Page 1 of The Killer You Know

1

Robin Hanson

There are two things in life I hate and that’s gossip and people—yet somehow my entire livelihood depends on both.

Ironically, I was coerced into specializing in both so I can do what I really love: write cheesy romance novels.

My literary agent couldn’t sell the cheesy romance novel I wrote, so she suggested I get myself a platform. She thought maybe we could reverse engineer my road to romance riches via starting off with a vast and hungry audience that waits at rapt attention to hear what might spew from my lips next.

She promised the publishers would come crawling, just begging me to sign on the dotted line, and soon enough I could die in an avalanche of my cheesy romance novels once the publishers gave the advertising push that my books would need to survive.

My agent’s parting words were, try to be relatable. Women eat that right up.

So I opened up an Insta Pictures account and started peppering it with wedding photos, seeing that I was newly married at the time, less than five years ago. No one really seemed to care about my white dress or me, or my newly acquired legal eagle husband.

No one cared about all of the artfully staged pictures of my breakfast—avocado toast again!—or when I showed off a glossy new manicure with my coffin tip nails.

They didn’t care about anything I had to offer it seemed.

But one summer I took a picture of myself trying on a swimsuit—neck down with the teeny weeny bottoms cutting into my pillowy hips, cellulite dotting my thighs like a solar system, and a belly that could easily hold a baby even though that’s never happened for me.

And just like that, my newfound followers did care about something. They liked, shared, and commented. I instantly exploded as some hero in spandex as if I just brought peace to the Middle East by way of belly fat. They couldn’t get enough of it—or more to the point, me.

It turns out, my agent was right.

Women were obsessed with relatable me.

They kept begging for more. So I gave it to them in the form of disheveled hair—brunette roots with brassy highlights—the dresses I ordered online that didn’t fit, and an entire soliloquy on how I loathed the fact I had to actually leave my house to send them back.

I shared wall color that looked like heaven in a paint chip and as if Satan was moving in once I slathered the room with it. I shared bloodied blisters on the back of my heels from ill-fitting stilettos—then I promptly made every one of my ardent followers swear we would banish those death sticks from our wardrobes. I shared the mom jeans I fell in and out of love with, the stained yoga pants I lived in for weeks on end, the pricey coffee I drank by the gallon and then complained about the cost, the nachos and guacamole that I ate with wild abandon that I claimed comprised ninety percent of my body mass. True as gospel.

They loved me because I was a reflection of them. I became an imperfect, unhealthy, yet beloved internet celebrity seemingly overnight. I’ve never been so thankful for cellulite in all my life.

And even though the cheesy romance book deals never came rolling in, the nonfiction feel-good quasi-self-help book deals sure did. A three-book deal with one of the big five publishers which landed me a very nice advance. Two have already hit the shelves and the third is currently with my editor.

Once I got the deal, I was ecstatic because the last thing I wanted to do was write another entry to my Insta Pictures account. As it turns out, that whole a-picture-says-a-thousand-words stuff is baloney. They not only wanted to see my cellulite, but also wanted the cheeky diary entries that came with it.

Over the years, those entries have grown a bit. I started a website and a blog, in addition to posting and reposting to all of the social media apps where I discount my soul.

Nevertheless, my agent squashed my dreams of stepping away from the overexposed circus my life had become. She warned that it would be the end of my writing career if I stopped showcasing my innards to the peanut gallery.

My cellulite and I were forever bound to the masses who had come to adore us. I owed them every last bit of my overexposed self because without my ardent fans, I was worthless.

And now I make a daily sacrifice at the altar of my own vanity in hopes for one more like, one more comment, one more glorious share.

That’s exactly how Oh so Relatable! started out. Nothing but a farce to land me a publishing deal five very long years ago.

I glare at the screen a moment before tapping away at my keyboard.

Hey, girls! First up is some gossip from my end of the Rockies. You know I always have the best dirt. A certain resident crooner who has sold out shows worldwide (she’ll be ending her tour right here in Colorado—I’ve got tickets!)—anyway, she and that construction worker who finagled his way to the altar with her are calling it quits.

Rumor has it, he’s suing her for spousal support to the tune of seventy-five thousand a month. I guess it’s clear why he showed up to the party to begin with. He plans on making her sing, all right, via her lawyers.

He had better secure his hard hat because I have a feeling his delusional self is about to get knocked right back to reality by way of a rather lucid judge.

And if you think that’s bad, there’s another marital dissolution underway with Aspen Heights very own queen of mean—you know who she is. Her self-help book on how to land a man may have scored her a top spot on every coveted best-seller list, but it did no favors for her when it came to the heart. According to official reports, she and her plus-one have been separated for the entire last year. And yes, they’ve only been married for one year as well. Fancy that.

Now back to the real world where the rest of us live. My new retinol serum is making me feel as if I’ve got a third-degree burn on my face. If you have a great retinol you love, please leave the name in the comments.

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