I felt a flush of hopefulness. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.
“Keira?” Roza gestured. “Pass out your synopsis, dear. I’ll read it aloud and then we’ll provide feedback.”
Keira did so, her lips pressed in a grim smile. It comforted me that even she, with all her poise, had struggled to come up with something.
The synopsis described a young woman who had gone through her recently deceased mother’s things and found a letter her mother had written decades before but never sent. The letter indicated that her mother had almost left her family to reunite with a woman who’d been doing mysterious research on Goree Island, a former slave-trading hub off the coast of Senegal. The protagonist decided to track down the woman and find out more about her, the research, and the secrets her mother had kept from her.
“Well.” Roza slammed down the paper. “I’ll start. I think it’s brilliant. Anyone else?”
Keira’s face softened with relief as Poppy and then Taylor both echoed the sentiment.
“Just don’t make it too heart-warming,” Roza said. “Make it difficult, okay? All right. That was easy. Let’s move on to the next. Taylor?”
Taylor offered to read it herself, which impressed me. Her idea concerned an American woman in France who met a female bartender who promised to lead her on an unauthorized tour of the catacombs beneath the city. While at first they enjoyed their time—“Ahem, lots of sex”—they eventually came across a masked group performing a sacrificial ritual. The rest of the story involved them trying to get away from the group, who wanted to kill them.
“Oh my god, how does it end?” Poppy’s eyes were wide.
Taylor shrugged. “Betrayal. The bartender was part of the cult all along.”
“I knew it!” Roza banged a hand on the table and we all laughed.
After a few more questions and suggestions from Roza, we moved on to Poppy. （“Ladies, we’ll be done quite early today if everyone’s ideas are as good as these two.”） Poppy’s proposal was about a young woman who traveled to the Cayman Islands, where she got caught up with a group convinced they could access God in a certain remote cave.
“Islands and cults!” Roza raised her hands. “It seems we have a theme.”
Something about the story pulled at me, a thread of recognition. I felt like I’d heard of this story before, though I couldn’t remember where.
But no story was completely new. Maybe I was thinking of another book, maybe even something Poppy was using for inspiration.
Wren went next and she read in a clear, precise voice. Her story concerned an actress invited to work with a famous director she’d admired since childhood. When the actress arrived on the remote set, she was unsettled to find that the group comprised only her, one other male actor, and a skeleton crew. As they filmed, the project got more bizarre, until the actress wondered if the director had gone mad—and if she was in mortal danger.
“Another small-group setting.” Roza sat back, folding her arms.
“Maybe because of this retreat?” Taylor suggested.
“Could be.” Roza tapped one red-tipped nail against her bicep. “Poppy? What do you think?”
“I love it.” Poppy grinned at Wren. “I think it sounds super intriguing.”
“Keira, how about you?”
“I like it too.” Keira gazed at Wren. “I would definitely read it.”
Wren nodded graciously, then her eyes went back to Roza.
“Alex?” Roza’s green eyes fixed on me.
“I think it sounds cool.” And I did. Wren had her issues, but coming up with creative ideas wasn’t one of them. When we’d stopped talking, I knew she’d been finishing her novel. While stalking her social media, I’d waited for the post that would reveal she’d gotten an agent, then a book deal. But, so far, no news. It had made me relieved; at least there was one thing Wren wanted that she hadn’t yet gotten.
Roza crossed her arms. “Well, I think it has promise, Wren. I really do. But actors are not my favorites. It’s not just that they’re shallow and selfish. That’s fine. In fact, that can be a good thing. But the problem is that, as protagonists, they’re often boring.”
“My protagonist won’t be boring.” Wren’s expression darkened.
“I mean, we have to give a shit about her, don’t we? This starlet who’s jetting off to some remote location to work with a famous director? I’m sorry, but… puke.” Roza sniffed. “Make her a failure. Make this the last chance she has to get a job before she throws herself out a window. Okay?”
“Okay,” Wren echoed.
Roza sat back suddenly, her chair scraping the wooden floor. Her good mood was gone and now she seemed borderline annoyed. “Girls, please work hard to make your work compelling. If I have to read boring shit every day, I’m not going to be able to make it, believe me.”
Everyone shifted, uncomfortable. Roza’s rapidly switching moods were giving us all whiplash.
“Alex.” Roza grinned at me. “You’re up.”
My chest squeezed in fear. Roza had given Wren a hard time, and her idea had actually been good. What was she going to do with mine?
“The End of the End.” I cleared my throat, but to my embarrassment, my voice continued to waver, strained. “Rebecca and Elyse have been best friends for ten years, since they were sixteen. After both their first loves break their hearts in high school, they band together to punish them. They continue this cycle through their teens and into their twenties; whenever a man hurts one of them, they make it their mission to destroy him. They both get jobs out of college at the same publisher. Rebecca is soon promoted. She falls for her new boss, who is married, and who quickly dumps her. Rebecca knows that revealing any of this to Elyse will make him a target. However, Elyse knows her better than anyone. Elyse takes the secret affair as a betrayal and decides to punish both of them. Rebecca must stop her before it’s too late. She knows what Elyse is capable of… at least she thought she did. It turns out that all this time Elyse has been holding back. Unfortunately for Rebecca, that’s no longer the case.”
Roza sat back and let out a long sigh. The room was silent. Outside, flakes of snow had begun to gently fall. The sun descended in the sky, casting a silvery veil over the landscape.
“No,” Roza said.
I blinked. “No?”
“I’m sorry, Alex.” Roza shook her head. “It’s not going to work. It’s too similar to Devil’s Tongue. Only it’s less interesting, because they’re adults.” She sighed. “Even the names. Elyse? As in, Devil’s Eliza?”
I froze, horrified at my mistake. I could sense the others looking down, not wanting to witness my humiliation, as if it were a disease they could catch.
“You know, if you were writing dime-store pulp, this could work,” Roza went on. “It could be sexy. But I expect more from you. And frankly, I’m tired of stories where women fight over men.”
“Okay.” My face grew warm and I knew it was candy-apple red.
“Any other thoughts?” Roza looked around.
“I actually like it,” Keira said. I glanced at her, grateful. “Having female characters who fight over men doesn’t dictate whether a story is feminist or not. Alex’s story actually subverts the idea, because the women gain control by punishing their exes. It subverts it again when Rebecca actually falls for someone. Ultimately, it’s about the futility of self-protection in heterosexual relationships within a patriarchal society.”