The middle-aged man sitting behind the office desk picked up the manuscript, skimmed through it quickly, but after only a brief look at the first chapter, he tossed it back onto the desk. “This person’s writing isn’t even up to standard. Can a book like this really be published?”
“But the subject matter is really interesting, and it happens to coincide with the movie of the same theme coming out in September. Single mothers—this topic has strong relatability. Many women become full-time homemakers after working. I think this work has perfect timing…” The young editor, Garden Hall, grew anxious. Seeing the editor-in-chief’s lack of interest, he quickly added, “How about I meet with the author and give it a shot? She’s a newcomer—we could offer a modest advance. I think this book has huge potential down the line…”
Young editor Garden’s eyes were full of hope, his hands braced on the desk, practically begging the editor-in-chief to say yes right away.
This kind of subject matter wasn’t common at the time. No one had ever written popular women’s fiction like this before. But he had a strong feeling that this type of revenge-driven women’s novel would be very popular with single mothers and housewives—and often, they were the ones doing most of the spending.
If he could just offer the new author a small advance, the publisher might make a killing.
However, the editor-in-chief didn’t even look up at him. He just shook his head. “Reject it directly!”
Garden sighed, took the manuscript, and walked back to his desk in frustration. How many times had this been now? How many rejections had he faced?
The editor-in-chief took off his reading glasses and said to his friend on the other end of the phone, “These fresh graduates, always pushing lovey-dovey novels at me. This one’s even worse—not only is it about romance, it has no depth at all, and the writing isn’t even passable. Ridiculous. Our publishing house isn’t a trash bin. These are literary works, not entertainment gossip…”
The same scene playing out at HarperCollins was also happening at other publishing houses. Some rejected the work at first glance, others hesitated before declining. But none had an editor like Garden who saw so much potential in the piece and connected it to the upcoming September movie release.
Starting on the sixth day, Jolene began receiving replies from various publishers one after another.
The first was from Penguin Books. Jolene sat on the living room sofa, her heart pounding, carefully tearing open the envelope.
Slowly unfolding the letter, she found only a few lines—a standard rejection letter:
[Dear Ms. Jolene Bell, We regret to inform you that your manuscript does not meet Penguin Books’ publication requirements. Please feel free to resubmit after revisions. Thank you for your interest and trust in us— Penguin Books.]
Jolene: “…”
Alright, she’d already braced herself for this. Nothing was ever that easy. Beginnings were always hard—she had to comfort herself.
Back in the day, when she first applied to sign with a web novel platform, she’d been rejected 18 times before finally getting a contract six months later.
Jolene took a deep breath and kept reassuring herself: there were still nine other publishers who hadn’t replied yet. No rush. They couldn’t all reject her, right?
To be honest, Jolene didn’t quite understand. Sure, web novels were different from print publications of this era, and the original owner’s English wasn’t great—but she still believed in her market instincts. Surely at least one publisher would see the commercial value of this book…
Despite Jolene’s famously resilient mindset—she was a seasoned author, after all—over the next two days, she received six more rejection letters from major publishers, and it nearly broke her.
She kept writing the later chapters while pinning her last hopes on the remaining three publishers.
But by now, she had zero confidence. Even so, she didn’t think about stopping. She’d tried dropping and abandoning stories before, and experience had taught her that you never know a novel’s potential until the very end. Even a flop could gain traction through word-of-mouth if it was complete—and might even blow up unexpectedly.
Another weekly AA support group meeting rolled around. Jolene brought her attendance log and headed to the center.
This time, she didn’t bring Emma.
This was one of the things Jolene felt most relieved about. At first, Emma would break down crying if she had to stay at the church alone. Now, she’d nod and agree even when Jolene asked Raymond to pick her up.
It showed that Emma’s sense of security had improved—and that she really liked Raymond.
Before the meeting, all ten members handed in their attendance sheets from the previous week. Black checkmarks meant no drinking; red X’s meant they’d drank.
A quick glance told the story—no one was lying, because the sheets were filled with red X’s everywhere.
Jolene voluntarily stepped out of the competition, giving up her spot to the others. She explained that she’d already quit alcohol completely, which would help motivate the rest.
Still, she had to keep attending the meetings—this was the bare minimum support the rehab center required, and she needed to get their certification letter.
Because she voluntarily stepped back, everyone put her in charge of tallying the statistics.
That was easy—it was just like counting check-in data back in the author groups, almost exactly the same, except swapping Excel spreadsheets for handwritten records.
Soon, Jolene had ranked the top three performers from the previous week.
The prizes were small gifts bought with everyone’s pooled money—simple things like a pen, a baseball cap, a notebook, or even a chocolate bar.
It didn’t matter what the prize was—what mattered was that mutual accountability was working.
“I counted everyone’s drinking frequency and found a clear decrease compared to last week. That means we’re all making progress. So we’re moving toward a better goal—don’t focus on what we did wrong, look at how far we’ve come. Only we understand the pull of alcohol, and we’ll beat it together!” Jolene said, holding up the tally sheets.
Others chimed in one by one. “Yeah, I drank two fewer times last week. My life is getting better. I went out with a friend once—you know, I’d lost all my friends over the past six months…”
“I also tried dating. My partner didn’t distance himself because of my drinking. I believe everything is getting better…”
“I want to quit drinking as soon as possible. I want to start over. I want to fight for custody of my daughter again…”
But Jolene’s mind was no longer on the support group—it was completely fixated on the mailman. There were still three letters out there. But what if some publishers didn’t even bother to send a rejection? Would that mean all ten copies were wasted? A hundred and fifty dollars down the drain?
Dragging her weary body home, she found Mr. Raymond was already back with both kids, and they’d already eaten.
Jolene thanked her employer for covering for her—not only picking up Ben but also offering to pick up Emma.
Grateful, she sat eating her plate of ravioli while looking at her kind employer. She even caught herself thinking: if her writing career never took off in the end, maybe she’d just stay here as a nanny forever. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
Lifelessly, she helped Ben with his homework, went over a few problems with Emma, and lay down to read picture books to both kids.
Ben looked up with his big eyes and said, a little puzzled, “Jolene, your animal voices today weren’t good at all!”
Jolene reached out and ruffled Ben’s hair. “Oh, I’m just in a bad mood.”
Kids had no real concept of mood swings—Jolene had noticed that long ago. They were all carefree little brats.
Sure enough, even though she’d said she was feeling down, Ben acted like nothing was wrong. He just shook his head. “Fine. But tomorrow you have to do the animal voices properly.”
Jolene sighed inwardly. “Okay.”
After Ben went back to his room, Jolene turned off the light and lay down next to Emma.
Emma reached out her little hand and touched her mom’s face. “Mommy, why are you sad?”
Jolene’s heart softened. Who said kids couldn’t empathize with adults? Here she was, with a real little sweetheart—a true little darling!
“It’s nothing. Mommy’s thinking about making money. About making lots and lots of money, so that one day Emma and Mommy can have our own house, wear beautiful clothes, and Mommy can send Emma to swimming lessons, piano lessons, and take her to all kinds of fun places…” Jolene lay on her side and explained carefully to Emma.
The child turned onto her side too, and said softly, “Mommy, don’t be sad. We can stay at Ben’s house, eat Uncle Giovanni’s yummy food, and Emma already has pretty clothes.”
“Mm, okay. Then Mommy won’t be sad. Emma, go to sleep early—don’t you want to grow taller?” Jolene whispered.
Emma nodded eagerly. “Okay. Good night, Mommy.”
After Emma fell asleep, Jolene went back downstairs to write more of the manuscript. She’d reached a major turning point: the female lead accidentally discovers on the streets of New York that one of her old illustrations—discarded in the trash, picked up, and credited to someone else—had been turned into a famous comic book that had taken the city by storm.
But the female lead had no idea her work had been infringed upon long ago. The illustrator who stole her work had made a fortune off that comic.
The story hit a major turning point, and Jolene had to channel the emotions—make the readers feel the anger alongside the heroine, make them want revenge too.
Maybe Emma’s comfort had worked its magic, because Jolene found herself caring less and less about whether she got published. At worst, she’d keep writing and wait for the age of web novels to come—or adapt it into a script and pitch it to production companies. There was always a way.
The next morning, after dropping the kids off at school, Jolene went browsing at the bookstore again. If she didn’t know what to write, the best way to figure out the market was to read what was currently popular—so she could see what kind of stories sold.
After reading for a while, she strolled home leisurely.
As soon as she walked in, Giovanni said, “Someone called for you earlier. I said you weren’t in. He said he’s an editor from Random House and left his phone number—”
“What?” The book in Jolene’s hand dropped to the floor.
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