Chapter 1
In which I enter full panic mode and dispose of unwanted clutter
Here lies Maggie Bliss, who died a slow and tortured death by total impostor syndrome after failing to write the final book of the Delania Trilogy.
I stared at the words I’d just typed, then said them out loud. They sounded perfect for my tombstone. I’d have to save this little nugget, just in case. But where? Send it to my daughter? Probably not. The last thing she needed was another therapy moment. My ex-husband? He’d always been good at paperwork, but we had been divorced for twenty-three years, so … no. My agent was a logical choice, but it might raise a few red flags. After all, he thought my writing was going along just fine.
Maybe I could print it out and frame it, with careful instructions attached.
Wherever it ended up, the good news was that the next time my editor, Ellen, sent me one of her hourly texts asking if I was writing about Delania, I could, for the first time in six months, truthfully answer yes.
I was all alone in my office as I said the words, and it was a good thing. Every author in the world knows in their heart of hearts that despite the fame, awards, accolades, and devoted followers, at any moment we could all become incapable of putting together even the simplest of sentences. If another writer had heard those words, she would have pulled down the leg of her sweatpants, poured us both more coffee, and helped with the punctuation.
But if anyone else had heard me, well … people would be disappointed. Even upset. There were the readers, literally millions of them, who didn’t know or care what impostor syndrome was. All they knew was that they had read the first book of the Delania Trilogy and were eagerly awaiting the second. To them, there was no question there’d be a third book. After all, this was a trilogy. Those readers had questions. Expectations. They were invested. They wanted a great big The End. If I didn’t write one, well, can you imagine what would happen to me?
Then there were my agent and my editor, who both insisted that this third book was going to bring my career to the next level. They had invested a great deal of time, energy, and money in my work over the years, and this was going to be the payoff. Yes, they’d also be upset.
It’s not like I didn’t know how this trilogy ended. Of course I did. Bellacore (call me Bella) LoModeria, twenty-six, five ten, flat stomach, ample bosom, and green-flecked eyes, had given up on love and wasn’t looking for a man. Not any man. Not even …
Lance. Sergeant David Rupert Lancaster, thirty-four, six feet two inches of rock-hard muscle, and surprisingly smooth skin despite the constant stubble on his firm and often clenched-in-frustration jaw. He knew that Bella was the woman for him and was going to do everything he could to make sure she knew it too. Theirs was a love that was never meant to be. Theirs was a passion that could not be denied. Theirs was a story destined to bring tears of joy and heartbreak and, ultimately, happily ever after.
All I had to do was finish writing it.
And therein lay the problem. For all my plotting and charts, maps and good intentions, I was two months away from my deadline and hadn’t written a single word.
Except for this epitaph, which I found to be both pithy and profound.
Listen—writer’s block happens to all of us. And usually writer’s block was not a big deal for me because I always took a bit of time between books. But I had signed the biggest deal of my twenty-plus-year career for a trilogy that would bring to life the tortured love between a beautiful ex-supermodel-turned-foreign-rescue-worker and a hard-bitten ex-Navy SEAL determined to protect her in war-torn, made-up Delania.
The first book started slowly, but word of mouth drove impressive sales. The second book of the trilogy was due to be released in early June, less than two months away. Already the buzz was intense. Presale numbers alone had earned me the third-place spot in People magazine’s Best Summer Reads list, a slot on Good Morning America, and book tours across the country.
That was the kind of success that might let me quit teaching creative writing classes every fall, which I did because I could not yet support myself solely on my writing. Yes, I know … writers are supposed to be rich. The truth is that most of us are not consistently on the top of the bestseller lists and are not in the same tax bracket as Stephen King. If I lived somewhere other than northern New Jersey, I could scrape by on book royalties alone, but I wasn’t about to move to Iowa just for a more reasonable cost of living.
And then there was the Cable Network Option. That’s right, an option for the Delania Trilogy to be made into a miniseries produced by a Very Important Actress/Producer. An option that would give me not just quit-teaching money but … dare I say it … beach house money.
I’d wanted a beach house since the first time I’d set my tiny two-year-old feet in the ocean. I remember it clearly: the sudden cold of the water, the sharp tang of salt in the air, the sand crunching between my toddler toes. This is what I want, I thought then. I want to live here.
I hadn’t changed my mind over the past forty years. And the option was finally going to make it real. But thanks to Game of Thrones, which had to have its finale written on the fly because the author had not finished the last book, nobody was going to sign anything until the final book was on my publisher’s desk.
So … everything I had ever hoped for as a writer was right there. Sitting in front of me. Waiting.
All I had to do was finish the damn book.
Correction. Start the damn book.
* * *
I met Greg Howard seven years ago at a cocktail party given by Drew University, which was where I’d been teaching my creative writing course for years. Greg was a writer of political nonfiction and would be giving a writing seminar there for the first time in the spring, and the cocktail party was to welcome him aboard. I took my time with him, carefully weighing the cost of a relationship. After all, he was younger than I and, quite honestly, a bit intense.
But I pursued him because he was, for all intents and purposes, my perfect alpha male: strong and sexy, exciting, with an air of danger about him. He had, in the course of his career, survived being held at gunpoint, stranded in the middle of the Amazon, and taken hostage by a small but determined guerrilla band somewhere in Africa. He was also charismatic and bright and engaging, funny and … well, let’s be honest again here … passionate. As in, the mere touch of his lips on the back of my neck was enough to turn my knees to jelly. One of the reasons I was so good writing about mind-blowing sex was because whenever Greg was around, that’s what I got, pretty much whenever I wanted it. Did that make me shallow? No. We spent even more quality time out of bed. But I have to say, the thought of those fingers and that mouth of his tended to make me gloss over his greatest and most fatal flaw:
His ego.
He had won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, and had been asked to speak before Congress and the UN. He had groupies. And he loved it. He had never, in all the time I’d known him, shown the least bit of hesitation or self-doubt about anything he’d done. He was absolutely confident in all his choices.
That’s sexy.
But it was also starting to take a toll. I recently had begun to feel a bit tired of always being the second-most important person in the room when we were alone together.
We had been living together for almost four years. Well, living together when he was actually in New Jersey, teaching his seminar. But that was only for six months of the year. He spent the rest of his time on the road, in one hellish country or another, researching his books. And when the research was done, he went up to his remote cabin in Maine to write. Alone.
Since his writing seminar was every spring, he was currently in New Jersey. On the day I wrote my epitaph, he had come home at some point in the early afternoon, probably when I was staring out the window or scrolling the internet or doing anything other than actually writing. I came downstairs to find him pulling things out of the refrigerator.
As writing is a lonely profession, I was grateful to have Greg around to discuss whatever problems I faced while working. Although I was not about to throw myself at him, sobbing with frustration, begging for help, I felt that desperate.
“Hey, how was your day?” I asked, moving in for a kiss.
He backed away. “You’re still in your writing clothes,” he said.
That was true. I was in sweatpants and my sleeping shirt and may or may not have bothered to brush my teeth. I know I hadn’t brushed my hair.
“I’ve been trying to work,” I explained.
He looked around, scowling. “Where’s the food?”
I stepped back. “The fridge is full of food. Can you be more specific?”
He narrowed his eyes. “All the food for tonight?”
Oh … crap. “Ah … that’s tonight?” I asked. Every semester he invited all his students to the house for an informal dinner, and tonight was the night. “I forgot. I’m sorry, but you know I’ve been preoccupied with this book. Which I really need to talk to you about. Could you maybe just push it back to next week?”
“I can’t just push it back. Those kids will be here in four hours. What are you going to feed them?”
“Wait … what am I going to feed them? These are your dinners, not mine. Take them to a restaurant. Tell them it’s a potluck this year and have everyone bring a dish. You have a PhD, Greg. You escaped a cartel’s compound in the Philippines and an ISIS stronghold in Pakistan. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” I ran my fingers through my hair, hit a snag, and tugged. “What I really need right now is to talk to you about my book.”
He shook his head at me, reminding me of my father when I would come home with a bad report card. “Maggie, I count on you to do this every year. You didn’t get my email? I sent it this morning, reminding you.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “Really? You sent an email? I’m supposed to be your partner, not your social secretary.”
“If you were my partner, you would have remembered.”
“If you were my partner, you would have noticed that I’ve been distracted and in a semi panic for the past few months. You know that I have the third book to finish, right?”
He nodded.
“And don’t I usually try to talk to you about tricky plot points?”
He nodded again. He rarely had any suggestions. In fact, I’m fairly certain he barely paid attention. But he always put on his I’m listening face.
“When was the last time I asked you anything about this new book?”
He frowned.
“Exactly,” I said. “I haven’t written a word. At all. In months. And have you even noticed? I mean, has it crossed your mind that I should be writing and I’m not, and maybe, just maybe, you should ask me why?”
He ruffled his short sandy hair. “I’ve been distracted too, Maggie. You know that.”
“Yes, and I know exactly why because I love you and am interested in your work. I know that your deadline has been pushed up, your department is undergoing another reorganization, and you’re having trouble getting a visa to wherever the hell you’re going next. I know all that because I ask you every day what is going on in your life.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not just as interested in your life?”
“I’m beyond suggesting, Greg.” I exhaled loudly. “Do you have any idea what’s going on with me? Because I’ve been trying to tell you for the last five minutes, and you don’t seem the least bit interested.”
He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Now, Maggie, it’s really not the same thing, is it? I mean, my work … well…”
I could feel weeks, no months, no, maybe years of resentment start to bubble up. “Yes, your work. Let’s talk about your work, Greg. It takes you away from us, from me, for half the year. The other half of the year you have speaking engagements and calls to testify in Congress and lectures to give, in addition to your all-sacred class schedule, also taking you away from me. And when you are here, I’m automatically expected to be on call for your social obligations. Whereas I plan every conference, signing, or engagement around your schedule.”
He rolled his eyes. “I can’t help it—”
“Yes, Greg, you can help it. You could say no once in a while. You could bring me with you to your conferences and meetings. I’d love to go with you. And your time in Maine … do you know that I’ve never seen the inside of the Maine place?”
“Because I work there.”
Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth Ernst
