Forever Princess (The Princess Diaries 10)

OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WROTE A ROMANCE NOVEL AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME!!!!!!!!!! YOU R SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!! I LUV U!!!!!!!!! ROMANCE NOVELS 4EVER!!!! I’VE STARTED IT ALREADY AND IT’S SO CUTE!!!! YOU HAVE TO TRY TO GET THIS PUBLISHED!!!!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WROTE A WHOLE BOOK!!!!!!!! Tina

P.S. I have to talk to you about something. It’s nothing I can put in a text. It’s not a bad thing. But it’s something I thought of because of your book. CALL ME ASAP!!!!!

It was as I was reading this that my phone rang, and I saw it was J.P. I picked up, and before I could say anything, even “Hello,” he was all, “Wait…you wrote a romance novel?”

He was laughing. But not in a mean way. In an affectionate, I can’t believe it way.

Before I knew it, I was laughing, too.

“Yeah,” I said. “Remember my senior project?”

“The one about the history of Genovian olive oil presses, circa 1254–1650?” J.P. sounded incredulous. “Of course.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, actually, I sort of…lied about that.” Oh, dear God in heaven, I prayed. Don’t let him hate me for lying. “My senior project was really a historical romance novel. The one I just sent you. It’s medieval, set in 1291 England. Do you hate me?”

“Hate you?” J.P. laughed some more. “Of course I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. But a romance novel?” he said, again. “Like the kind Tina reads?”

“Yeah,” I said. Why did he sound like that? It wasn’t that strange. “Well, not exactly like the kind she likes to read. But sort of. See, Dr. K told me it was great that I helped Genovia become a constitutiona

l monarchy, and all, but that I should really do something for myself, not just for the people of Genovia. And since I love writing, I thought—and Dr. K agreed—maybe I should write a book, because I want to be an author, and all, and I was always writing in my journal anyway. And, well, I love romance novels…they’re so satisfying, and proven to be stress relievers—did you know many of the Domina Rei, leaders in the business and political world, read romance novels to relax? I did some research, and over twenty-five percent of all books sold are romances. So, I figured if I was going to write something that had a hope of being published, statistically, a romance had the best shot—”

Okay. I was babbling. I mean, did I really just tell him over twenty-five percent of all books sold were romances? No wonder he wasn’t saying anything.

“You wrote a romance novel?” he finally said. Again.

Weirdly, J.P. was turning out to be less upset about the fact that I’d lied to him than he was about the fact that I’d written a romance novel.

“Um, yeah,” I went on, trying not to focus too much on how stunned he sounded. “See, I did a whole lot of research on medieval times—you know, like when Princess Amelie lived? Then I wrote my book. And now I’m trying to get it published—”

“You’re trying to get it published?” J.P. echoed, his voice breaking a little on the word published.

“Yes,” I said, a little surprised by his surprise. What was up with that? Isn’t that what you did when you wrote a book? I mean, he’d written a play, and I was pretty sure he was trying to get it produced. Right? “Only not very successfully. No one seems to want it. Except vanity presses, of course, who want me to pay them. But that’s not unusual, I guess. I mean, J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel got rejected numerous times before she—”

“Do the publishers know the book is by you?” J.P. interrupted. “The princess of Genovia?”

“Well, no, of course not,” I said. “I’m using a pseudonym. If I said it was by me, they’d totally want to publish it. But then I wouldn’t know for sure if they really liked it and thought it was good and worth publishing, or if they just wanted to publish a book written by the princess of Genovia. Do you see the difference? I don’t even want to be published if it’s going to happen that way. I mean, I just want to see if I can do it—be a published author—without it happening because I’m a princess. I want it to happen because what I wrote is good—maybe not the best. But okay enough to be sold at Wal-Mart or wherever.”

J.P. just sighed.

“Mia,” he said. “What are you doing?”

I blinked. “Doing? What do you mean?”

“I mean, why are you selling yourself short? Why are you writing commercial fiction?”

I had to admit, he completely lost me there. What was he talking about, “selling myself short”? And commercial fiction? What other kind of fiction was I supposed to write? Fiction based on real-life people? I’d tried that once…a long time ago. I wrote a short story based on real people—it was about J.P., as a matter of fact, before I had gotten to know him.

And I’d had the character based on him kill himself at the end by throwing himself under the F train!

Thank GOD I’d realized at the last minute—just before the story was about to be distributed to the entire school via Lilly’s literary magazine—that you just can’t do that. You can’t write stories based on real people and have them throwing themselves under the F train at the end.

Because you’ll just end up hurting their feelings if they happen to read it and recognize themselves in it.

And I don’t want to hurt anybody!

But I couldn’t tell J.P. that. He didn’t know about the short story I’d written about him. I’d kept that a secret this whole time we’d been going out.

So, in answer to his commercial-fiction question, I said, “Well. Because…it’s fun. And I like it.”