I just... I don't know why I'm even writing this here, it's not like anyone knows me, which is actually a blessing out here 'cause lord knows word travels faster than gossip in a small town. Everyone knows everything before you even do yourself sometimes. So anyway, I'm a teacher, retired now, thank god. Taught English for thirty-two years in the same dinky little school in the middle of nowhere. Kids were mostly good, some real stinkers mixed in, you know how it is. But I always had this thing, this idea in the back of my head, since I was a kid practically. That I could *write*. Like, really write. Not just lesson plans and report card comments, but a proper novel. A real book. My ma used to say I had "a head full of stories," bless her heart. She was always my biggest fan, even when I just wrote terrible poems about sad puppies. So, for the past five years, since I finally hung up my chalk, I've been doing it. Wrote the whole damn thing. Historical fiction, set just after the Civil War, about a woman trying to make a life for herself out here, you know, the grit of it all. It's got love, loss, a little bit of intrigue, everything. I even got some of my old students, the ones who went off to fancy colleges and became editors or something, to read it. They said it was "promising" and "had heart." Which, okay, is not exactly "Pulitzer-worthy" but it's not "burn it with fire" either, right? So I sent it off. To this little independent publisher, in a city far, far away, hoping they wouldn't just laugh me out of their slush pile. It's been two months now. Two months of checking the mail like a madwoman, jumping every time my phone pings, thinking it's *the email*. And honestly? I'm terrified. Not of getting rejected, not really. What I'm actually scared of is that I'm right. That I spent my entire life, like, *my whole damn life*, telling myself I had this thing, this talent, this secret gift, and it was all just a delusion. A fantasy. That I'm just a mediocre teacher who retired to write a mediocre book, and that's it. Fin. The end. That I was never meant to be anything more than what everyone else in this town expected me to be. And if I get that letter, the one that says "thanks but no thanks," it's not just a rejection of the book, it's a rejection of *me*. Of the idea of me. And then what? What do you do when you realize the one thing you thought made you special was just... not true? I mean, what a punchline, eh? "Retired teacher discovers she's actually just average." Ha. I guess I'd have more time for bingo.