A Wife for the Billionaire
Chapter 61: INTERLUDE

Chapter 61: INTERLUDE

Hello my amazing fans,

In honor of reaching 60 Chapters, I, Henry Raggins, want to use this medium to thank you all for your support, views, gifts, power stones, comments, reviews and collections.

A Wife for the Billionaire is my third book on NovelFire and my first contracted book.

It’s been two months and some days now, and honestly it’s been quite a ride. There were days of happiness and days of gnawing sorrow.

But today, the 6th day of November remains the worst of them all.

Before NovelFire, I have written things. I’ve birthed ideas and thoughts on blank white pages. But after a while, the project, no matter how good, proves to be nothing short of tragedous.

I have books on Amazon which should be bestselling, but without promotion they barely make sales. Perhaps it’s preposterous to claim my books should be bestselling, but I know I’m right.

Usually when I post a single page or few pages on any of my social handles, the likes, comments and reactions I receive proves to me just how good those books are.

Not to mention that I’ve had dreams of where I see those books in bestselling ranks. And perhaps dreams are just images formed by our disheveled minds, but I believe mine. I hold onto them like

hope of an oasis in the desert.

I joined NovelFire after self publishing four books on Amazon. The hope was to keep doing what I love most and make enough to hire a promotion agent or agency to promote my books and subsequently bring about more sales until it gets and stays at bestselling rank.

My first book on NovelFire, ’Dear Dia; My Sweet Sixteenth Diary’ was a promising project featuring Annabel Mace and her personal relationship with Dia, her diary whom she viewed more like a person. A listening ear than mere decorative pages bound in pink calf leather.

After losing her mom to acute lymphoblastic leukemia at eleven. Overwhelmed by grief she stopped her daily entries with Dia.

But due to the promise she made to her mom on her dying bed, she decided to write to Dia on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.

When the Divas of St. Nicholas High (Mia Hover, Alicia Stones and Susan Sams), tricked her into friendship and stole their deepest and private conversations and shared it with the entire school including her infatuation towards Liam Denvers. The darling of St. Nicholas High, the modern Greek god and captain of the football squad, Anna found herself in pantagruelian regret for ever writing on Dia’s pages on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.

The story follows Anna’s progression as she navigates turning sixteen, without her mom. In a new city with a new family, Felicia Burner, her stepmom, Henry Burner, her stepbrother and her never-at-home dad, Taylor Mace.

My second book was ’A Mafia Vendetta’. My most promising book. It follows the story of Andre Sanchez, 8 years after he had to watch the brutal murder of his father by the ruthless Baron... Baron Falcone.

Forced to work for the Baron with his mother being held hostage, Andre fights to end it all on his twentieth birthday.

But will he be able to pull the trigger after all these years? Will he come to the end of his road to vendetta by killing the father of the woman he has grown to love?

A Mafia Vendetta was so promising that it was recommended even when it was yet to be contracted. Potential Starlet, that’s one of them and on the very day it got rejected it was recommended as New Arrivals. Meaning that I was this close to obtaining a contract before the editor decided otherwise.

I still remember the day I got rejected. I remember the tightening in my chest, the pounding in my head and weight

pressing down at me.

I didn’t see it coming, I wasn’t ready when it struck. My heart broke that day, it made me realize that a broken heart is not always as a result of relationship drama. Several things could as well.

I recall wanting to give up. Going to sleep that night and praying not to wake.

Before NovelFire, I was so depressed. So down that the thoughts of ending it all occupied my mind on several occasions. I just needed to be free from it all,the disappointments, the tears, the pain, and the shallowness.

Do you ever get that feeling that you were born to do great things? That your mere existence could change things? That you were put on this planet for a purpose?

I know that feeling well. I’ve been

battling with it ever since I could form thoughts. I have read and watched the fertilization race, and it led me to believe that for me to reach the egg first out of millions of other sperm cells, I had to be special.

There had to be something in me that those other sperm cells didn’t have.

But as the years wore on, as months fled and days raced, I began to doubt. I began to wish another had reached the egg first. I felt nothing like special, how could I when everything disagrees?

Purpose.

The very thing that makes life worth living. That part of us that renders meaning to our existence. The light at the end of the tunnel that inspires us to keep going. To keep striving until we make it out.

I used to have a purpose. My life used to have a meaning. There was something driving me to keep going forward.

I thought my writing was my purpose. No, my writing felt like my purpose, but is that drive worth it when it feels like it’s not good enough.

When after devoting one’s time, energy, spirit, soul and mind to something and at the end, the result isn’t worth it. The light at the end of the tunnel happens to be the flickering wick of a candle that can snuff out at any time, and not daylight as believed.

I began writing on NovelFire after it felt like I lost my purpose. After it felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here. After my days lacked meaning and my nights were an endless stretch of tears and melancholy.

I longed for meaning, for a purpose, but in honesty, I longed for death more.

On several occasions, death came to claim me. Mostly in the form of sicknesses, the kind where I coughed out blood and my heart palpitations feels like the ticking of a time bomb before it explodes.

During these times, my family keeps praying. They fuss over me, but they don’t know that a part of me was waiting for death to claim me. That in my heart, I prayed a contradictory prayer.

Perhaps I’m cruel, but isn’t it more cruel that I live and can’t do something about their way of life? That I breathe, but can’t seem to bring any form of change in their lives? That I’m counted as part of the world populace, but can’t affect any form of change in the world?

During my periods of illnesses, I feel death on the other side of the door, but for some reason it never gets through. It sticks close, but never close enough.

When natural death couldn’t alleviate me from the pain, I strived to do it on my own.

I remember a particular day. It was the 13th of November, 2022. I was home alone and in the still silence of our house, my mind wandered, the echoes of my pathetic existence where everything I tried felt like a disappointment reverberated through the walls of my mind. I resolved to end it all.

This is an Excerpt from one of my books on the experience. I had extracted it from my diary, months after the event.

There I was on my knees clutching a kitchen knife aimed at my guts. Tears streaking down my cheeks. My head pounding, an after effect of constant hitting on the wall and slaps. My lips trembling and my body shaking as I cried in between sobs. Surprisingly my hands were steady, all I needed was a plunge and that would be it. I was in our sitting room surrounded by pictures of happier days hanging on the walls. I had a smile in all of them, if only that me could see me now. The ode I wrote as my goodbye (ode to all who knew this being) resting on the glass table inches away. I remember raising the knife, closing my eyes, sealing my fate and...

Yes, I didn’t go through with it. I was a coward. But I did find an outlet for the pain, for the unsurmountable feeling of uselessness that bored at me.

I had cut myself that day, over and over again. And it felt good, instead of feeling pain, I felt peace. The flow of my blood felt like an outlet for all the pain I felt within. I felt calm and peace I hadn’t felt in a really long time.

That was how it started, cutting myself I mean. I hid it from everyone and I knew it was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but when you are very intelligent, when you were among those likely to succeed in your senior year book, and at a score year old, you’re yet to find a path towards success, any outlet from that feeling of failure is welcomed.

It was when I started writing on NovelFire that I gradually began to stop cutting myself. It wasn’t easy, but when the thrill of seeing your thoughts take form like black indents on blank white pages, that beats the urge to see my blood.

And to crown it all, those thoughts have actually been read by thousands of people from different parts of the world.

After ’A Mafia Vendetta’ got rejected, I

told myself that I wouldn’t write again. I found myself retreating into the darkness I just escaped from. But two days after that rejection, the inspiration for ’A Wife for the Billionaire’ took form in my mind and I decided to try again.

Long story short, I got contracted and then the issue of stockpiling for privilege Chapters became a problem.

By day, I’m an engineer of sorts, I work in a bakery pan construction company and I’m good at both bread pans and cake pans. But the job is exhausting, I come home after a long day and I still try to write.

For you guys, my ever loyal fans, I strive to upload on a daily basis. Some nights I don’t even sleep at all and I know that’s no excuse, but I was hoping that the payment from last month would be enough for me to stop working and focus more on my writing.

And also change my phone, yes, I type with my phone. I have been using this phone for three years now and the battery capacity is no longer what it used to be. At full charge, I can only write a Chapter and half of another before it dies.

So, I’m pleading with you guys, for support no matter how small, be it a review cause I really need more of it to boast my book’s visibility. More collection for rankings, more power stones, more subscriptions and most importantly, more gifts.

All these will help me make enough next month to change my phone, stop work and do better for you guys.

The first phase of the book is over, after this pause, the selection phase begins and I promise you, it will be worth every read and every swipe. Just encourage me, make your presence known and I promise you that I will do my best not to disappoint.

Like I said, what I saw today as my income after devoting sleepless nights to writing, wasn’t encouraging and that voice, usually quick to remind me of what a failure I am, came again. I almost started that unhealthy activity I had dropped earlier this year.

But instead of cutting myself, I forced myself to table my problems to you guys. In doing so, I expressed my feelings and talked about it instead of bottling it up.

I know we are living in an age where it’s better to invest in coins and crypto than on the best form of investment - helping another rise. I also know it’s hard to trust and most people blackmail others emotionally, but I swear on everything I’ve ever written that these words are true. They’re born from a shattered mind and a bleeding heart.

Now in all sincerity, my phone’s battery is at 18% and I’m yet to spell check these words before upload. With my data off, my battery still drains quickly, but with it on, I don’t think I need to explain what happens.

See you in the other phase. And thank you for the support I know you will render in response to this cry for help.