Chapter 16: A Name of My Own
My own name looked smaller than Marian Crowe, which was exactly why I typed it first.
At 10:10 on Wednesday, the PageTurn pitch clinic opened on my laptop in a borrowed meeting room above a Bristol bookshop.
The same simultaneous-launch condition and matching countdown from yesterday still sat above the two public application cards. Eligibility gave me nothing worth launching.
GRACE ELLISON filled the SOLE AUTHOR field.
The blank project box waited beneath it.
Alistair Shaw sat across the narrow table, invited by PageTurn as one of three independent publishers offering recorded pitch feedback.
His badge said ADVISER, NOT COMMISSIONING EDITOR.
“I cannot promise a contract,” he said before I shared my screen.
“You may decide the idea deserves nothing else.”
I opened my first proposal.
A celebrated husband gave away his wife’s identity; she exposed every lie and rebuilt her life in public.
Alistair read the paragraph without rescuing me from its obvious source.
“What happens after the reader agrees she was wronged?”
“She proves who made the work.”
“That is an argument. Where is the story?”
The clinic recorder caught the question and my silence.
My proposal offered betrayal, documents, and a heroine whose victory depended upon making a man admit she was right.
It would have attracted attention this week.
It would also have kept Oliver inside every chapter I wrote under my own name.
I highlighted the entire page.
“If I delete this, I lose the subject people are already discussing.”
“Yes,” Alistair said. “Anger is carrying the pitch. It is crushing the book.”
He asked what image had stayed with me before Rowan Hall.
I told him about a harbour ledger from a research trip: six recorded distress calls and a seventh line overwritten in different ink.
“Who notices?”
“A harbour accounts clerk assigned to nightly incident reconciliation. Her name is Carys.”
“What does she risk?”
I had no answer yet, which felt cleaner than pretending I did.
I deleted the marriage proposal.
The empty page held for one frightening second.
Then I typed SEVEN CALLS FROM SALTMERE.
I described a coastal mystery built around a caller removed from the official record and a clerk who refused to forget her.
Alistair circled refused on his printed diagnostic sheet.
“That is a verb. Build from it.”
I saved the project in my personal PageTurn account and selected SOLE AUTHOR: GRACE ELLISON.
The creation receipt carried my login, title, and 10 September timestamp.
It carried no North Quay mark and no Marian Crowe reference.
While the clinic recorder was still running, Pippa’s cursor selected WITHDRAW SUCCESSOR CLAIM on the public application page.
A warning opened beneath it: OLD-BRAND EXPOSURE CANNOT TRANSFER TO A NEW PROJECT.
Beside her card, Shelf & Signal displayed independent booking SS-PF-204, a future-brand profile sold on the premise that Pippa was Marian Crowe’s successor.
“Keep the Shelf & Signal position,” Oliver said over the common audio line. “Change the wording after selection.”
“It was booked because I was called successor,” Pippa said. “Cancel it.”
She clicked CONFIRM WITHDRAWAL, then confirmed CANCEL SS-PF-204 under her own name.
Her public card changed to LEAD WRITER / BRAND EDITOR, with EMPLOYER INTEREST DISCLOSURE COMPLETE beneath it; PageTurn kept the new project active without transferring old exposure.
Shelf & Signal cancelled the future-brand homepage feature, bookseller briefing and directory slot.
This was not the Rowan Hall old-series introduction or interview cancelled two days earlier.
The former recommendation position immediately passed to the next debut novelist, and Pippa’s portrait disappeared while Oliver was still objecting.
That was a real professional loss caused by the premise she had just withdrawn.
It did not repair her affair with my husband or make us allies; it showed she would continue only through work carrying her own name.
At 10:58, I submitted my title and deleted proposal to the clinic record.
PageTurn acknowledged two independent projects, then issued the next requirement to both public application cards.
By 15:30 that afternoon, each side had to promise an audience something Marian Crowe could not supply.