As she pulled into her driveway, she noticed the mailbox barely able to hold its contents. That was never a good sign.
Knowing what was waiting, Shane parked and slowly walked to the curb. It was indeed another rejection. Her book sent back from yet another publishing house.
“Well.” Shane thought, “At least this time they actually had my name spelled right.”
“I wished to God I knew how so many of them dagum’ books get on the shelves of Barnes & Noble!” she said.
Shane went into her modest looking house and set her things on the breakfast bar, along with the mail and manuscript. As she slipped off her shoes she said,
“I am not so naive to believe this wasn’t a painstaking process, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy from the beginning of this whole thing. But for heavens sake, I figured I would have passed to some 4th of the line editor to be used as a wipe for spilt coffee by now!”
She frustratingly made her way into her bedroom and took off her work clothes from her job as a computer operator. She grabbed her robe off the hook on the back of her bathroom door and wrapped herself in it. As she knotted the tie, she suddenly thought, “Maybe, just maybe.”
Shane ran back to the mail to see if she could see evidence of the book even being touched as she had done on numerous occasions. No such luck as she perused through the pages of type. Not even a dogged ear corner could she find.
She pushed the tissued cardboard box she had sent the script in aside and went into the kitchen for a cup of tea. She sat down at the dining room table, lit a cigarette then looked down at her 4 pound tan and white Chihuahua.
“Well Brutus, I guess this just means I gotta keep my day job for a while longer.”
The dog looked up at her then blinked slowly as if to say,
“It’ll happen”…