“That’s what my dad always told me.”
“I hate to give in to that kind of limited thinking,” Bert said, and then smiled at her. “But Alexander Green it is.” They went on editing then, and corrected a few problems she hadn’t been able to solve herself. He always had the right fixes, and knew just where to insert something, what to cut, and how to move things around. It was still her writing, but he made it better, just as a good editor was supposed to do. He never inserted his own words and ideas, but he used her own to improve it, in ways she hadn’t thought of and didn’t see. They finished Hear No Evil in March. She had three books to sell now. She was a prolific author as well as a talented one.
—
Alex got a call from her agent in April.
“I’ve got good news, Alex. We’ve had an offer for Blue Steel.” She hadn’t shown the other two yet, and wanted to wait till they sold the first one. Alex had to establish herself with one published book first before a publisher would buy more, which Rose had explained to her. And now they had their first sale, to a very reputable publisher offering a standard amount for a first book. They would publish it the next spring, a year from now. And they had accepted that she would do no publicity for it. She couldn’t, and preserve the secret of her identity as a woman crime writer. “I expect to have a contract on my desk by next week.”
Alex couldn’t believe it. She thanked Rose profusely and called Bert to tell him as soon as they hung up. And then she went to St. Dominic’s the next day to tell the nuns in person. She was beaming as she came through the door and told Mother MaryMeg the minute she saw her.
“I sold my book!” she shouted with glee. The mother superior gave her a hug, and Alex ran upstairs to tell the others. She stopped in her room for a few minutes to glance at the photographs of her father. He would have been so proud of her.
She found Sister Regina in her room. She had lost weight in the last few months and looked troubled. She was going to mass frequently and trying to spend more time praying. But so far nothing helped, as she wrestled with the agonizing decision of what to do with the rest of her life. The mother superior was aware of it, and had suggested counseling. She had told her that at some point in most lives dedicated to the church, there came a crisis of some kind, and either a renewal of one’s faith or a change of direction. Sister Regina was still at the crossroads and felt paralyzed, but she was happy for her friend, and her good news about the book. Her career as a writer was beginning.
Alex signed the contract after Bill Buchanan checked it out. They had created a plausible biography for “Alexander Green” by then, and Rose and Alex had fun doing it. He was thirty-six years old, born in the States but had grown up and been educated in England. He was reclusive and lived in Scotland part of the year, and Montana when he came to the States. He preferred the rugged outdoors to cities, was unmarried and had no children, and under no circumstances would he agree to do publicity for the book. There were to be no photographs of him, and the publisher was so excited about the work that they agreed to all of her conditions. They had assigned her an editor, Amanda Smith, with whom Alex would communicate by email, so she didn’t have to see her. And all the real editing had been done by Bert.
As soon as school ended, she moved back into the convent and wrote every day. She was working on a plot outline for another book.
“Are you still writing thrillers that will scare your readers half to death?” Sister Xavier teased her after she missed lunch one day, and she brought Alex a sandwich at her desk and some fresh peaches from the kitchen. It was hot in Alex’s room, as she pounded away on her typewriter, but she didn’t care. She had never been happier.
“I’m trying to.” Alex smiled at her. She had more confidence in herself since selling the first book. Her only frustration was having to wait another ten months before they could sell her second and third books. It seemed like a long wait. She joined them in the dining room that night to take a break from her writing. She told them that she was going to New Hampshire for a week in August, to attend a summer camp for writers she’d read about. There were going to be several well-known guest speakers, and the writers at the camp were mostly unpublished. She thought it would be interesting, but Bert said she’d be wasting her time and her money when she told him. She felt a little more extravagant at the moment, having received the advance for her first book. Rose had explained to her how the advance worked. The publisher estimated what she would make on royalties for a certain number of books. If she sold more, they would pay her the difference. If less, she still got to keep the advance. It sounded good to her.
“What do you need with a writers’ camp, for God’s sake? Stay here and work on your outline,” Bert told her. “They’re going to be a lot of bored wannabes who are never going to write a book, and has-been hacks telling them how to do it.” Bert didn’t believe in creative writing workshops for amateurs. And she was a pro now.
But in spite of his dire warnings, she left for the camp in August. They promised campfires at night, and the simple life in tents, and lectures and workshops all day long to help campers hone their writing skills. The draw for her had been an important mystery writer who was supposed to be there, and she thought meeting him might be interesting and helpful.
But when she got there, the accommodations were incredibly uncomfortable, raccoons wandered through the tents at night, the mosquitoes attacked them constantly and devoured them, and teachers and would-be writers alike spent most of their time having sex or drinking too much, or both. The lectures were incredibly boring, and the well-known mystery writer never showed up, and was replaced by a very good-looking writer in his late thirties who had written two pornographic crime books that no one had ever heard of, and it was later revealed he self-published. He spent most of his time trying to seduce the housewives from Connecticut who had come to the camp to learn about more than just writing and went swimming naked at night in the nearby lake after drinking too many mojitos.