Roll with the Punches by Amy Gettinger Read Free Book Online

I'd received fifty comments from regular visitors in response to one nasty post by a particularly mean agent claiming I should be shot for plagiarism. Half supported me, but half went with the agent. Yikes! I composed a quick defensive post and then whaled on my punching bag for fifteen minutes before calling my best friend Harley, well after midnight. She was an accountant and the most logical person I knew.
    "Why you calling so late?" She yawned. "Did your book get picked up?"
    The words felt like a stomach punch. "Ding, dong, the book is dead. Buried. With my life.”
    "Rhonda. We've talked about this. It's a great book. You have to be confident or you'll never succeed in a writing career. You know how brutal publishing is."
    "Brutal? You don't have a copy of Reynard Jackson's latest book, Memory Wars , do you?" I chewed a fingernail.
    "No. You know I only read chick lit. Why?"
    Standing at my lonely kitchen sink, I explained the whole fraught writers’ group scene as I ripped open an emergency package of two-bite brownies.
    "No way."
    "Way." I stuffed two brownies in my mouth. Heaven.
    "Whoa. That blows. With Jamesie Boy sitting there? Ouch."
    "Double ouch. Some evil editor lady, Yvette was there, too. She actually accused me of stealing my own work. From Jackson. By hacking."
    She snorted. "With your sucky computer skills? Right. But that plot was your idea. I watched the whole painful process. What are you eating?"
    "Celery."
    "Like hell."
    I pounded the counter with my fist. "Harley! This screws up my current project, too. How can I sell the sequel to a book someone else published?"
    "Imitation is the sincerest … you're not flattered, are you? What about your agent from the last book?"
    "She's on the bad agent list now. Got caught asking for a reader fee and lost all her clients." I ate another brownie and poured some milk. "And the other agents have all started emailing me death threats for plagiarism."
    Harley groaned. "Agents read Jackson? Who knew? Could your old publisher help you? Your lawyer?"
    "No, that publisher only does kid stuff. And I broke up with my lawyer, remember? I'm sure Jackson's lawyers are much better, anyway. Besides, even if I could prove it's mine, the book's already in print. They can't print a clone. Copyright issues. And if they did, who'd buy mine if they could buy his? He has the name. No, I'm really screwed." I flopped onto my recliner.
    "They could change the author's name on it …"
    "Do you know anything about publishing?" I yelled.
    Silence.
    "Sorry."
    "So who do you think Jackson is?" she grumbled. "One of your online critique partners?"
    "Janelle and Brenda? They only read selected chapters of the book, never the whole thing."
    "Are you sure? Then who? Your writing group? Your mom? Your dad? A neighbor?"
    My stomach dropped. "I don't know! Not many people come over here except—"
    "I know. Just boyfriends, flying through the revolving door of your love life. I hate men." When we were young, Harley had wanted to be a strong woman in the circus. Currently, she just wanted to annihilate the male subspecies. "Well, one of them could have grabbed your backup disk right before that last breakup speech, and hello bestseller.”
    "Not lately. The revolving door's stuck. And forget disks. We use flash drives now. The one with all the drafts on it is somewhere in the house, I'm pretty sure, but—" I scanned my living room skeptically. Oh, boy. What a jungle.
    She snorted. "How do you know with that giant mess?"
    "I love my piles. They're stratigraphic. I can find anything I want at a moment's notice." I started kicking at dusty, ragged piles of books and paper that covered the floor.
    "Except your tiny flash drive on its little lanyard. Which Sam the Salami or Peter the Poop probably wore home.”
    "Hey, get off my case about the boyfriends. That was eight years ago and I said I was sorry.”
    She snorted. "Six years, four months, and two days. So who else saw the book?"
    "Just the folks