Finding Mr. Write, page 21
She glanced at Daphne as they walked. “You have seen Chris, right? You two are obviously more than author and assistant, so you know exactly what I mean. He’s not my type—at all—but I can still objectively see that he is a very good-looking guy. If he were an actor, he’d be a dime a dozen, but as an author, he stands out. A lot. I was going to discuss it with you guys because, hot single author under forty? He’s going to have problems.”
“Okay,” Daphne said carefully.
“But he’s not just young and hot. He’s not just an instant bestseller. He’s also gone viral for facing down a grizzly bear.”
“Minor-league viral,” Daphne said, and at Sakura’s look, added, “I know. Not the point.”
“This is the point, Daphne.” Sakura held up her phone again.
“Is that—is that a website?” Daphne said.
“Yep. Someone put this up yesterday.”
Daphne read the URL again.
WhoIsZaneRemington.com
She asked if she could see Sakura’s phone and took it with trembling hands. The website was just one page, done through free web design software. It was a horrible design, covered in photos of Zane overlaid with hard-to-read text.
Who is Zane Remington?
Calling all Zane fans. And if you’re not a Zane fan, have you seen this guy??? Get out your fire extinguishers, ladies… and gents, if that’s your thing :)
Check out that face. Those arms. Those abs (anyone with a shot of his ass please send it in because I’m sure it’s just as hot!!!) And he’s smart, too. He wrote a book! I haven’t read it—books are for English class, amirite?—but it’s supposed to be good.
So who is Zane Remington?
That isn’t his real name. I know because I’ve looked everywhere, and my friend—who does read books—says it’s called a pseudonym. A fake author name so we can’t track him down and offer to have his babies. Is that fair? No, it is not.
You know what to do.
Find Zane Remington.
“That’s…” Daphne began.
“Concerning?”
“I was going to say creepy. Really creepy. But yes, also…” Daphne took a deep breath. “So people are trying to find out who Zane is, and that’s a concern for the publisher. They’ve added managing it to the million tasks stacked on your plate.”
“Oh no. The publisher won’t care. It’s added publicity. Doesn’t matter if this person is a reader or not—it gets Zane’s name and his book out there. If they find out about this website, they might weigh the ethics of leveraging it. Discreetly, of course. Ultimately, for them, it comes down to whatever sells books.”
“So this is you… preparing us? Warning us?”
It wasn’t. Daphne could tell by Sakura’s tone. She was pissed off, and so far had shown no signs of being the sort of person who gets angry at her boss and takes it out on everyone around her.
“These people will find Chris Stanton,” Sakura said. “It wasn’t easy. I did an image search, and it took hours to track down that photo. That’s buying you a bit of time. Even after I had that, I couldn’t dig up much on Chris, and believe me, I am an expert. There’s nothing worse than being assigned to a new author and discovering blackface costume photos on Facebook. I don’t just search. I scour. With Zane, there was nothing, obviously. Chris is nearly as invisible. If he has a social media presence, it’s locked down under a username, and ‘Chris Stanton’ is common enough that it took me two hours just to dig up a smattering of information.”
“Okay.”
“But that was enough to find out a bit about Chris’s hobbies and such. You know what I didn’t find listed there? Writing. Even when I dug back as far as his high-school yearbook. Not a single mention of him taking any interest in writing.”
Now Daphne had to force out the word. “Okay.”
“Then there’s you. Daphne McFadden.”
Daphne twitched.
Sakura continued, “You’re an architect.”
“Yes, I never said this was my career—”
“And you’re nearly as elusive online. For millennials, you two either spend very little time online or you’re very private people, with usernames and whatnot. But I did find you. Including this.”
Sakura passed over her phone. Daphne was holding herself so tight she could barely stretch out a hand to take it. She braced herself, looked at the screen, and softly exhaled.
It was something she’d written under her own name. A published piece of writing.
So why the surge of relief? Because it wasn’t even remotely connected to her fiction. It was an article in a regional architectural magazine edited by a friend who’d asked her to contribute.
“Yes, I wrote this article,” Daphne said. “I’m surprised you found it, but I’m not sure why it’s—”
Sakura reached over and scrolled up to the brief bio line at the bottom.
Daphne McFadden lives in the Yukon wilderness, where she spends her days dreaming up new ways to build ecofriendly northern homes… and her nights dreaming up new scenes for her northern zombie novel.
Her heart stopped.
When Daphne “became” Zane Remington, she and Nia had combed the internet for anything linking Daphne to Edge or even linking Daphne to writing. There was nothing.
Oh, Daphne was online. More than Chris, who’d admitted he didn’t have any social media profiles. It just wasn’t his thing. He kept in touch with his friends on group chats and such, and if he needed a profile, he had a username.
Chris was an accountant. He didn’t want potential clients googling his name and finding him playing beer pong with college buddies. He had to be the kind of guy they could entrust with their money. Serious, even staid.
Daphne did the same—her social media presence was mostly restricted to friend groups. Yet there was one exception. Writing.
Daphne was a member of at least a dozen online writing communities. And every one of those profiles was completely locked down, with usernames that linked back to email accounts that used those same names.
If she had to put in a “real” name, she used a fake one. The online smokescreen gave her the freedom to speak openly about writing, but she’d always planned to use a pen name, so she’d left nothing connecting her writing life to Daphne McFadden.
Except this.
One line below an article in a very small, very specialized journal.
Daphne hadn’t written that line. Her editor friend had. This friend had known Daphne was writing a zombie novel and added it to the bio line. Daphne had been annoyed. Her friend had teased her about being so secretive and saying it added human interest. So Daphne had let it go and forgotten about it.
Until now.
“Chris Stanton didn’t write Edge, did he?” Sakura said.
Her tone said that wasn’t a question, so Daphne didn’t answer.
“Please tell me you wrote it, and your boyfriend agreed to play the role of your pseudonym.”
Daphne glanced over.
Sakura shrugged. “If that’s the case, I hope you had an iron-clad contract drawn up, one that confirms you wrote it and all rights remain yours, but if that’s the situation, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“That you guys ‘wrote’ it together.” Sakura air-quoted “wrote.” “Meaning you actually wrote it and he helped brainstorm ideas, and for that he wanted author credit, and you didn’t say no, either because you’re blinded by love or you honestly think he’s entitled to call himself an author for doing what a lot of writers’ partners just naturally do.”
“That’s—”
“Then there’s scenario three, where he’s a guy you met at a writing conference, and he convinced you to ‘cowrite’ this book with him, meaning you did all the writing and he plays the role of author.”
“No,” Daphne said. “It’s not that. One person wrote this book.”
“That person being you.”
Daphne said nothing.
“You do realize the position you’re putting me in?” Sakura said as they walked past their third coffee shop without pausing.
“Yes, which is why I’m not confirming anything that might get you into trouble with your employer. Unless you’re asking for confirmation to take to your employer, in which case, I’m also not giving it. If there is an arrangement, and if Chris didn’t actually write the book, then everything has been handled legally. However, we are aware it could be an ethical issue and are already making plans to fix it.”
“When?”
“After the tour.”
“Good. That would be my suggestion,” Sakura said. “It’d be a shit-show if it came out now. There are only three stops left. Once you’re done, I would strongly suggest you fix this immediately.”
“We plan to.”
Sakura exhaled. “Okay.”
“I’m honestly sorry this puts you in a bad position,” Daphne said. “Can you dump Zane as a client? Say he did something and you no longer want to work with him?”
“Only if that ‘something’ is an unwanted sexual advance or an overtly racist comment.”
“Oh.”
“Yep. I’m sure there’s a morality clause in your contract. They all have them these days. I wouldn’t make a false accusation even to save my own career. I can’t refuse to work with him midtour for a minor annoyance, and everything except harassment would be considered a minor annoyance. I could say he expects me to deliver his food and feed it to him, and as long as he wasn’t being kinky about it, they’d tell me to just get through this tour and then they’ll handle it.”
“What can we do to make this better?”
“Well, what you could have done is warned me. I know why you couldn’t, but I reserve the right to be pissy. I started suspecting something was up yesterday. In person, there’s no trace of the guy I was dreading having to work with. He’s a little too prepped with his writing answers, which made me nervous. And he checks in with you a lot. Talking to readers, booksellers, sales reps… He checks to be sure you’re okay with his answers. It’s discreet enough that they don’t notice. But I did.”
“Okay,” Daphne said. “So be more careful about that.”
“A little, yes. Mostly, though, I just need to know so I can be prepared in case the shit hits the fan.”
“Okay.”
Daphne must have sounded nervous, because Sakura’s expression now held the first hints of sympathy.
“It won’t,” she said. “We just have a few days to go, and this website is the only concern I’ve found. Even then, if they realize Zane is actually Chris Stanton, they’ll presume Chris Stanton is the guy behind the pen name. You have time.”
“Okay.”
“But we need to be vigilant. I have Google alerts set up.”
“So does a friend of mine.”
“Good. Can I give her more parameters? So there are two of us monitoring?”
“Please.”
“Then let’s get that coffee. And let’s get through these interviews before you talk to Chris. You have a few hours off today. I’ll make sure you get that.”
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHRIS
After the interviews, Sakura had decided Chris and Daphne could go to lunch on their own. Which would have been great, if Chris hadn’t been very aware that something was wrong. Daphne was upset, and she’d been trying hard to hide it, and he’d been trying equally hard not to fret about it during the interviews. Thankfully, they’d been mostly softballs, and he’d smiled and charmed his way through them.
He was surprised at how easy it was to be charismatic when playing a role. All his awkwardness and overthinking fell away, and he could be Zane Remington, smooth and charming in a way Chris himself never was. Of course, part of that meant not worrying whether what you say might be misinterpreted or sound blatantly insincere. So, in the end, he’d sacrifice being charming Zane for being genuine Chris.
As it turned out during their lunch conversation, Zane was the source of Daphne’s worries, specifically a website dedicated to unmasking him. And really, if there was going to be a website devoted to uncovering your secret identity, one would hope for more than the crappy site she showed him.
He could make light because by the time they uncovered his secret identity, the point would be moot. In a few days, Daphne would come out to her publisher, and if they needed to keep “Zane” as the author, it’d be an open pseudonym, purely for branding, with everyone knowing a woman wrote the books.
So, lunch hadn’t been the private time together they might have hoped for, but the conversation had been an important one, not only quelling Daphne’s fears but helping them plan her authorial “outing” a little more.
Their personal-alert-team system was working, too. While he’d been in interviews, Nia had found the “Who Is Zane” website on her own and notified Daphne. Over lunch, he got a text from Gemma directing him to it. Everything was covered.
After lunch came stock signings, with all necessary appearances by charming Zane. Once that was done, Sakura made good on her promise to give them some real time off. It was only three thirty, and they had nothing on the schedule until the car would pick them up at six for the signing.
Plenty of time for a nice—albeit early—dinner for two. He’d suggest a cocktail in one of their rooms. Time to relax and talk about the good stuff that had happened so far. He had a few stories to tell her from the interviews, and he started one as they walked into the hotel.
“So the first thing she asks is whether I’ve ever seen The Walking Dead. That was a new one, and it gave me pause because I know you have, and I suspect Zane would have, but he’d never admit it. Since Zane won’t be alive much longer, though, I decided to lean in your direction and said I’d seen the first few seasons and enjoyed them.”
“Uh-oh. That was a trap,” she said as the doorman held the doors.
He poked her arm. “Oh ye of little faith. I have been doing this for weeks, my dear. Weeks. I am an expert at trap spotting. Once I imply that I didn’t watch the entire series, I set myself up for her asking why I stopped, which leads to me insulting the most influential zombie media of our time. When I said I’d only seen a few seasons, I said I was late to the show, not wanting to be unduly influenced.”
“Nice.”
They got in line at the front desk, where he continued, “Next she asked which was my favorite season.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I answered, choosing season three namely so I could link it to the scenes in Edge when Theo meets Finn and his community. Then she asked how Edge’s zombies differed from the ones in The Walking Dead.”
“I’m sensing a theme.”
“Pure coincidence, I’m sure. I answered that with an emphasis on your zombies. Next question: Which Walking Dead character was most like Theo? Then which character was most like Finn… and Atticus… and Mochi.”
“Mochi?”
“She didn’t seem to realize Mochi was a dog.”
Daphne sputtered a laugh. “Just read the back cover, right?”
“Pfft, no. I’m the back cover, remember. You can’t read that.” He paused, head tilting. “Although, when you were away from the signing table yesterday, one woman did say she’d like to read me. I pretended to think she was a fortune teller.”
Now Daphne was biting her lip to keep from laughing. He opened his mouth to continue, but the line cleared, and it was their turn at the front desk.
“We have two rooms reserved under Daphne McFadden,” Daphne said, and then added their publisher’s name.
“Oh!” The young woman’s eyes rounded, and she fished under the desk, pulling up a copy of Edge. She laid it in front of Chris. “Could you sign this, please?”
Apparently, the booking had also included Zane’s name. He smiled and took her pen with a flourish. Then he glanced at her name tag.
“Make it out to Millie?” he said.
“What?” She frowned. Then her eyes widened again. “Oh. No, it’s not for me.” Her nose wrinkled. “Not my thing, really.”
He smiled. “Zombies aren’t for everyone.”
“It’s about zombies? No, I mean reading.”
He kept the smile on. “‘Books are for English class, amirite?’”
Daphne gave a soft laugh at his quoting that website.
Millie laughed louder. “Exactly. I haven’t cracked open a book since they made me read Moby-Dick.”
“Ouch. Never finished that myself. By page twenty, I was rooting for the whale.” He lowered his voice and said, “Most books aren’t what you read in school. Find the right one, and it’s even better than TV. Books have more time to dive into character and emotion.”
He’d thought it was a game try, but he could tell he was losing her, so he trailed off and left it at that. Too bad, really. He might have rolled his eyes at that website line, but English class had turned more people off reading than time-table memorization had turned them off math. Which was a damn shame, on both counts.
“So make the book out to…?” he prodded, pen over the title page.
“Oh, just sign it. Lots of authors stay here, and the manager says it makes them feel good if we ask them to sign a copy of their book.”
“I see.”
“Between us, I think he sells them on eBay.”
“Ah.”
Chris wrote: To the manager of the Rosemont Hotel. Thank you for the lovely stay. Then he added a scribble that was nothing like his Zane signature.
“Done.” He closed the book and slid it over. “Now, if we could have our room keys.”
“Your rooms aren’t ready. Check-in is at four.”
“Our company arranged early check-in for after two.”
Millie checked her watch. “It’s three.”
“After two. Three comes after two.”
Hmm, it seemed that asshole Zane wasn’t completely gone, after all. Just lying low until required. In this case, though, it didn’t matter. Millie had given their rooms to people who’d been there at two, because they weren’t.
