AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So, yep, the synopsis wasn’t exactly accurate, but she trusted that the publisher knew what it was doing. The main thing? She was holding a copy of her book. And in less than a month, it would be released into the wild.
She could not wait.
CHRIS
Chris sat on the balcony of his micro-apartment with the package Daphne had sent: a copy of her book. It’d been waiting when he returned from a long day of legal meetings, as Nia worked her magic on his case. Now he’d poured himself a beer, collapsed into the one chair that fit on his balcony, and exhaled for what felt like the first time today.
Things were going to be okay. Oh, he’d still take a financial hit from his ex-partner’s mess—one he couldn’t really afford—and he might have to slink back to his former firm, but he’d survive with his professional reputation largely intact. He might even get to keep his car. And it was all thanks to this little package he held in his hands.
“Thank you, Daphne McFadden,” he murmured.
He tore open the wrapper and gazed down at… his face.
It was surreal, seeing his face on a book cover, but it was also like looking at an amateur portrait of himself, where he could catch bits that looked familiar, but the overall impression was that of looking at a stranger.
He’d had the same reaction when he got the shots from the photo shoot. Is that really me?
In high school, Chris had been what girls had affectionately called “a cute math geek.” In other words, attractive enough but gawky and acne-prone. After he took on his first job, he’d nearly collapsed from stress at tax time, and a friend took him to the gym. There, Chris discovered both a remedy and a passion; his body took to it and filled out.
Around the same time his face had started to change, not only losing the acne but the youthful softness, too. He’d seen photos of his father and grandfather, and they’d been the sort of men who looked better at forty than twenty. His mom always joked that she’d married a sleeper hottie.
So part of his disconnect with the jacket photo was the fact he still didn’t picture himself as that guy, but it was more, too. When the publisher wanted to add a “small” photo of him to the book jacket, Nia had suggested ways to disguise Chris. He appreciated that, even if he knew Nia suggested it mostly for Daphne’s sake. She couldn’t have people recognize her book’s author as Vancouver accountant Chris Stanton.
Chris also didn’t want to be recognized as a book author when he wasn’t one. For the jacket photo, moody lighting shadowed his face, and the angle added to those shadows. He wore his Zane glasses and his Zane hairstyle and his serious-author Zane expression. Add in the photo editing, and no one was going to recognize him, which was good because it was not a tiny author photo inside the jacket.
It was the entire freaking back cover.
He held it up again and felt a stab of guilt. A memory flashed, one of being in a bookstore with his older sister. Gemma had picked up a hardcover adult novel and flipped it around to the back cover, with its giant author photo.
“This is going to be me someday,” she said.
“An old man?”
She flashed him the finger. “You know what I mean. My photo, on a book someday, when I’m an author.”
His sister was the writer in the family, and now it was his photo on the back of a book. At least Gemma wouldn’t see it—young-adult wasn’t her genre—and even if she did, she might only think that it kinda looked like her brother. It couldn’t be, of course. Chris might read nearly as much as she did, but he didn’t write.
He fingered the book. It didn’t feel right, seeing his photo on Daphne’s book.
It had been her choice, though.
Why had she chosen a male pen name? He had a feeling it wasn’t a random decision, and that bothered him.
APRIL 18, TWENTY-FIVE DAYS TO PUBLICATION
Daphne: Did you get the copy I sent?
Chris: Copy of…?
Daphne: The book?
Chris: Right! Yes, it arrived. Was going to text. Thought you said my photo would be a square on the back cover. It IS the back cover. The ENTIRE cover.
Daphne: Any chance you’re going to read the book before it comes out?
Chris: I’ve started. It’s a lot of words.
Daphne: 90,000 of them.
