Page 26 of Smoke and Fire
I made a beckoning motion with my hands.
“Bring it.”
For the next thirty minutes, he reviewed a surprisingly simple set up. One email account for Jess, and then a private one. I’d have access to the one for Jess. Over 1,000 unread emails already populated the main inbox. Haphazard attempts at organizing the messages seemed apparent, but never followed through.
“Jess has done some AMA’s and a few other online forum appearances, but nothing physical,” he said. “No podcast interviews, videos, conferences, or book signings. Nothing that would assign a voice, picture, or physical trait to her.”
His habit of referring toJessas a third person intrigued me. Did he see himself as two people? Is that how he separated his life in his mind? I pushed those aside to ask, “AMA’s?”
“Ask-me-anything. They’re an hour long question-and-answer session where people can write in question, and Jess would respond to them. They’re all online. You can just type AMA into my email search and pull up the ones she’s done. That’ll help you know how I respond to questions that readers write in, since you and I really don’t know each other all that well.”
For some reason, his admittance of the fact felt incredibly vulnerable. Our eyes met for a quick touch, then skated away again. In it, I felt a burn I couldn’t deny. Was it because I didn’t want it to be true that we hardly knew each other? Or because everything about Bastian felt . . . different?
Like playing with fire.
“Then how is she selling?” I asked with a little clearing of my throat.
“I wrote a lot of books fast.” He shrugged. “Wrote the first four, then pitched to agents. Pri helped me find a mid-sized publisher that put it into the world, where it did well. As more books were released quickly, traction grew. I kept writing, they kept publishing.
“Around book sixteen, a few influencers got a hold of the series. They started to spread the word. Traction grew, so I kept going. When more success came, more marketing dollars funneled to me from the publisher. My name grew big enough it created more opportunities for the publisher, so they continued to fuel Jess. The books carry themselves from a rabid fandom now. You should see the social media group that’s formed.”
The buried warning in the words made me want to gulp. I thought of thousands of Lizbeth’s hidden behind a computer screen and felt a new version of screen fright.Rabid fandomwas a new phrase in my world.
A car pulling up to the drive-through gave me a reason to step away and process for a second. While I warmed up a danish and tossed several coffees into a to-go box, my brain continued to spin through what he said. For as grassroots and quiet as all this started, he seemed to have a better grip on it than I thought.
When I returned, he seemed a little more at ease. Somewhere under all that stress, there was probably a fun guy. If a few drinks loosened him up, I had no doubt we’d have a great time. A karaoke master lurked in him, I could sense the vibes. We’d be a killer Sonny and Cher.
“Here’s one email that’s interesting.” He nudged the computer closer. “A reader wrote in about her husband just dying, and how Jess has helped her have something happy. I always respond to those.”
“Do you want me to leave those for you?”
“Yes.”
While I watched, he responded to a few emails in that vein. Other emails popped up about reading order or his writing process. A lot of messages from aspiring authors came in, seeking advice. The brief tour of how he responded and what he said was so easy it felt barren. Most of the rote answers were copyable, and I thought of a few ways to make this faster than having to type it all fresh each time. I’d go over that later.
I pointed to an email near the top.
“There are dozens of interview requests here,” I said. “Do you just ignore these?”
He shifted. “Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Well, sometimes I fill them out, but if they want an in-person interview or a podcast or anything like that, I usually just say that I’m only available for written interviews. My readers have gotten used to it.”
“Except . . .”
“Except now they want more,” he agreed with a begrudging mumble. “Sometimes, readers in the social media groups start speculation threads around who Jess is and where she lives and why she doesn’t ever show herself.”
“Does Jess comment in the group?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. The people that start the speculations don’t have images or details on Jess. They’re not stupid. They know it could be a scam or they could be getting catfished or something.”
“Have they ever guessed the truth?”
A moment of levity lightened his gaze. “Yeah, but it’s typically shot down by other people, or the idea is just left to die. There’s one girl from Canada named Katrina that lives in LA. She’s attempting to be a documentary filmmaker, and keeps threatening to make Jess the next topic of interest.”
I snorted. The edges of his lips twitched in amusement. “The speculations eventually die down, and I just ignore those messages.”
