A New Story

*Prologue*

Maria Blakestone took a long, deep breath as she looked around the meeting room of the convention center. There were people scattered throughout the huge room; some in seats around the large conference table in the center, and even more standing in small groups. But there was no meeting taking place in the room that evening. Various celebrities from all over the world were gathered there. Not all were authors, like Maria, rather some were actors, artists, film directors; she had heard there was even an Olympic medal-winning ice skater present. What had brought them together was a good cause, the Read4Life Campaign. The campaign raised money to provide educational resources for the most poor and impoverished areas of the world. As it had been explained to her, people would spend good money to buy a ticket to sit in a room and hear a celebrity read from a book, especially for charity. Obviously most of these celebrities hadn't written a book, so they had chosen one of their favorites, or one had been chosen for them. But the event coordinators had insisted that Maria read from her own—The Void: Journey Within.

As Maria considered the caliber of the people around her, her own self-doubt told her that charity was the only thing that would put her in the same room as them. Another wave of nerve-induced nausea swept over her, and she cursed herself for allowing John to convince her to do this event. John, her publicist, had been begging her to do public appearances since her first book hit the bestsellers' list. Pushing off the notion was easy at first—she blamed the fact that she was still grieving the loss of her husband a year and a half earlier. But as time wore on and the book became even more popular, she knew she couldn't hide away forever. When she finally wavered she insisted she would only do interviews with "reputable" publications and news outlets and only make public appearances for charitable causes of her choosing.

As the anxiety continued to wash over her, she was tempted to turn her irritation toward her deceased husband. She knew it was a ridiculous, pointless thing to do. She often went down this path of thinking, and always found herself feeling guilty about it afterward. But, in the middle of these irrational moments, she thought it was his "fault" this book was even published. He had encouraged her along the way, insisting the book was wonderful, and she just had to get it published. And now she was stuck in a room with a bunch of swanky celebrities, and felt more out of place than Gandhi would at dinner with the Kardashians. She took deep breaths and allowed the calm to creep in. As she saw past her panic attack, she could admit that she was proud of the book she held in her hands. It was a labor of love and if she wasn't feeling so anxious, she knew she would be feeling the way she normally did—overwhelmed with gratitude that people loved it so much.

She took another deep breath, which only helped so much, and fidgeted with her reading glasses. She had the bad habit of cleaning her glasses on the bottom edge of her shirt. It was annoying enough that she had started having to use glasses for reading, and to have to carry around a special cloth to clean them annoyed her even further.

At this point, she just wished the waiting could be over so she could be led to the hall where she would read from her book. She held the glasses out and looked through them, unsatisfied with her previous cleaning job, she held them back to her shirt for a second attempt. She was almost done when a blur of bright yellow and red came rushing around the corner and ran right into her, and as Maria dizzily backed away from the event staff person who had collided her, she was certain she had heard a crunch.

"Oh, Mrs. Blakestone, I'm so sorry—," the man in the bright yellow shirt emblazoned with big, bold, red letters that said "Read 4 Life" mumbled apologetically.

Maria gasped and her breath caught in her chest as she looked down at the broken, twisted eyeglass frames. "Wha—, she squeaked out. This couldn't seriously be happening, could it? She wasn't already overwhelmed enough?