The Accidental Bestseller (21 page)

Faye and Tanya set to work on breakfast while Kendall headed to the living room to tackle the allegedly rotted baseboard. Mallory took the stairs down to her bedroom silently thanking God for allowing Faye and Tanya to come for the weekend. She wasn’t a religious person and there weren’t a whole lot of things she believed strongly in. But the combined force of their creativity was one of them.

By 9:35 they were all assembled on the deck. They sat at the round Plexiglas-topped table with yellow pads and ballpoint pens in front of them. Kendall also had an egg-and-bacon sandwich that Tanya had made for her plus an extra large glass of orange juice, neither of which she could bring herself to touch. She still wore her pajamas and tool belt because the baseboard project wasn’t quite finished when Tanya had come to drag, er, escort her out onto the deck. But at least she was here. And so were her “peeps.”

“Why don’t you start by telling us the basic premise,” Faye suggested.

“Well.” Kendall thought for a moment about the story she had once been so excited about; something she hadn’t been able to do in a long time. “It’s about four writers at varying stages of their careers who became friends before they ever got published and who help each other deal with the ups and downs of publishing.”

“So you’re writing about us,” Tanya said.

“Well, in a sense. I mean, I didn’t plan to write about our real lives—although I was envisioning a
New York Times
Bestseller.” She glanced at Mallory. “And an author who writes inspirationals.” Faye raised her hand, “Present.”

“And I did sort of have a category writer who was a, um, single mother as a primary character.”

Tanya stood and took a bow.

“But what I wanted to capture was the connection we felt, feel, for each other. And how it enhances our work and, well, um, our lives.” Saying it out loud it sounded as if she’d been too lazy to imagine something and so had decided to rip off their lives. “Originally I thought one of the writers would have a real problem and the others would come to her aid.” Kendall looked around the table and smiled sheepishly. “I had no idea I’d be the one needing help so desperately. I’d pictured a car crash or an illness that kept the protagonist from being able to write, not an evil editor and a disappearing husband.”

“How much of a plot do you have?” Faye asked.

“Not much. I’d seen the main POV character suddenly unable to write the book she had to write and her friends somehow stepping in and helping, but that was as far as I got.” She shook her head at how closely her life seemed to be mimicking her idea. “Weird, huh? I feel like I’m stranded in the middle of a Stephen King novel—you know, a writer gets an idea and all the sudden she’s living it. Maybe if I’d never come up with
Sticks and Stones
Calvin wouldn’t have left me.”

“With all due respect to Stephen King, I think we can rule out your idea being the impetus for Calvin’s being an asshole.” Mallory’s tone was dry. “But I really like the idea. There aren’t that many books about writers. And whenever I do a signing or a talk, people are really curious about the business and the whole creative process. It could have real appeal.”

“Yeah,” Faye added. “There is a whole mystique attached to being a writer even though it’s probably the least glamorous profession on the planet. All those hours alone in front of a computer; the self-doubt that sneaks in; the flukiness of the business.”

Mallory grinned wickedly. “The lack of showers and grooming during that last patch when you don’t leave your computer for days as the end of a book pours out of you.”

“Or what’s even worse,” Tanya put in, “when you’re so close to typing ‘The End’ that you can taste it and you can’t think about anything but finishing. But you have to keep stopping to go to work. Or take your kids somewhere.” She grimaced. “Or deal with your mother. It’s like being in labor and ready to push and having the doctor say, ‘Wait, don’t push right now. I need to go deal with something. We’ll get back to this in a couple of hours.’ ”

“You know if you can capture all of that, if you can intertwine the realities of being a writer with the personal stories and relationships of each of these characters, you could have something major,” Faye said. “And if you put enough insider information in it, it could be huge with readers
and
other writers. You could generate a real buzz within the industry.”

Kendall looked at her friends and saw the genuine enthusiasm reflected on all their faces. They weren’t hyping her just to get her started. This was a great idea and could really be something out of the ordinary, a true breakout book much larger than what she’d done before.

For a moment Kendall felt the possibility, imagined the satisfaction of writing such a dynamic story. But in the next moment she realized the futility of it. Because even with such a strong premise, even with her friends here to help her think it out, she didn’t see how she could possibly summon the energy to write this book and do it any kind of justice. Not with the state her life was in and not in the time she had left.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, guys.” She swallowed, trying to rid herself of the lump that had risen in her throat. “I really appreciate you being here and all your fabulous brainpower. You’re the best.” She looked away for a moment, out over the deck railing to the world beyond, hazy through the sheen of tears she was trying not to shed. She wished she could respond in the way she knew they wanted her to, but there was no point in pretending she was going to do something she couldn’t. If nothing else, she owed them complete honesty.

“It could be an incredible book,” she said carefully. “But I can’t write it.” She blinked back the tears that threatened. “Not right now. I just don’t have it in me.”

No one spoke right away, for which she was grateful. But she could practically see the wheels turning in their heads, could see them marshalling their arguments, trying to figure out what it would take to turn her around.

“There’s just no way,” she said, wanting them to understand. “There’s no way I could write a four-hundred-page manuscript in less than three months. Not with my whole real life falling in around me. I can’t even think straight right now. How in the world could I write?”

In the silence that followed Kendall’s pronouncement, Tanya considered her friends. No one really had an answer but all of them wanted like hell to make things better for Kendall.

She had never had to deal with the inability to write, thank you, God. From the time Tanya had started, writing had been the one consistently bright spot in her life.

But she completely understood the horror of having your whole world cave in around you. For Kendall it had been sudden and cataclysmic; Tanya had spent her entire life like that little Dutch boy she’d once heard about who had to keep his finger in the dike. Since childhood she’d been an active participant in adult realities. For a very brief time after she’d married Kyle, she’d thought she could let up and let someone else take over, but this had proved a bad case of wishful thinking. When the dust settled she’d still been all that stood between herself and disaster, only then she had two babies to protect, too.

She looked at the others, trying as always not to be resentful of the easier lives they seemed to lead and reminding herself that Kendall’s life had appeared pretty cushy from Tanya’s perspective and look how that had turned out.

Faye had struggled when her husband had first started his ministry, but they seemed to be doing really well now. There was something in the back of Faye’s eyes that didn’t quite jibe with her role as inspirational author and wife of the charismatic Pastor Steve, but Tanya was not one to pry into even a close friend’s personal life.

And Mallory? For all her outgoing personality and celebrity status,
there
was a closed book for you. Tanya could count on one hand and maybe a couple of toes the personal things Mallory St. James had ever shared. Up until recently, she’d seemed pretty much like a bestseller machine, cranking them out one after the other, accepting it all as her due. But something was off there, too. For someone who had it all, she didn’t seem all that happy.

And not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Mallory’s self-sacrifice in rushing to Kendall’s aid also seemed a bit off. If Tanya had been writing a story and had a character who acted so out of character, she had no doubt these very people would have called her on it.

But whatever her motivations, Mallory had brought them all together to help Kendall and that’s what they needed to do. If Kendall Aims thought the three of them were just going to let her slide down the publishing drain, she didn’t know who she was dealing with.

Mallory was the first to make it clear that the conversation was not over. “Why don’t we start with your character’s growth arc? Where does she need to get to emotionally? What does she have to deal with to get there?” Mallory said. “Once we have her set, we can figure out the other writers’ journeys.”

Faye jumped in next. “Maybe you should use what really happened to you, from the time your editor left and things started going downhill,” Faye suggested. “Include a husband who does the wrong thing. Maybe even the kids leaving for college. They always say it’s best to write what you know. And it might be cathartic.”

Tanya watched Kendall process the fact that they weren’t going to let her off the hook. A whole boatload of emotions washed over her face, but at least when she finally spoke the tears that had been welling in her eyes had dried and her tone was both sharp and sarcastic.

“Do you think it would be too obvious if my main character was named Kendall and her lying, cheating husband was named Calvin? And do you think it would be OK to kill and dismember him by chapter two?”

Faye and Mallory laughed in relief, but Kendall’s words smacked Tanya right between the eyes and cleaved right through to her brain. She had what she thought of as a “duh” moment, the kind that practically walks up and clops you on the head and says, “Don’t be stupid, just do this.”

Trying to work it out, she stood and began to pace to the edge of the deck and back. The others’ conversation stuttered to a halt as they watched her. Faye took her feet off the deck railing and sat up straighter. Mallory stopped scribbling on her yellow pad and Kendall stopped fingering her tool belt.

“OK,” Tanya said, turning to face them. Her thoughts seemed to be outpacing her ability to communicate, and she made a conscious effort to slow them down. “Kendall’s story is supposed to be about four writers, loosely based on us.” She paused to make sure she had their full attention and then emphasized each word carefully. “But what if they
are
us?”

“What?” they Greek chorused.

Again she tried to slow herself down so that she could be as clear as possible, certain that if they only understood, they would be as excited about her idea as she was. “What if Kendall’s character
is
Kendall. And Faye’s is Faye. And yours is yours, Mal? And the beautiful, yet driven, single mother is me?”

Kendall’s brow furrowed. In fact, all of them stared back at her as if she’d somehow taken a nose dive over the edge of reason. But Tanya could see it all clearly now; she just had to make them see it, too.

“Kendall’s right. She’s in no shape to write a four-hundred-page manuscript from multiple points of view right now. But what if each of us wrote our own character?”

The shocked silence continued, but Tanya was determined to push through it.

“We could each write from our own character’s point of view and then we could meld the pieces together.” She paused a moment to gather her thoughts. “That way each of us would only be writing about a hundred pages—a quarter of the book.” She paused once more to let this part sink in; a hundred pages was nothing compared to a complete manuscript—another twenty-five pages a week over the course of a month. “And just think of how genuine each of those characters’ voices will be. We could really create something great.”

Still no one spoke, but at this point Tanya couldn’t have stopped talking if they’d wrestled her to the ground and taped her mouth shut, which they looked somewhat tempted to do. She just kept spewing out her thoughts, reforming and restating them, trusting that if she talked long enough her message would get through.

“It’ll be labeled fiction,” she explained, “so we can make up our characters’ backstories or we can write the absolute truth and let people think it’s fiction—whatever’s easiest or most interesting to us. Of course, we’ve got to figure out the plot and what it is that threatens their careers and their friendship—but that should be fun if we do it together.”

She paused for breath and to scan their faces for clues to their reactions. She’d explained her idea as best she could. Now she was going to have to ask them point-blank whether they were willing to consider it or were just trying to figure out how to tell her “no.”

17