by Julie Wright
She was truly a beautiful woman. Classy, while also being vibrant. Where I worked hard to blend into my environment and go unnoticed as often as possible, she clearly didn’t mind standing out.
Jen smirked at Lillian. “Are you giving Toni grief again?”
“Other. Way. Around.” Lillian tossed back a glare to the dark-haired woman, whom I could only assume was Toni.
Toni cleared her throat and stood. “Protecting the L. M. Christie brand is not the same thing as giving you grief.”
My head snapped back to the blonde they’d called Lillian.
Only a miracle kept me from gasping aloud.
L. M. Christie!
I’d read all her books, and not just read them but actually owned them. All of them. Her complete works sat in a lovely line tying up almost three full shelves in my living room. She’d written thirty-plus novels and an instructional book on writing. Her mystery series was one that both my sister and I loved. And her fantasy series was unparalleled.
Now here she was in the same room with me. Would she think it inappropriate if I fished my phone out of my purse and snapped a selfie with her?
I didn’t do that, of course. The calm, cool, and collected points all went to me.
“What did you do?” Jen’s casual tone and slight smirk said she didn’t think whatever Lillian had done could have been too bad.
I followed L. M. Christie religiously on social media. I hadn’t seen anything.
“She didn’t think my vegan joke was funny.” Lillian shrugged.
“The one from this morning?” I burst into the conversation without meaning to. “I loved that! I laughed out loud on the plane!” I stopped there, leaving off the fact that I’d even put three hearts in the comment section. L. M. Christie received thousands of comments on every post. Mine was a drop in an ocean.
“See?” Lillian crossed her arms over her chest and gave Toni a look of sheer triumph before she uncrossed her arms and turned back to me. “It was hilarious, wasn’t it? I was eating breakfast this morning and it just came to me, and my husband and I both laughed ourselves sick over it, and—”
“And it offended people,” Toni interrupted.
“People have got to stop taking themselves so seriously or there won’t be anything left to this world except offended people. It was a joke, Toni. And it wasn’t directed at humans. It was directed at plants. I doubt, I really do, that kale is going to file a lawsuit against me.”
“Some people who eat a plant-based diet felt like you were making fun of their lifestyle.”
I interrupted again. “The guy next to me on the plane was vegan, and he peeked at my screen because I’d been laughing. He thought it was hilarious, too. He took a picture of the post with his camera and sent it to his friends.”
“There.” Lillian waved at me. “You see? You can pat that mountain back down into a molehill because my friend here has proven my point.” She waved in my direction and then frowned. “I’m sorry. What was your name?”
I put out my hand. “I’m Lettie. Lettie Kingsley. I just signed on with Jen this morning.” I knew that Jen represented L. M. Christie because on the acknowledgments page of every book she wrote, there was a special paragraph to her agent. That had been one of the reasons I’d persevered in submitting my manuscripts to Jennifer Apsley.
Lillian took my hand in hers, showing off her red-polished, glossy nails, and then pulled me into a hug. “Welcome to the family!”
L. M. Christie was hugging me and calling me family. Now would definitely be the time for me to snap a selfie, but I felt the cold shadow of Toni’s disapproval from over Lillian’s shoulder. I stepped back and cleared my throat. After all, I was the interloper in the situation.
“I think that’s everything,” Lillian said to Toni. “We’ll finish up through email, since I have an appointment I need to get to.”
“What appointment?” Toni asked.
“The one I plan on making as soon as I leave your office,” Lillian said.
I barked out a laugh that had to be swallowed back down at a single sharp look from Toni.
“We are going to be such friends, Lettie,” Lillian said to me. “You call me if you ever need anything. You can ask pretty much anything.”
Ask anything?
It was a credit to me that I didn’t ask whether or not Maggie Wood, heroine of the Silent Dust series, would ever find the source of the mountain’s magic to defeat the evil heir apparent. Lillian was probably under contract and unable to share that information anyway. Besides, she was gone before anyone else could get another word out of their mouths.
“That woman is far too flippant for her own good.” Toni did not sit back in her chair but, instead, picked up a file, crossed the floor, and circled me in a way entirely unlike a vulture might circle its next meal.
Unlike because the look she gave me upon inspection was one of meh. A vulture would have at least looked interested.
Toni shrugged. “You clean up well enough. Your online presence didn’t give me much hope, but you’re well-dressed and tidy enough today. It at least gives me a better baseline to work from.”
Ouch.
I kept to myself the fact that I was only well-dressed because other people had dressed me. No reason to throw wood on the fire she planned on using to burn me at the stake.
“So is her contract signed?” Toni asked, talking around me instead of to me by asking Jen.
Jen nodded.
“Yes, I signed my contract,” I interjected, making it clear that I could answer my own questions.
“Good. As soon as Jen gets you the first check and it clears your bank, you need to go shopping.” She pulled a list from the binder in her hand and held it out to me.
I looked down at the list and realized something more than the Mariana Trench would be needed if I intended to frown as deeply as I wanted.
“What kind of crazy person made up this list?” The list was double-columned and two pages long. It included a camera, a whole column of equipment needed to accessorize the camera, curtains, a coffee table, books to go with the coffee table, a couch to go with the coffee table, and clothes. Next to each item were suggested brand names and website URLs to stores no self-respecting person on a budget would ever shop at unless there was a clearance sale.
Toni smiled the kind of smile that said she thought I was legitimately funny. “I made the list.”
I shook my head. Not that I didn’t believe she was a crazy person, but that what she was suggesting went way beyond mascara and a different shade of lipstick. “But I already have all this.”
Toni also shook her head, starting the motion before I’d finished speaking. “You have the hazmat version of these items. The secondhand, scratch-and-dent version.”
“Ouch.” This time I said it out loud. “Being thrifty does not make my life a hazmat crisis.”
She gave me a look that might have seemed like patient understanding to the average onlooker but had all the marks of an eye roll. I had a hyper-controlling mother and a teenage sister. I knew an inward eye roll when I saw one. “You’re right,” she said. “There’s fashionable thrifting, and then there’s the thrifting one does out of abject poverty.”
“I’m not impoverished,” I said.
“I know. You do well for yourself. But your social media looks like the life of one who is impoverished.”
“But the things I own are already on my social media. It’s not like I’d be fooling any of my followers.”
“We will be scrubbing your social media and starting over.”
“Starting over? I have more than a thousand followers on Instagram. It took me four years to build that.”
“I can get you that in a day. It’s important that we bury your previous social media so that it can rest in peace in an unmarked grave and we can move on to something bette
r.”
“But I follow people, too.”
She ignored that comment as she pushed forward with what she envisioned as my future me. “Yes, we’ll have to start fresh with your social media. We need to capitalize on your nickname.”
My head spun at her rapid-fire list of things to do. “But my social media already uses my nickname, and if the name is already in use . . .”
She gave me a look that made her appear to have just walked into a room full of teenage boys who hadn’t showered in over a month. “Yes. I know. Lettie. That’s not the nickname I mean. Lettie is the name of a ten-year-old who does what her mother asks without needing to be asked twice. It’s the name of the girl who never skipped piano practice and always did her homework the moment she got home from school. It’s boring. It leaves no lasting impressions. So that isn’t the nickname I meant.”
I tried—and failed—to not flinch at the insults she flung. I glanced at Jen for some kind of intervention, but Jen was looking at her phone—likely to avoid having to look at me. “I don’t have any other nickname.”
“That’s why we’re here. To give you a fresh start. Your name has so much potential, I don’t know why you cling to a childish nickname.”
I clung to it because it was what my father called me when he came into my room at night to listen to me tell him the stories I made up. Princess Lettie, or sometimes even Queen Lettie when my stories were extra special. It was the name of the creator—the girl who told stories.
“Charlotte . . . Charlotte . . .” She clicked her pen, flipped it over, and clicked it again in the same way she seemed to be mentally flipping my name. Her eyes widened and she straightened in her chair. “Char.”
She said it like she’d come up with something unique. Lots of people who didn’t know me personally shortened my name to Char. It felt abrupt and lazy all at the same time. It was the name used by someone who hadn’t taken the time to get to know me. “You want me to be associated with images of seared meat?” I asked.
“Not seared. But sizzling. It’s perfect. It’s what’s happening now.”
“I just don’t think—”
“I know this seems harsh and you likely think I’m being a bully, but I am your advocate in every way. Jen got you a contract because you’re a good writer and you deserve a contract.”
Without intending to, I straightened under that praise.
“But no one will know you deserve that contract if you can’t appear to them as someone they should admire. If you want to keep your old couch and coffee table, that’s fine, but for your social media pictures, we have to start fresh. Your pictures need to look like someone who is flawed and willing to show those flaws.”
“I don’t understand.” I needed to sit down but didn’t want to draw more attention to myself by actually moving. “Isn’t everything you just said about me a flaw?”
“Charlotte, living within a budget is not a flaw. I’m not criticizing your life. But we need flaws that make you a leader—someone who can take others to the places they want to go, not just by the words you wrote but by the walk you walk. People don’t want to aspire to live in a world where they require a budget. They don’t want to aspire to a reality they already live in. Your flaws need to be carefully manicured so that they aren’t pitiable but adorable instead.”
That made sense in a twisted, uncomfortable sort of way—uncomfortable enough I had to interject. “The book is about accepting yourself as you are. It’s about being the authentic you. Shouldn’t I be my authentic self?”
“Mm-hmm. Yes. It is, and you should. But people tend to need heroes they can look up to, heroes who can show them a better way. You can still be authentically you. But outfits like this need to be restructured.” She produced a picture from my Instagram out of her binder. In the picture, I was wearing my six-impossible-things-before-breakfast shirt.
“But that’s my lucky rabbit’s shirt.” My voice cracked with the heightened protest. The picture on the T-shirt was of the White Rabbit holding a pocket watch. He was framed in the words the Queen had said when Alice told her it was impossible to believe impossible things.
“I wear it when I feel like I’m coming close to the end of a book.”
“And that detail is adorable, likeable, follow-able. So instead of wearing this faded, worn-out shirt that you’ve likely had since you were twelve, you can wear this.” She retrieved a box from her desk and handed it to me.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s a gift to welcome you to the HNT family and to wish you a well-earned congratulations for snagging an amazing book deal. And I read the book. You have so much to be proud of. I want to help you shine. I want people to see you for the genius you are.”
I pulled the ribbon from the box, lifted the lid, and stared at the shirt inside. There was the same Through the Looking Glass quote and almost the same image, but this was not the same shirt. It was a Cora original with Swarovski crystals sewn into the picture of the pocket watch, each crystal marking an hour on the watch face. I would have been too pedestrian to know the brand except Kat wanted to own a Cora original.
Toni had done something unexpected. She’d given me a gift I loved and a compliment my heart couldn’t ignore.
“You see?” she said. “You’re still your authentic self. I’m not here to change you. I’m here to help other people see the diamond that you really are.”
I gave a single nod of assent. “Okay. I’m ready. What do we need to do?”
She set me up with new accounts on social media and got me an appointment for my hair and makeup and then a photographer for when I was back home. Like a fairy godmother, Toni wielded her pen and laptop as if they were magic wands. She showed me how to transform myself from the household servant to the woman in the ball gown.
The first consultation with Toni had been painful, and the idea of an exhausting routine that required me to keep up with the world made me regret in the tiniest bit signing the contract, but I reminded myself that I had a fashion-designer sister and a photographer best friend. The level of engagement wouldn’t be too hard to maintain once it got going. And Toni knew her business. I trusted that she could do what she said.
Jen, who had said she would stay with me for the whole ordeal, had remained quiet for most of it, so it almost startled me when we exited the office and she spoke up. “Lillian asked if we’d like to join her for an early dinner.”
I glanced at the clock. Had we really been in that office so long that it was now dinnertime and, wait—
“What?”
“Lillian, the woman in Toni’s office when we arrived, wanted to get some dinner with us. If you’re too tired, I can tell her it’s not a good time.” Jen positioned her phone to cancel the coolest dinner date I would ever be invited to in my entire life.
“No!” I wanted to reach for her phone and throw it to the curb to keep her from declining. “I’d love to!”
Jen tilted her head and gave me a look that said she wanted to make sure; when I nodded, she did as well, settling the matter.
We met Lillian at a nondescript cafe that served anything but nondescript food. It was there that I sat at a table with my hero author. Lillian asked all about me, about how I’d come to know I wanted to be a writer, about how I’d gotten so lucky to be catching my big break so young, and how I was lucky to have Jennifer Apsley as an agent and Melissa as an editor.
“You haven’t mentioned how lucky I am to have Toni as my publicist.” I’d waited until Jen excused herself to use the restroom before approaching the topic of the PR firm.
Lillian hooted at that. “Ah, yes. Publicists. They are a necessary evil.”
I thought about the list burning a hole in my future bank account total. “Are they?”
“We aren’t supposed to talk over the details of contracts, but it’s obvious your deal came with a publicist clause
or you wouldn’t have been in Toni’s office.”
I nodded that she’d hit the mark.
She sighed. “Writing is such a difficult thing. To finally get the validation that we all crave so much it’s basically oxygen to us is exciting. We want people to know that we did what we said we were going to do. We want our friends to know. We want our family to know. We want all of those people who told us that our dreams were silly, ridiculous, and a waste of time to know that they were wrong. Don’t regret this day, Lettie. Toni and her group will make sure that everyone knows. And if I know Toni, she’ll probably rub their noses in it while making you look humble and sweet in the process.”
I groaned. “I love the idea of people loving my books, but I’m not so sure how I feel about standing in the spotlight with those books.”
“Ah, you’re the recluse writer, huh? Well, you’d better get used to the spotlight because that is where they need you to be.”
“I do trust her to do what she says.”
“Good. You should. She’s the best.” She leaned forward. “A little change is good, Lettie. But don’t let her change everything about you. Be stubborn enough to push back every now and again. When it really matters to you, don’t give in. It’s the thing that’s kept me sane.”
The advice was good. I tucked it away to use in case Toni crossed a line I didn’t want crossed. I thanked Lillian and then really looked at her. “I’m confused. Why does your brand need a publicist? Not to sound like the stalker fan-girl that I unabashedly am, but you’re already famous.”
Lillian laughed. “Oh, honey, you really don’t spend enough time on the internet if you have to ask questions like that. The comment section of any article or review will tell you that people think their opinion matters more than anything else on the planet, and any minor indiscretion ever committed in your life will be ripped open and put out there for everyone to judge and stamp an opinion on. I got death threats when I killed off Carmichael. Death threats! Because of a fictional character. So when my real life gets sticky, I need a publicist to save me from the public.”