Joel and Gisele broke up, surprising no one, but he’s seeing someone new, a normal girl, he says, not a model or an actress. For a normal girl she sure is statuesque and beautiful. Leave it to Joel to nab the only gorgeous nonmodel/nonactress in L.A. He wants to come out for both holidays this winter, and Dad almost cried when he heard. It was too much for Mom to take, and her nerves are nearly shot, or so she says whenever I call her, which is every day. Justin laughs at my complicated family dynamic, and I tell him to be quiet, because his family is no picnic either.
Pia Brown and I continue to work together, and Kelly calls us her power couple. Pia turned out two books over the summer, so I’ve got my hands full dealing with her work and a few other projects Kelly sent my way. She often has Justin collaborate with me, and now that Kevin has my old job, he can join us as well on the big assignments. Luckily, Carly decided editing was no longer for her, and she quit. This was right after she found out that Justin and I were dating. Joe Carlson was the last to wish her well in her next endeavor, practically shoving her out of the office and into the elevator. He wiped his hands when the doors closed and shook his head. A few people heard him mutter, “Good riddance,” when he marched past.
A new development has also emerged that might interest you. Without my permission, devilish Kevin absconded with my dating journals, put them together in a binder, and gave them to Kelly. She read the entire thing in one day and called me to her office. Kevin looked so damn smug when I walked past his office, I could have slugged him. He steepled his fingers together and grinned wickedly.
I sat in Kelly’s office for an hour, and she mostly spoke. She offered to publish my journal if I could turn it into a book. At first, I didn’t understand. What was she talking about? There’s no way my wayward natterings could be a book.
“You have good material here,” she said and tapped the binder. “Kevin was right to give it to me. He’ll make a great book bloodhound.”
“But how do you expect me to do this while juggling Pia and the other manuscripts?”
“Because I know you can do it. You have however long you need. I don’t expect you’ll need an advance as you’ve already gotten a substantial raise. We can talk advances with your next book.”
“Next book?”
“If the first goes well, I’ll have to put you in the author stable. I hope you can figure out a way to write and edit. Because I would hate to lose you as an editor.” With her small smile, she waved me out, and my next mission began.
Justin doubled over when he heard and gave Kevin a high-five. I didn’t know where to begin.
“How can I do this?”
“Just think of it as a conversation with me over martinis,” suggested Kevin. “That should be easy.”
“I can’t write drunk!”
“Why not? Hemingway did.”
“I hate Hemingway.”
We went to my office and I collapsed in my chair, no longer fawning over its comfy-ness. Justin and Kevin sat down across from me and gave me reassuring looks.
“We know you can do it, Cass,” said the best boyfriend in the world. “You used to write all the time.”
“That was before. What if I don’t have it in me anymore?”
“That’s bullshit,” says Kevin. “A writer never loses her mojo. Sometimes it just gets neglected. You need to take it out for a spin, fill the gas tank, and run rampant down some country road.”
“Right.”
“Exactly,” says Kevin. “Write.”
And so here I go. I’m about to write my first serious novel. Well, not serious serious. I reread my journal, and there’s some funny stuff in there. Justin bought me a stack of yellow legal pads to take notes, and my laptop sits at the new desk in the corner, waiting. It stares ominously at me, and at first, I’m scared. What if I can’t make it into something workable? What if it fails?
Then I remember that’s what I thought about the dating game and look how that turned out. Justin is at the grocery store buying supplies for dinner. He’s going to cook while I write.
What a man.
That’s when it hits me. I have this in the bag. All I have to do is imagine myself at Brits, with a beer, surrounded by my girls and the boys and chat with them. After all, isn’t a book really a conversation you’re trying to have with other people?
I sit at the desk, open my laptop, and make my way to Microsoft Word.
Thirty minutes later, Justin comes through the door. He doesn’t say a word, because he hears the most miraculous sound coming from the corner: energetic typing.
The first thing I wrote was the title page, with no title yet, and the dedication.
Untitled
A Biographical Novel by Cassandra McTiernan
For the girls, you know who you are.
For K and J, who gave me the pep talk.
And for my parents, without whom I wouldn’t be here to write.
Acknowledgements
It took an army of cheerleaders to write this book: family, friends, teachers, colleagues. Thank you to my mom and dad, who told me I could be whatever I wanted. Kind of backfired: they’d rather I’d chosen accounting. Without their support and readership of second-grade ramblings, this book would not exist.
To my brother, thank you for listening to me talk about characters, how they were doing things I hadn’t expected or planned, and how I was languishing at the halfway point. You were always there with a pat on the back and a “why don’t you just move on to the next chapter and worry about that later?”
To my Olive Garden and Beyond friends, whose names are in this book: Alicia, Lindsey, and Keeley. My cadre of foul-mouthed, enthusiastic fans who kept me full of new material.
Thank you as well to Dr. Jennifer Brantley, who ushered my college-age writing onto a new level. She kept telling me to push, and that successful writers weren’t necessarily the best ones, but they were the ones who just kept writing.
And to everyone who reads this book and sees a bit of themselves in it. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again!
Colleen McMillan is a Minnesota native who currently lives in the Twin Cities with her cantankerous cat, Duncan. She also likes to call Paris her second home, but don't tell the Parisians. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls and received her Master's Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, Canterbury in England.
Twitter: @Colleen40303158
Facebook: @ColleenMcMillanAuthor
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