Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys.

Okay, this fic was inspired by 3 different things:

The resurgence of really, really bad erotica that's being published these days and is becoming "mainstream." I look at my own fanfiction where I've written erotic scenes and then compare it to the Richard Castle novels and snort. That's a fade-to-black, sorry.

I saw the Belle Knox story and was fascinated. An ivy league student who did porn for a living until she was outed and threatened off campus. Kinda sad, but if she's not ashamed of her choices and thought them out, more power to her.

The book Sneaking Candy by Lisa Burnstein. She's an excellent writer and I lover her YA books! Check this book, and the Pretty Amy series, out. They're worth it!


It's one in the morning. And I'm trying to go to sleep. All I can think about is that stupid wedding I'm supposed to be in for my father and his fiancee in a few months. And for fuck's sake, they're having sex right now and think I can't hear them.

Vomit.

I rolled over, leaning over the side of my bed to root through my backpack to find my iPod so I can't hear them.

Don't get me wrong, I have a really good view towards sex for a child of divorce; I'm not exactly afraid of it, but I don't exactly share. When Dad and I had that super-awkward sex talk when I was twelve (that ended with him taking notes from me) what I took away from it was that he didn't want me engaging in risky behaviors (in other words, use a condom at all times), that he wanted me to have good sex, not be afraid of it, and that I could go to him about anything. I guess I owed him that, too. I eventually confessed out of guilt and depression that I had had sex during the Princeton Summer Program first time between junior and senior year at Prep school with Carter. Dad looked crestfallen, but never got mad at me, just asked if we had used protection. I admitted yes, we had been safe, but it hadn't ended well. He walked me through a rebound relationship (thank GOD I didn't have sex with that boy) and then I met Ashley.

I shoved my earbuds into my ears and turned on the Weepies to drown them out. But, they weren't loud enough to muffle the sounds of unbridled passion.

Christ. I needed to move out of here.

Kate had confronted me about moving back home; Is it me? I don't want you to feel like you can't come back home because of me, she had asked me. Don't get me wrong, I like Kate a lot; I just wished we lived in a bigger place. Even though Dad has a top-floor loft and it's huge for New York standards, lofts notoriously lack soundproofing.

The Weepies were not enough. I turned on the Weeks instead, The House That We Grew Up In blared into my ears. Tara and I were planning on seeing them in Williamsburg this summer together, when she got back from Israel with her brother and mom. And yes, I admitted to myself that I was not getting back to sleep for a while. I had been having a lot of insomnia lately; this whole break-up thing with Pi had left me without a lot of confidence. I broke up with him mainly because I got tired of the amount of blow jobs he tried to pressure me into, shoving my head down when we were making out. Couldn't he just ask, like a normal person? I kept on wondering if that was normal. There needs to be a little mystery in a relationship, I'll be honest. Call me a delusional romantic, but being pressured into giving BJ's when you really don't want to do one is not a fantasy of mine. And he had the balls to make me feel bad about it. And then, the bathroom was not a private place when the door was shut. Taking a shower alone? He never let me, and it got irritating when I was just relaxing under the shower spray and suddenly, the shower curtain tore back and he scared the shit out of me. You're wasting water, babe, he told me. It left me wondering if I was just a prude or something for wanting to shave my legs (and other choice areas) without him watching and talking to me about the number of bees in White Plains and the deal he got on a dimebag. I got up from my bed and picked up my computer, opening it, it glowed to life in the semi-darkness of New York City.

I could never let Dad know that I was working on a manuscript called Love's Triangle. Hell no. I could never do what he did. I don't know how he wrote novels so quickly. I had been working on this one since my junior year of high school. I had finished it, but I kept on picking at it. Dad could never, ever find out about it.

I had been harboring fantasies of publishing Love's Triangle under a nom de plume and never telling anybody it was me. I couldn't stand the idea of the comparisons that would come from having a writer father who was a much, much bigger name to live up to. I could hear everybody sneering, you'd have never gotten published if it weren't for your father. Couldn't a girl do something for herself?

I had researched agents and even made up a pen name; Harper Rogers. I had a perfect query letter that I had worked on for months and nit-picked and rewritten and obsessed over when I was living with Pi. He even glanced over it and said it was okay... before we broke up. He was always dragging me down. He was a college drop-out and was doing crap jobs to get by and I ended up paying for everything because he spent most of his paycheck on weed after the rent and utilities. Pi had criticised me during sex, too. I quit faking it when he had criticised me enough. I wasn't going to give him anything he hadn't earned.

To hell with Pi. He thought my writing was blasé, not ready to be published? I'd show him.

I opened up my email for Harper Rogers and the spreadsheet with the list of literary agents who'd accept an adult urban fantasy and picked out four agents names. I went ahead and sent ten emails out to each of their submission boxes, each query letter tailored and edited to be personal enough. And I hit send. Then, I went insane and sent query letters out to ten other agents, like a mad woman.

Once I hit send for the final time, the panic welled up in me, suddenly. What if they knew who I was? What if the writing samples weren't right? What about the hook in the query letter?

Oh shit!

I felt panic rise up in me and I couldn't help but pace around my room, realizing that the loft was dead silent now and the Weeks had stopped playing on my iPod.

Well, there went my entire night's sleep.