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CHAPTER ONE
DAPHNE
I need a penis,” Daphne said.
On her laptop screen, she watched Nia’s chopsticks clatter to the café table a thousand miles away. “Yes! I have been waiting for this day!” Nia snatched up her phone and jabbed the screen. “I’ve been thinking Plenty of Fish or—”
“I’m not talking about dating.”
Nia stared, and then burst out laughing. “Well, okay then. Ms. I-don’t-do-casual-sex has finally been in the wilderness too long.”
“None of that,” Daphne said. Although, to be perfectly honest… No, none of that. Sadly. She leaned back in her patio chair on the deck of her Yukon home. She was “having lunch” with Nia, who was in Vancouver. Daphne got Nia’s autumn scenery—the busy city patio, with its bustling street and sidewalk—and Nia got hers, with its lake and forest and snow-capped mountains.
Daphne continued, “Remember that article about an author who submitted her book under a man’s name?”
“And got five times the responses than she had under her own. You’re thinking you could sell Winter’s Sleep easier if you were a man. I know it can feel that way, but…”
“I did sell it.”
Nia bolted upright. “What?”
“I’d gotten another rejection, and I drank some wine and remembered the article and said, ‘Screw it. Let’s try that.’ So I tweaked a few things in my cover letter—more survivalism, more zombies, less romance.”
“What? Tell me you didn’t get rid of the romance.”
“Not in the book. Just in the description. I pasted in the new cover letter, attached the manuscript, and hit Send.”
“I thought you were only supposed to send the full manuscript if they asked for it.”
“I figured if I was going to be a man, I didn’t need to follow the rules.”
“And it worked?” Nia snorted. “I’m not sure whether to laugh or dissolve into a puddle of weeping despair. So you got an agent who thought you were a guy. What’d they say when you told them the truth?”
Silence.
Nia’s eyes bugged. “They still think you’re a guy? You’ve talked, right?”
“I told him I live off the grid in the Canadian wilderness and don’t have cell service. I expected he’d want me to get my ass into cell range so we can talk, but apparently, you don’t tell guys like Zane Remington to do that. You accommodate the quirks of their literary genius.”
“Zane Remington?”
“I was drunk.”
“So your agent thinks you’re a dude named Zane Remington?”
“Who lives in a house he built himself, from trees he felled himself. Zane hunts and fishes and is completely self-sufficient up here. Like Theo is, in the book. Except without the zombies. Oh, and Zane has an MFA degree.”
“Of course he does. So you got an agent who sold Winter’s Sleep to a publisher. What happens when that publisher goes to look up this Zane on social media? Have him sign a contract? Deposit a check with his totally fake name?”
“Er…” Daphne waved a hand. “Well, you see, I have this friend who is not only a lawyer but has an MBA, and she’s rather brilliant. I’m certain she can suggest the perfect solution to my dilemma.”
“Uh-huh. Do you know my hourly rate, McFadden? How much did you get for this book?”
“Five hundred.”
“Yeah, no offense, but that’ll get you an hour and a half of my time, even at the friends-and-family rate.”
“Five hundred thousand. Three publishers wanted it, and there was a bidding war.”
