The Roughest Draft

1

Katrina

The bookstore is nothing like I remember. They ve remodeled, white paint covering the exposed bricks, light gray wooden shelves where there once were old metal ones. Cute candles for sale and Jane Austen tote bags occupy the front table instead of used books.

I shouldn t be surprised it looks different. I ve pretty much given up buying books in public in the past three years, including from Forewords, where I ve only been once despite the bookstore being fifteen minutes from our house in Los Angeles s Hancock Park. I don t like being recognized. But I love books. Doing my book buying online has been torture.

Walking in, I eye the bookseller. She s in her early twenties, not much younger than me. Her brown hair s up in a messy bun, her green nose piercing catching the overhead lights. She doesn t look familiar. When she smiles from the checkout counter, I think I m in the clear.

I smile back, walking past the bestseller shelf. Only Once sits imposingly right in the middle, its textured blue cover with clean white typography instantly identifiable. I ignore the book while I move deeper into the store.

This visit is something my therapist s been pushing me to do for months. Exposure therapy, conditioning myself to once more find comfortable the places I used to love. Pausing in the fiction section, I collect myself, remembering I m doing fine. I m calm. I m just me, looking for something to read, with no expectations pressing on my shoulders or stresses jackhammering in my chest.

Covers run past me in rows, each waiting to be picked out. Everything is crisp with the scent of pages. I knew the Los Angeles independent bookstore scene well when Chris proposed we move here from New York for the job he was offered in the book department of one of Hollywood s biggest talent agencies. Each shop is varied and eccentric, indignant icons of literacy in a city people say never reads.

Which is why I ve hated avoiding them. The past three years

Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka met and fell in love in high school. Austin went on to graduate from Harvard, while Emily graduated from Princeton. Together, they are the authors of several novels about romance for teens and adults. Now married, they live in Los Angeles, where they continue to take daily inspiration from their own love story.

"Real, raw, and heartfelt." USA Today

"The Roughest Draft is a book about books, and a breathtaking meditation on the ways in which fiction can be a space to expose and write large our must vulnerable truths...Complex and achingly romantic, The Roughest Draft feels as if it's a palimpsest for Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka's most deeply held beliefs about writing and each other a profound collective story inked out for all of us to find ourselves on its pages." Entertainment Weekly

The Roughest Draft has it all: Romance, rumor, and intrigue, and you won t want to put it down. Shondaland

"Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka deliver on what they ve always done best: imperfect characters who you want to follow all the way to the end. There s fire-hot tension and yearning and resentfulness and fights and steamy romance, but there s also beauty in the way the story depicts the uncertainty of creative careers, working as a team, and individual growth. If you have a case of winter blues, this is the novel to pick up." Buzzfeed

Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka are the dream team from heaven. Starting as YA authors and shifting their powerhouse kingdom into adult, The Roughest Draft absolutely gives me The Hating Game vibes for a new generation, but sweeter. And maybe steamier?" Oprah Daily

"This novel is that rare piece of writing that needs no editing, haunts your sleep, and leaves you wishing it was longer when you turn the last page. Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were Here

I love, love, LOVED this book. It sucks you into a slow, sexy burn from page one and keeps you hooked with its layered, heart-wrenching honesty. This is contemporary romance at its best! Lyssa Kay Adams, author of Isn t It Bromantic?

Together, Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka produce a seamless voice that is compulsively readable. Their characters spark to life immediately on