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“No, Jillian Ashley is a man—me, who, yes, does live in Oceanside. I’m not a lesbian but I do write books for lesbians and I’m glad you find them enjoyable.” Turning to his left, Max reached into his familiar brown leather messenger bag, which Sally hadn’t noticed was next to him on the seat. “Here, I’ll prove it to you,” he said, extracting his iPad Pro from the bag. After tapping the screen a few times, he held out the device towards her so she could read the screen.

Sally didn’t quite know what she was looking at; there was a lot of information on the screen, but it seemed to be an Amazo

n-related site.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s my KDP account,” Max told her. “Kindle Direct Publishing,” he added when it was clear Sally had no clue what KDP meant. “Every Kindle author has one. Now, look…” he pointed at the screen “…there’s my name.”

Sure enough, Sally saw “Max Tremont” where he indicated.

“And, look…” he pointed to another portion of the screen “…here are all the books I’ve published.”

Sally saw a list of about eight books, all with Max’s name as their author. But there were four additional books listed. All four written by an author Sally was very familiar with: Jillian Ashley.

“Jillian is just a pen name,” Max explained. “She’s made up.”

Sally was feeling a little lightheaded. First, there was the fact that, by the evidence being shown her on Max’s iPad, her favorite lesfic author, Jillian Ashley, didn’t exist. Second, there was the fact that, wait a minute, Jillian Ashley actually did exist, just in the form of one of her best friends. Third, there was the fact that Max—a man she thought she knew at least fairly well—had a secret life as a writer.

Before she had a chance to construct further questions in her mind, Max tapped the screen again. Suddenly, Sally was seeing charts and dollar amounts.

Holy fuck!

The dollar amounts were impressive.

“And, see,” Max continued, “the money from all of Jillian’s books belongs to my KDP account. In fact, Jillian’s books are really the only ones that actually earn me any money.” He actually sounded a little sad about that. “I tried writing mysteries but those barely sold. Then I tried sci-fi and those also barely sold. I didn’t hit it big until I became Jillian.” He put the iPad down. “So, are you convinced?”

Sally had to take a moment before answering. Those dollar amounts were still swirling around in her head. Max was making a lot of money from Jillian Ashley books. In fact, if she had interpreted the chart that Max had just shown her briefly a few moments ago, even though Jillian’s latest novel had come out only this past Tuesday, Max had already earned enough from it to not only pay Sally’s rent but also her car payment.

“Why?” Sally finally asked. A one-word question that sounded childish to her ears but, really, what else was there to ask at this point?

The waitress brought their lunch. Fortunately, this time she didn’t linger because another table needed her attention.

“I mean, did you do this to meet women?” Sally whispered.

Max leveled his best boss-glare at her.

“Yes, Sally, I became a best-selling lesfic author to meet gay women. This was all part of a brilliant but diabolical dating strategy I came up with.”

Sally blushed. When he put it like that, it was a silly question.

“But why lesfic?” Sally asked, quite happy with herself because it sounded like a better question than her most recent one. “I mean, you’re a man and, therefore—as you pointed out—not a lesbian.”

Max sighed and took a bite of his kale salad with trout.

“You know how Amazon sends those emails each month with a list of free books you can read on Kindle?”

Sally nodded. She got the same emails and every now and then she’d find a new book to try from that list.

Max went on.

“Well, a while ago, one of the books listed was a lesbian romance—I forget which one. None of the other books interested me and so I downloaded that one and read it out of curiosity. Halfway through it, I started thinking, ‘Hell, I could write a better book than this!’ And so I did. When I was done, I published it on Kindle. I figured nothing would come of it. But the next thing I know, that stupid lesfic book I wrote was outselling all my other books combined.”

“Stupid?” Sally asked indignantly. How dare Max call any of Jillian Ashley’s books stupid! Where did he get off disparaging—

She gasped as she realized her mistake.

Son of a bitch!