waiting for the perfect moment to make her move and when it came…
She was ready.
As soon as she found out that K.L. was going to attend The Boston Love Affair book signing, she signed up as a volunteer, requested to work as K.L.’s assistant and crossed her fingers only to find out that she was put in charge of being the signing’s gofer. But that was fine with her. When the day came, Amber made sure that she had something special waiting for the volunteer they’d placed with Kristen and when the unfortunate volunteer that had been bragging about spending the day as K.L. Haven’s assistant was forced to go to the hospital, Amber was there, ready to take her place.
She spent the day helping Kristen, letting her know just how much she loved her books without overdoing it, made sure to show the proper level of excitement to find out that she was working with her, laughed at her jokes, jumped when she needed something, and was at her beck and call all day, and when Kristen invited her out to dinner to thank her, Amber made sure to slap a warm smile on her face when she said yes.
From there, she casually mentioned that she lived close by, made herself available for coffee, late nights putting together swag bags for readers, picked up the slack when Kristen fell behind with her emails, took over her reader groups, and eventually agreed to become her assistant. Within weeks, shehad access to K.L. Haven’s social media accounts, her emails, and a front row seat for her downfall.
It didn’t take long for her to realize that something was wrong. She didn’t know what that something was until an angry letter came in the mail one day. K.L. Haven had writer’s block and that letter seemed to make it worse, so, of course, Amber made sure to send another one the next week. While Kristen spiraled, Amber learned everything that she could about K.L. Haven. She learned who her beta readers were, found out everything that she could about the captains of her street team, got to know her editors and her cover designer, and even managed to get to know her agents.
She also learned that Kristen was hoping to sell the rights to her paperbacks to take some pressure off herself. So, Amber made sure that was never going to happen. She intercepted the call a year ago, made sure that they knew that Kristen wasn’t interested and then changed the phone number saved under “Life Changing Call” to a burner phone that she picked up at a gas station.
The only thing that she wasn’t able to do was gain access to Kristen’s laptop. She guarded that thing with her life, refusing to let anyone touch it. At that point, Amber decided that she had everything that she needed, but that’s when things got interesting and the man who was determined to make Kristen’s life a living hell moved in across the street.
At first, Kristen refused to talk about him until one fateful day when she got dragged into the pond by the mutt that couldn’t seem to resist peanut butter. That’s when Amber learned the truth behind all those glares and decided that she should stick around for a little while longer to see how this played out.
That’s also when Amber realized that Garrett was in love with Kristen. Not that Kristen seemed to realize it, but no man, nomatter how much he hated a woman, was going to give up a partnership at a prestigious law firm to work out of a house that should have been condemned years ago unless he was in love. If there was any doubt in her mind that Garrett was in love with Kristen, the first time that she saw the way he looked at Kristen would have destroyed any doubt in her mind.
While Kristen was dealing with Garrett, Amber focused on Kristen’s laptop. She used her key every chance she got to search Kristen’s house, looking for a backup hard drive, thumb drive, a backup laptop, anything that could possibly be used as a backup of her files. When she didn’t find anything, Amber decided to take a different approach.
After ensuring that Kristen wasn’t getting out of the signing a few months ago, she spent the weekend placing cameras around the house, hoping that one of them would capture Kristen typing her password into her computer. It took a little over a week, but she finally had what she needed and so much more.
But it wasn’t enough.
So, she downloaded software onto Kristen’s computer so that all of her files were automatically saved to an online hard drive and just because she couldn’t quite help herself, she turned Kristen’s phone into a listening device. As soon as she got her hands on Garrett’s phone number, she sent him a link to a dummy contract to look over for Kristen and turned his phone into a listening device as well.
After that…
She had everything she needed, and now, she was finally where she belonged.
Her book had held the number one spot for the past week, her sales were more than she could have ever dreamed of, and thanks to Garrett and Kristen, she now had enough material to write a second book. Life honestly couldn’t get any better, Amberthought, unable to help but smile as she dropped down on the couch.
Unable to help but smile, she opened her laptop and quickly signed into her publishing accounts to check her sales only to feel that smile fade away when she saw the negative balance on her account. This wasn’t happening, Amber thought, swallowing hard as she struggled not to panic as she moved to click on customer support only to go still when she saw it, “Account Frozen” in bold, red letters under her name.
She forced her trembling hands to click on the link under her book cover and-
“Oh, God...”
-realized that all the five-star reviews that were up yesterday were suddenly gone, replaced by one-star reviews calling her out for plagiarism, bullying, lying, and trying to destroy K.L. Haven’s reputation. She moved to click back to her account, praying that it wasn’t too late to stop this only to watch in horror as her book page suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a page letting her know that the page she was looking for couldn’t be found.
