Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
It started as a joke really. I would post one chapter every two weeks on the fan fiction board. The response blew me away, I had over seven hundred comments in two days. People would count down the days until another chapter dropped. When I finished it, they were asking when the next one would come. There was no pressure, so after doing two books on the fan fiction site, I thought it would be even cooler to publish the books.
Since I was doing this in secret, and I still am, I had to google how to publish a book. I did everything in steps. First thing I did was get it edited by four people. Then I read the book over and over again. To the point where I hated it and doubted every single word.
I got a graphic designer I went to school with, who helped me create a cover. I uploaded the two books I had on two of the fan fiction sites first. Within a month of each other. I was shocked when everyone who read it on the free site went ahead and bought it. Then when the third one came out three weeks later, it became an overnight best seller. I was climbing the charts on all retailers; I was so fucking shocked.
Here I was at twenty-three, writing books in secret from my family. Until I hit The New York Times and had a semi freak-out and called my aunt and namesake Vivienne. I was a sobbing mess and she rushed over to see me. If anyone would understand me writing and keeping it a secret, it would be her. She had this dating blog for the longest time and no one knew who she was. Until she fell in love with Uncle Mark and it went from dating advice to parenting advice. I swore her to secrecy and showed her the paper. She had no idea what she was looking at since I didn’t use Vivienne Grant. Instead, my pen name was Cooper Parker. The minute she saw the name, she knew. She pulled me into her and cried happy tears with me.
It was the week after that I got an email from the biggest publishing house out there. I was shocked when they wanted to speak with me. Of course, Aunt Vivienne stepped in and acted as my agent, she went soft on them for two books. The advance was not even five thousand dollars, but she knew what she was doing. Because the books blew the other three out of the water. They came back and asked for three more, but now Aunt Vivienne went in there and had demands. Six figures with higher royalties, she gave them a couple of days to think about it or she would take it to auction. I had no idea what any of this meant, nothing. Not one thing, all I knew is I loved writing this fictional world I was creating.
Needless to say, they called the next day and the rest is history. I’ve been with them for the last five years. I’ve hit The New York Times over two hundred weeks, which is insane because one of the books stayed on The Times list for over forty weeks. There were even weeks when four books ended up hitting the same list. My books were translated into fifteen foreign languages, with five more contracts that just came in. The best thing out of all of this is no one knew who I was. There was a small cartoon character of my face, which wasn’t even me, it was who I thought Lucinda looked like. The only thing we had in common was the hair color, other than that she had a pixie cut with blue-rimmed glasses.
It was crazy how successful I was, and I would celebrate in secret because the only thing my family knew about my job was that it was in writing. They knew it had to do with writing and the computer, since I traveled with them wherever I went. Once Franny caught me editing and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was freelance editing. She never asked me another question. My father sometimes tried to ask me what I did and all I said was I edit websites.
So now I was writing a book in which Lucinda was falling in love for the first time. I didn’t know if it could happen. She was such a badass single person, who you knew had a love life off the pages, but now she was actually catching feelings and I was loving every single second of it. It was the first time there were two storylines going at the same time.
Finishing off the pie, I get up and walk to the bedroom. I hop into shorts and a tank top before sliding back into bed, this time with my laptop. I open my computer, checking my emails first, before opening the Word document and reading the last three chapters I wrote.