The nice thing about being a writer? You can monetize your anxiety.

A few nights ago I saw a post by Jimmi Simpson on Twitter about his first day on Westworld S2, which promptly gave me a collywobble attack (some background — those of you who read Degree of Resistance may have noticed to whom the book is dedicated. Because I thought it might give him some nice egoboo, I contacted the gentleman and asked if he wanted a print copy. He graciously agreed. He recently pinged me to tell me that he received it and planned on reading it. My thought process upon hearing this went something like: “Wait, what? He’s not going to just stick it on a shelf somewhere? I didn’t want him to feel obligated to read it — oh, God. The sex scenes. I’m an idiot. WHY DID I SEND HIM THE BOOK? Oh, God, oh, God, he’s going to think I’m an illiterate perv…” Hence the collywobbles). As I know where my dedicatee is, I idly wondered if it would be too extreme to fly out to the set, find out where he’s staying, bribe a hotel maid to let me into his room, and steal back the book before he can read it.

(Yes, I know I’m nuts, but at least I’m productively nuts. Moving on…)

And then I thought, “Oh, hey, wait. That would make a freaking hilarious romcom plot.” Which resulted in my drunken Muse swanning into town and burping out a story about a tech writer in LA who sidelines as a romance novelist. After her wannabe screenwriter boyfriend breaks up with her, she gets totally loaded with her BFF and inadvertently sends a smoking hot romance inspired by her current actor crush to said actor. When he DMs her a few days later to tell her he’s received the book and plans on reading it, she’s horrified (because unlike me, she had inebriation as an excuse and hadn’t realized until the DM what she’d done) and decides to get the book back no matter what. “No matter what” includes drafting her BFF for a panicked trip to New Mexico, a long-suffering hotel maid, a sarcastic director, a man-eating actress who’s determined to get the actor in bed, and a hastily thrown together cover story BY THE ACTOR where the writer has to pretend to be the actor’s girlfriend in order to dissuade M-EA from her goal. Oh, and there may be a weekend trip to Vail and an inebriated swordfight somewhere in there. And hijinks ensue!

I told it to Ramón this morning. He said, “You realize that’s not a book, petal. It’s a movie.” Now he’s muttering about Kickstarter and Con Man, and I’ve got Karen Gillan, Tom Mison, Kat Dennings, Nathan Fillion, and Martin Freeman in my head running lines. Whee!