Happy Fossil Feud Day!!!

There are times in a writer’s life when words just will not do the job, but they’re the best she’s got so she has to make do. I have a story for you today, but first, thank you for everything you’ve done for Fossil Feud. I owe all of its success to the people who screamed about Rules and Ripple and preordered Fossil Feud and won’t stop yapping about Ripley and James. You’re the reason I stay in this publishing game! <3 <3 <3

Forget preordering, BUY NOW, YAY

TOUR EVENTS: Ottawa is sold out, Vancouver is not far behind, but we have both general admission tix ($10) and admission plus book tix ($28.99 with NO TAX, a total steal) for the big launch in Toronto (with bestie Stephanie Archer) on THURSDAY JULY 30th with Hopeless Romantic Books! If you’re within striking distance of the GTA, I would love to see you - there’ll be free snacks plus a Clever Girl hat for one lucky audience member!! Stephanie and I will both be signing (I think it might be her first appearance in Toronto?) and there might also be some other special guest authors there, if we’re lucky? Anyway I will probably cry and Mr. North will get all frowny and protective, pls ignore that part but come for the rest of it!

Today is kind of a special day for love, and also I was inspired by Annabel Monaghan’s 269-word love story, so without further ado:

It’s the first day of high school sometime in the late Holocene Era. In retrospect, the day will feel like a thousand rare events all swinging into alignment: she was born on the West Coast, he on the East Coast, yet somehow they’ve both wound up in this central Canadian government town. There was a mix-up with her transcripts and she very nearly ended up in a different school at the last minute. But she’s here, and he’s here, and those thousand unlikely events have put them in the same homeroom. When the teacher calls his name, she turns around to see who it is. He doesn’t notice her looking at him, probably. She turns forward in her seat and waits for her own name to be called as if this is a regular day and not the beginning of everything.

It’s the last day of high school and they’re signing each other’s yearbooks. She hesitates with her pen poised above the glossy black and white page, watching him scribble in her book. This moment might be the last one they will share for a while — maybe ever — and she can’t think of a reason not to write what she’s thinking: I would’ve gone out with you, if you’d asked. They guiltily close each other’s books before handing them back, like maybe they’ve gone too far but it’s too late now. Later, she will read, Maggie, my love. I will wait for you eternally. And then, shoehorned in off to the side: P.S. I wasn’t kidding about the waiting thing.

It’s their first year of university. They’re living in different countries, but he has friends in her town and he comes up for Homecoming weekend. It’s unlikely that they would spy each other in the field-storming melee after the football game, but they do. He has this thing where, when he’s happy to see someone, he offers them both hands, palms up. She takes his hands; of course she does. Another unlikely thing: a photographer from the campus newspaper sees them and decides there’s something to capture here. By the time she sees their picture in the paper, he’s back at his school, far away. For seven years, they date other people.

It’s seven years later — her last year of grad school; his last year of medical school. They run into each other at a party. He’s leaving for his residency in another city in just a few months; she’s had enough of academia and is applying to medical school. After a few minutes of idle conversation, a strange expression flickers across his face, like he’s suddenly out of patience. “So,” he asks, his voice so, so casual, “when are you going to be single?” She looks up at him — he’s gotten tall since high school — and it’s been twelve years since they met but this is the moment he suddenly falls into place for her, like a missing link. After a moment of surprise, she says, “Soon.”

It’s a few weeks later, and she’s single, and she’s not going to wait for him to ask her out this time. Pretending she only wants to pick his brain about med school interviews, she invites him for coffee. She meets him at his house. He’s waiting for her out front, and as they turn toward downtown, he fits his hand to the small of her back, just for a moment. She will never forget this moment.

It’s not even two months later. She’s staying here for med school, and he’s moving away for residency, and she knows his relationships usually end when he moves. She doesn’t regret falling in love with him. She doesn’t regret a damn thing. After some thought, she decides not to ask him for a long-distance relationship. He’s a kind and gentle man, and she doesn’t want his kind and gentle rejection to colour her memories of him. One day, he says, “So…I was thinking we could try long distance.” He’s using his fake-casual voice, like that night at the party. She strives for the same vibe when she says, “Okay.”

It’s a year into their long-distance relationship. They’re both ruined from 80-hour work weeks interspersed with hundreds of miles of driving to each other’s cities on the rare weekends they’re both free. Phone calls are expensive and texts cost even more, so the relationship naturally turns epistolary. One particularly exhausted day, he accidentally signs an email “undying lying” instead of his usual “undying love,” and they never sign their love letters any other way ever again. Later, she’ll print those emails and bind them — one book for each of the three years they spend apart.

It’s the year she will graduate from medical school, and they’ve finally managed to live in the same city. He has another year left in his fellowship, but three months from now, she might match to a residency halfway across the country. She ambushes him at the breakfast table with a ring box and some words she won’t remember later because she’s blackout-level nervous. By now, he shouldn’t be so astonished that she didn’t wait for him to ask, but he’s speechless. She tries to take a casual sip of tea after popping the question, but her hands are shaking so hard that she only succeeds in banging the cup against her front teeth. The ring fits him perfectly. He says yes.

It’s the fourth year of her residency and both of their families are pissed off that they want a small wedding. She’s not really a crier, but she starts crying when she sees him in his wedding clothes standing next to the officiant. He holds out his hands palms up, exactly the way he did on the football field all those years ago. When she takes them, he uses the private sign language they’ve invented over the last eight years (big nerds. HUGE) to tell her a joke. She laughs through her tears, and no one but him knows why.

It’s the year their daughter is born, and wow, this is not an easy baby. Still, there’s something about doing a really hard thing with him that is kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to her. She starts writing a blog, and she thinks it’s about parenthood, but really it’s about love. This is the beginning of something, too, but she doesn’t know it yet.

It’s the year after her first big break as an author. Publishing has low points, and this is one of her lowest: her first book died on sub, then she parted ways with her agent. She waits until he gets home from work to tell him that a new agent wants a phone call with her. He does the sluttiest thing a man can do, which is to wrap his arms around her for a long minute and whisper: “You worked so hard, Mags. You could’ve given up, and you didn’t. I really think this is the one.” He’s right. As usual.

It’s the day her third book is published. He’s never read her work; she asked him not to. But when the preorder links for her books go live, she doesn’t post them on her social media until after he’s bought the first copy of each one. He proudly tells every single one of his friends that his wife writes romance, and the friends send him selfies from bookstores whenever they see her books. “I’m your number one fan, Mags,” he says while gently prodding her to take more chances, bet on her career, believe in herself the way he believes in her.

Today, she thinks he might be right about the believing thing, too. As usual.

Wishing you every good thing,