An Author's Struggle - What Lies Ahead

Ch 8 - Chains of Hope

“Here’s to 250! @everyone” 

A monumental occasion, the end of volume 3 and a whole 250 chapters posted in under a year. 

Alas, there was no celebration this time, either. 

Murphy merely rubbed his weary eyes and posted an update on his social media, ensuring his gaggle of addicts didn’t bother him about their daily dose.

It was all routine at this point. 

Fake smiles, fake gratitude, and fake friendships.

Once the charade took hold over reality for so long, it was hard to distinguish between what was true and false. He scorned everything as false, because he himself was a liar. 

Deceptive at all times.

To build connections, he had to lie and say he enjoyed works he actually despised. He knew the others did the same. 

To build a fandom, he had to lie to the readers and claim he was grateful for compliments, and remorseful when they hated it. In truth, he didn’t care.

To build his book, he even had to lie to himself. 

It is the latter types of lies that are hardest to distinguish. He had to see past his own errors in judgement, but when they were reinforced by the system on a day to day basis, it was all but impossible to beg to differ.

His audience multiplied bit by bit, and everyone whom he traded reviews with said his book was nice. They did only so he would return the favor and not stain their page with criticisms, of course. But, it worked. He bought the lie, and never second guessed the swallowed pill.

When it came to his doorstep, he embraced it instantly — because that’s what everyone else did. He didn’t question it, because no one else in the cult had dared to.  

Without fanfare, the devil’s pristine hand silently drew before him on a day like any other.

[{QiE-Novel} Contract Invitation] 

“Dear Morpheus,

“It is our honor to invite you to join our Contracted Authors program. We reviewed your work, and it speaks to us deeply about your passion and talent for creation.”

Staring blankly at the email, Morpheus wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. After a moment, he snapped out of his daze and burst into laughter.

Maniacal, an endless roar that surely disturbed his entire neighborhood. 

Surprisingly, he wasn’t happy. He felt disgraced. His laughter sardonic and sad. 

“What a show you put on, o’ fate. This mockery… I can only applaud and bow to sincerely.”

Reading deeper into the hallowed invitation, his deranged self ridicule only intensified.

“We can feel that your work is filled with imagination, has a fresh and interesting plot, and well crafted characters.”

Clearly, the invite was a standard bot message. That said, it didn’t diminish the impact in the least.

His imagination had never been so dull and rotten. His plot only as basic as GPT-4 could generate, and characters as clicheic as every other harem story in the universe. The irony was palpable to him, a cruel slap in the face. 

When he wrote his finest, no one noticed. No one complimented it or remarked the plot. But something he half-assed with a broken heart had made it.

“For months I struggled to inspire… and went unseen. Invisible,” he bemoaned out loud, his eyes lucid but spiteful, “Am I supposed to believe this garbage is my best work? By what fucking metric?”

Wallowing in a brief moment of introspective clarity, Murphy cursed, and spat, and cried. 

This sudden contract was a wake-up call as loud as any. He felt their blades of sarcasm bite into him, deliberately prodding at his wounded ego.

They might as well have emailed him, “Your way will never work. We dictate the rules. Wake up from your delusions of grandeur, and accept your role in the machine.”

While it was authors who wielded the pens, it was QiE-Novel who dictated what their hearts beat towards. The trend setters — they decided what goes and what doesn’t. Anyone who made it past the blockade of trending nonsense was an underdog, a rare gem like no other.

He had been a fool to think he could ever be that special, and this polite invitation was a cruel reminder that ideals no longer mattered. It was time to put those behind, forever.

Hovering over their acceptance link, however, he froze again. 

‘What now?’ 

He had awoken. His mind was cleared, but laments would not earn him a livelihood. He was faced with the reality of going entirely broke in a few months. His dreams seemed all but unfeasible.

‘Still,’ he sighed, ‘How long can I keep this up for? It’s either do or die. Accept, or quit.’

Glancing at the ticking time, he sunk into his worries. As QiE-Novel had proved by now, they couldn’t care less about quality, or imagination, or how well crafted a story was. It all came down to the same old nucleus of the modern world — money.

Unfortunately for Murphy, he was in no position to deny its influence by now. His savings all but dry, he had no choice but to enter the Faustian bargain with a humble bow.

Opening up the contract, he briefly surveyed the main points around revenue splits and was satisfied. There were a few clauses on exclusivity and new works retention, but he paid them no heed. He wasn’t exactly in the best place of mind to decypher legal jargon.

As long as he got paid, it would be sufficient. Irrespective of the price he had to pay, it would be worth it if he got more views. 

With that trained mindset in effect, he filed his bank details and readily signed his name on it. 

Then… he sunk back into silence. 

There was no confetti flying out of his monitor. No special effects or congratulations. Only a brief lapse in awareness, a commemoration of his mistake.

The chains of hope slowly but surely unfolded, winding around him like coiling serpents. Each clause of the contract venomous, but subtle and smooth to the touch — warm.

He readily welcomed the shackles as they clasped around his wrist, set to guide his pen for years to come. With the future at stake, he forsook the present. 

What he failed to consider was that the shackles would remain in perpetuity. 

An unspoken wedding vow.

Till death do them apart… and, it did.