The Fiction Writer

by Jillian Cantor

Genres: Women's Fiction; Gothic

Synopsis

“Juicy, suspenseful, and irresistible.”– Nina de Gramont, New York Times Bestselling author of The Christie Affair

"Sultry and mesmerizing…" – Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters

From the USA Today-bestselling author of Beautiful Little Fools, Jillian Cantor's The Fiction Writer follows a writer hired by a handsome billionaire to write about his family history with Daphne du Maurier and finds herself drawn into a tangled web of obsession, marital secrets, and stolen manuscripts. 

The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel—a retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca—was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she’s battling a bad case of writer’s block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA.

At first, the write-for-hire job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry “Ash” Asherwood, a reclusive mega billionaire, twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her help in writing a book that reveals a shocking secret about his late grandmother and Daphne du Maurier. But when Olivia arrives at his Malibu estate, nothing is as it seems. The more Olivia digs into his grandmother’s past, the more questions she has—and before she knows it, she’s trapped in a gothic mystery of her own.

With as many twists and turns as the California coast, The Fiction Writer is a page-turner that explores the boundaries of creative freedom and whose stories we have the right to tell.

Release date: November 28, 2023

Publisher: Park Row Books

Print pages: 273

Sample

PROLOGUE

Last night I dreamt I went to Malibu again.

I stood barefoot on the sand, the cool water nipping at my ankles. And there, high above me, perched on the edge of that magnificent cliff, his stunning house sat as it once had, alive, whole. It had ten bedrooms and was on three private cliffside acres, with a lap pool, a tennis court, and a garden blooming flush with pink-and-white bougainvillea. But from the beach down below all I could see was its long wall of privacy-tinted glass windows, slanting out toward the sea.

He could see me here, out on the beach. I was certain he could, even in my dream.

He was still behind those windows, watching my every step. Though I couldn’t see him. The glass was one-way. But I imagined him there behind the glass so vividly, it had to be real.

Until it wasn’t. Until the heat from the flames would shatter all the windows, break them apart, send smoke spewing from the piano room, down the cliff, evaporating in wisps into the lonely Pacific.

But in my dream, the flames hadn’t existed yet. Or, maybe they never would. He and his house were there, watching me. Wanting me. Haunting me.

“Come back!” His voice was a desperate echo, my undoing. The smoke was so thick, even out on the beach I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t breathe.

So that’s why I did it, in my dream. I turned away from the house, and I walked into the bone-chilling water. It was so cold, it numbed me, but I walked into the sea, up to my shoulders, my neck, my chin. Until I could no longer smell the smoke or hear his voice.

And then my entire head was underwater, and the tide was strong. It sucked me in, held me there.

But I wasn’t trying to drown. I really wasn’t. I was merely trying to escape the fire.

 

ONEOne year earlier

To say I was shocked to see my agent’s name, Charley Bingham, pop up on my phone that morning in early March would be an understatement. But truly another word to describe how I was feeling escaped me. Aghast? Stunned? Astounded? None of them. All of them? I was a writer; words were supposed to come easily to me. But lately not much had. Why should this be the exception?

“Hey, Charley,” I answered, forcing a brightness to my tone I certainly wasn’t feeling. The last time Charley and I had spoken on the phone, six months earlier, was when she’d called to tell me that the last of the editors she’d submitted my third novel to had passed. What are you thinking for your next book, Olivia? she’d asked me then.

My next book. As if my ideas and words sprouted fully formed from our rooftop garden each summer, the same as my tomatoes. As if I didn’t need to actually sell a novel to eat and pay my rent. And what about my poor third novel, a slightly semiautobiographical coming-of-age story, which was now destined for no more than a dusty drawer? It had drained every bit of creative life out of me to write it; I’d poured my whole self into it for nine months, ignoring everything, and worse, everyone, in my life, until it was too late. And then having it out on submission for months had been its own special kind of hell. Charley had forwarded me lovely note after lovely note from passing editors who just weren’t the right fit. They used words like beautiful writing or gorgeous prose, followed by can’t break her out, too quiet, or perhaps the most honest one, who’d said that following the lackluster sales of Becky, is there really a place for this new book in the market? Harsh, but maybe that was fair. My second novel, Becky, had sold about a thousand copies to date.

“Olivia,” Charley said now. “How’s the new book coming?”

“Great,” I lied. “Almost finished the first draft.” If you considered fifty (well, forty-six to be exact) rambling pages close to a first draft, then that wasn’t a complete lie. But creativity was an emotional well, and mine had run dry, even as the generous advance I’d received for my first and second novels had too, almost run dry from my checking account.

“Great,” Charley echoed. “Can’t wait to read it.”

She paused for a moment, and the line was silent. Was that really why she was calling, to check on my progress? Charley had too many other clients, important ones, to have the time to hold my hand.

“Anyway.” She cleared her throat. “I have an interesting offer in for you.”

“An offer?” I repeated, not quite understanding. Book three was no longer out on submission. The disaster that was Becky certainly wasn’t causing any subsidiary rights folks to knock on my door. And though my first novel had gotten a little bit of nice press and was even an Indie Next pick, no one was still thinking about it (except for me) five years later.

“A write-for-hire gig,” she said. “A very well-paying one.”

“How well-paying?” I asked, quickly.

“Fifty thousand up front, and then twenty percent once it sells to a publisher,” she said. “Twenty percent of all of it—advance, subrights, royalties,” she clarified.

But all I really heard was fifty thousand up front. “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said, not asking any of the questions I should’ve asked, any of the questions all writers know to ask: who, what, why, where, when? These past six months, a fuzzy sort of desperation had come over me, where everything I used to know about writing felt ephemeral. Fifty thousand dollars? Great. Sign me up.

Charley laughed a little. “How about I send over the NDA, and after you sign it, we can discuss the details.”

I agreed. But how hard could it be? And fifty thousand dollars would go a long way toward rent and groceries and giving me time to figure out what the hell I was going to do next.

 

TWO

I refreshed my inbox, eager for the NDA to land, still in disbelief that Charley had called with something that might actually be good news.

The last time I’d spoken to Charley before today was the same day Jack had moved out of our apartment. Charley had called that morning to tell me my third book was dead. Charley was too tactful to actually use the word dead, though. Instead she’d said, how about we put a pin in this project for now? The pin felt more like a knife, as I’d tried to digest what Charley was saying while simultaneously staring at the boxes Jack had haphazardly stacked up by our front door. They were shoddily labeled—the top one was simply Sharpied with the word STUFF. (At that point, why had he even bothered to label?) And it occurred to me in that exact moment when Charley was talking about a pin, that Jack was so desperate to get out of here, to get away from me, that he hadn’t even taken the time to properly pack his STUFF.

What felt worse? The death of our relationship or the death of my book? The book. Definitely the book. It was my entire life, my career. The words had felt like my blood for a year, running through me, keeping my heart beating. But, later that night, lying in our bed all alone, knowing that all the boxes were gone from the front door, I’d suddenly wished I’d never written the book at all. If I hadn’t, I might’ve noticed what Jack had already seen for months, if not years, that we were growing apart. I might’ve held us together, before we were too far gone to fix things. Jack was the one who left, but as he’d said, quietly, just a few nights earlier as I’d downed half a bottle of pinot grigio in our tiny kitchen, I was the one who’d stopped trying. It wasn’t true, though. I’d simply gotten caught up in my story, in my fictional world, in my desperation to overcome those depressing Becky sales numbers and resurrect my fledgling career. Writing was my blood, but it was also my addiction. I hadn’t necessarily stopped trying with Jack. I’d just forgotten to try, for a while. For too long. And by the time Jack actually left me, I couldn’t even necessarily remember if I truly loved him, or if I more just loved the idea of him.

My inbox suddenly dinged with an email—Charley!—and I pushed Jack out of my mind again. It felt impossible that an offer could come out of nowhere, just like this, and for the first time in months, an excitement pulsed through my veins. Writing was still my lifeline.

Charley’s email called the NDA industry standard, and okay to sign, so I skimmed it, signed it, and emailed it right back to her. My phone rang almost as soon as I hit Send.

“Okay, are you sitting down?” Charley asked.

“Yep,” I lied. I was, in fact, standing up, watching my fish, Oscar, flutter through his massive tank. After Jack moved out, I’d needed something to fill the space where his sixty-inch TV once sat, and I’d landed on an aquarium after the internet told me watching fish swim could improve my mental health. I’d started with six fish, but five of them had already perished.

“Henry Asherwood,” Charley said.

“What about him?” I watched Oscar flip through a tiny pink coral like an acrobat.

“That’s who wants to hire you.”

I laughed because Charley definitely was joking. Henry Asherwood, reclusive mega-billionaire, twice-named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, and heir to the Asherwood store chain—wanted to hire me?

“Olivia, I’m serious,” Charley said, and I remembered that Charley was always serious, always working, not at all prone to kidding around. But how could this possibly be right?

“I don’t...understand,” I stammered and then sat down for real, bracing myself against the arm of the couch.

“His manager called me this morning. Henry Asherwood wants you for this project.” If I wasn’t so surprised myself, I might’ve been offended by how surprised Charley sounded.

“Why me?” I finally asked a question, though I inwardly chided myself for its self-deprecation as soon as it popped out of my mouth. Why not you?

 my friend Noah used to say back in college, when I’d doubt myself or worry that my writing would never be good enough to be publishable. “I mean, how does Henry Asherwood even know who I am, much less want to hire me?”

“His manager didn’t say,” Charley answered. “But maybe he read All the Little Lights?” My first novel had sold nearly one hundred thousand copies, so I supposed it was possible. But it also came out five years ago. “He thinks your writing is perfect for this project,” Charley added.

“And what is the project?”

Charley was silent for a few seconds, and then she said, “Well, that’s the catch. He didn’t exactly tell me what the project was. He wants to meet you in person first. Asked if you’d fly out to LA. He’ll pay five thousand now for your time and transportation. And if it works out, after you meet, we’ll set up a contract for terms. He’ll pay the fifty thousand and you can do the project.”

So the fifty thousand was far from a sure thing. I sighed.

“Are you up for this, Olivia?” Charley’s voice softened a little, and it occurred to me maybe she knew I’d been lying about my first draft being almost done earlier.

I stared at poor lonely Oscar, and then glanced around my half-empty apartment. Fifty thousand dollars or not, maybe this was what I needed. To get away, out of this apartment, out of Boston, which, even in March, was still in the depressing throes of a dark winter. LA sounded far away, warm, and sunny. Someone was handing me a free trip. And meeting Henry Asherwood! How could I possibly say no? ...