And then, one day, it wasn’t.
No one tells you that you write your first book in a tower only you can reach, and your next one in a crowded room, agents and editors looking over your shoulder, whispering words likeexpectationsandreturns, while readers crowd around and shout everything from praise to hate to theories about what you should do, and the clock is ticking on the wall and suddenly the thing you’ve always held on to, the thing that’s helped you escape, begins to feel less like dreaming than drowning.
And then your editor emails to say that sales aren’t what they should be, but hopefully the second book will help find new readers. But it doesn’t work.
And then your agent stops answering your calls, and you tell yourself they must be busy, and you cansee, thanks to their social media, that they’re negotiating massive deals for other clients, and somehow you feel more alone than you ever did when you were just writing for yourself.
And then, halfway through the third and final book, the one that will bring the whole trilogy together, you get the message you’ve been dreading. The one still on the laptop locked in the safe downstairs, from your now ex-editor, telling you that it’s such a difficult decision for them—forthem—but the publisher is cutting its losses, two books in. That they still believe in you, and your work, just not enough to let youfinishit.
That the Lightspeed Saga—the series that was supposed to help you out of the black hole—has officially been canceled.
Jaxon was devastated. Beyond devastated, actually.
He didn’t leave his apartment for three days straight, not even to go to the gym. On the third dark night of the soul, after his second pint of Ben and Jerry’s, he had the idea.
It only took a few minutes using an AI image generator, an hour or two of Photoshop tinkering, and he had it, his Hail Mary: a photo of Timothée Chalamet engrossed inThe Galactic Trialsas he chowed down in Chipotle. After that, he’d shared it across a dozen trusty sock puppet accounts.
Adaptation ahoy????
OMFG these books would make the BEST movies
Movie out whennnn?!
Better than Dune amirite
The photo didn’t exactly go viral, but it got decent traction—especially after Jaxon shared it from his official account (@SpaceBoyJaxon), with the caption “My boy Timmy’s got taste.” He thought the hashtag #doyouwantguacwiththat was a nice touch. And if he’d still had any dignity left at that point, he would have hated the idea that a single well-timed photo could do what years of work, hundreds of thousands of words, could not, and gain the books a following.
Not that it mattered in the end.
The campaign didn’t move the needle.
The series was officially dead, taking the last hopes of his career with it, like a black hole.
Until he got the invite from Arthur Fletch.
A ray of hope, that someone, somewhere, still thought he was special.
And now, here he is.
With the chance of a lifetime. A way to salvage everything.
And all he has to do is write.
The problem is, Jaxon hasn’t written a word in more than six months.
He’s tried. Of course, he’s tried.
But every time he sits down to face the work, he hears that voice in his head—that one that sounds at the same time like his editor and his dad—telling him that no one cares. That he’s not good enough, that he will never break free of this orbit, he will never escape, never soar among the stars.
And when the bad feelings bubble up, he can’t focus, so he gets up, and goes for a run, lifts weights, listens to a meditation app, starts to feel calm enough to tackle it, but then, well, it’s time for lunch, or dinner, and if he stays up too late writing, then he won’t be able to sleep, so he puts it off until the next day, and the next.
It turns out, it’s easy tonotwrite.
Creativity is like inertia. When you’re going, you keep going, but if you stop, well—something has to push you into motion.
Jaxon stands, limbs aching from the workout. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to drag his body across the room to the desk. He pulls back the chair and sits down, gaze immediately escaping to the window, and the sky beyond, the clouds churning low and dark. The weather here has a mind of its own, jerking between moments of stillness and jagged rain with the kind of whiplash that makes him think of tornado season back in Texas. One moment the world is holding its breath, and the next, it’s ripping up the trees. Storms this strong are dangerous, back in the flatland outside Dallas, but this place seems solid enough to withstand anything. The shutters rattle in the wind, but otherwise, the castle seems unbothered. Jaxon could sit there watching the storm rise and fall for hours.
Instead, he drags in a breath and forces his gaze down to the single sheet of crisp white paper sticking up out of the typewriter. It stares back, daunting in its blankness.
