Nobody wants to read this.
I would close the laptop and promise myself I’d revise the manuscript later.
Then another idea would arrive, and I’d start writing something new.
My family assumed I had no creative interests at all.
Dad introduced us the same way to almost everyone.
“This is Meredith. She teaches writing at the college. She’s working on a novel.”
Then he’d gesture toward me.
“And Devon works for the electric co-op.”
I wasn’t ashamed of my job.
Quite the opposite.
But I sometimes wondered whether Dad had ever considered that a person could love more than one thing.
Three years before my thirtieth birthday, the trucking terminal reduced Dad’s hours.
He’d recently financed a new Silverado.
The monthly payment was six hundred forty dollars.
Mom called me one evening, sounding worried.
“Devon, your father’s hours have been reduced, and the truck payment’s coming due.”
I sat on my couch with a bowl of reheated chili.
“How much?”
She told me.
Then explained that the situation would only be temporary.
Dad expected his hours to return.
I was earning decent money, especially when storms required overtime, so I agreed to help.
I set up an automatic transfer of six hundred forty dollars on the fifteenth of every month.
Dad didn’t thank me directly.
Mom said he appreciated it.
That seemed like enough at the time.
Then Meredith’s student loan payments resumed.
She had a remaining balance from graduate school, and the required monthly payment was four hundred ten dollars.
Her teaching income was inconsistent.
Mom asked whether I could help until Meredith found a full-time position.
I agreed.
With Meredith’s authorization, I arranged for the payment to come directly from my checking account.
Again, the arrangement was supposed to be temporary.
Again, it continued.
Month after month.
By the time my thirtieth birthday approached, I’d been covering a thousand fifty dollars in family expenses every month for nearly three years.
I didn’t mention it at gatherings.
I didn’t want to embarrass anyone.
I believed helping family meant helping without keeping score.
Then I met Erin.
She changed everything.
It happened at Nadine’s Café on Main Street.
Nadine opened early for people heading to work.
Lineman crews.
Construction workers.
Delivery drivers.
Nurses finishing overnight shifts.
I began stopping there before work, usually around five-thirty.
I’d buy black coffee and a cinnamon roll nearly as large as the plate, then spend an hour writing at the little table beside the front window.
Nadine was in her sixties, wore her reading glasses on a chain, and called almost everyone under forty baby.
She didn’t care what I was typing.
As long as I bought coffee, I could sit there until my shift started.
One April morning, a woman stopped beside my table.
She had dark blond hair pinned back and a library identification badge hanging from a blue lanyard.
“Can I ask you something?”
I looked up.
“Sure.”
She pointed toward my laptop.
“What are you writing?”
For a moment, I didn’t know what to say.
Nobody had ever asked me that so casually.
Not with genuine curiosity.
I considered giving a vague answer.
Work notes.
Personal project.
Something ordinary.
Instead, I said.
“A novel.”
Her face brightened.
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Yeah.”
She pulled out the empty chair.
“Mind if I sit?”
That was how I met Erin Matthews.
She was twenty-nine, worked as a reference librarian at the county library, and had moved back to Joplin to be closer to her parents.
She loved books.
Not merely the idea of being someone who read books.
She genuinely loved them.
She read fiction, history, biographies, mysteries, and the occasional instruction manual simply because she wanted to understand how something worked.
She asked what my novel was about.
I told her.
It concerned a crew restoring power after a winter storm and the complicated lives of the people they encountered along the way.
She listened.
Then asked questions about the characters.
Their motivations.
The choices they made.
And why the narrator was afraid to return home.
We talked until I realized I was nearly late for work.
I hurried to pack my laptop.
Erin smiled.
“Same table tomorrow?”
I looked toward her.
Then smiled back.
“Probably.”
She came the next morning.
And the next.
Over the following weeks, our conversations became the best part of my day.
Sometimes we talked about books.
Sometimes we discussed work.
Sometimes she told me funny stories about library patrons asking questions that seemed perfectly reasonable until she started trying to answer them.
Eventually, she asked whether she could read my novel.
My stomach tightened.
For a moment, I saw Meredith holding the green notebook.
Then I looked toward Erin.
“Maybe when it’s finished.”
She nodded.
“No rush.”
A week later, I finished the manuscript.
I printed it, placed it in a blue binder, and met Erin for lunch at a barbecue restaurant on Rangeline.
I slid the binder across the table.
My hand was shaking.
She noticed.
But she didn’t comment.
She simply placed her hand on the cover.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
Two nights later, my phone vibrated after midnight.
It was Erin.
“I’m supposed to be asleep, but I can’t stop reading.”
I stared at the message.
Then another appeared.
“You make people who do ordinary jobs feel important without turning them into speeches. That’s difficult to do.”
A third message arrived.
“Devon, this is really good.”
I read those words more times than I can count.
The following morning, Erin sat across from me at Nadine’s with a yellow legal pad.
On it was a list of literary agents.
She’d researched which ones represented commercial fiction with strong regional settings and character-driven stories.
I stared at the page.
“You did all this?”
She smiled.
“I’m a reference librarian. Finding information is literally my job.”
I laughed.
Then she said something that changed the way I thought about my writing.
“You’ve written five novels. You aren’t somebody hoping to become a writer someday.”
I looked at her.
She continued.
“You already are one. Now you’re trying to become a published author.”
For the first time, I believed that distinction mattered.
I began querying agents.
It wasn’t easy.
I sent dozens of carefully prepared letters.
Most received polite rejections.
Some received no reply.
A few agents requested partial manuscripts and then passed.
I continued working my regular shifts.
Continued writing at Nadine’s.
Continued seeing Erin.
Then one October afternoon, while I was working with the crew, I received a message from an agent named Margo Ellis.
She wanted to speak about representation.
I returned the call from my truck during lunch.
Margo worked in New York and had a quick, precise way of speaking.
She told me she’d read the manuscript in one sitting.
Then she asked whether I had anything else finished.
I hesitated.
“Four more novels.”
There was a pause.
“Four?”
“Yes.”
“Send them.”
I laughed nervously.
“They’re not as good.”
Margo answered.
“That’s what revisions are for. Anybody who’s finished five novels deserves a serious conversation about what to do next.”
By the end of the call, she had offered to represent me.
I sat in my truck holding a sandwich I had completely forgotten to eat.
My foreman, Arch, knocked on the window.
He was a broad-shouldered man with a gray mustache who believed every problem could be improved by a good lunch and a clear work plan.