Ruth’s Volvo SUV cruised into Chinatown on the back of a dragon. Or at least that was what the bridge seemed like, with its concrete guard rails transformed into red and gold scales made of plastic and metal. The archway ahead possessed the same bold colors, with dragon heads at each end biting the edges of a white tarpaulin banner.

            It was an unusual sight but, better than that, it gave me the chance to break the silence. “What does that say?” I gestured to the Chinese characters slashed in black ink on the archway’s banner, desperate for distraction.

            After all the paper-signing in the council hall, Ruth had fetched Mae and Jonathan at a nearby mall. Mae welcomed me gladly. Jonathan…did not.

            “Yúlánpén,” she said. “It means Ghost Festival, and today’s the first day of Ghost Month.”Ruth threw me a grateful smile through the rearview mirror. Her normally cheerful round face still showed signs of strain after her earlier quarrel with her son – because of me.

            “Oh.” I wished I hadn’t asked. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would not make me sound stunned and alarmed by their holiday. Ghost Month? Really?

            “If you can’t deal with it, that’s your problem,” Jonathan muttered under his breath. He was glued to his side of the door, as if he couldn’t get far enough away from me. A now-familiar scowl had settled on his face.

            “Jonathan!” His mother’s voice was like whiplash.

            He exhaled an angry breath. “Sorry.” He sounded anything but sincere.

            “It’s okay,” I answered quickly. He was right, anyway. Amnesiacs like me can’t afford to be picky.

            Mae, his year-younger sister, threw me an apologetic glance over her shoulder from the passenger seat in front.I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile as the elephant inside the car only got bigger and angrier. Jonathan had never tried to hide the fact he was against his mother temporarily adopting me. I wished I could reassure him that I didn’t mean any harm, but I couldn’t.

            Traffic congested at the foot of the bridge and I watched the digits on the speedometer display trickle down.

            With our windows rolled down, the sound of something hitting the ground easily reached my ears, like a rainfall of pebbles.

I glanced outside. A throng of people were on the sidewalks, throwing on the ground curved red stones that looked like pairs of Ying and Yang.

            Mae saw where I was looking and explained, “It’s kind of like fortune telling from the Gods. You get ‘yes’ if both stones face the same way and ‘no’ if it’s not.”

            A huge moan drowned the last of her words, and I looked ahead when the moaning didn’t stop. The sound came from gigantic temple gates protesting against the yellow-robed monks pushing them open.

A cold gust of wind blew into the car, stinging my eyes into shutting closed. When I opened them again, a bloodied, half-naked man slammed into my side of the car, mouth gaping wide.

I screamed, backing away and bumping into Jonathan.

“Stop it, you idiot,” Mia hissed at the ghost.

My screams died when I saw Mia put her hand out to push the ghost away, rapping out something angrily in Mandarin.

“It’s just a guy in a costume,” Jonathan said under his breath.

Embarrassment flooded my face and I scrambled away from him, mumbling ‘sorry’. It had been a prank. Just a stupid prank. And I had acted like he was going to kill me. In fact, my heart was racing fast I seriously wondered if the others could hear it. Worse, the frantic tattoo of my heartbeat against my chest was awfully familiar, as if terror had a permanent place in my life – whatever it was.

I caught a glimpse of Jonathan’s face. His cheeks were flushed, and I wished I could disappear, hating how I seemed to keep giving him more reasons to consider me a nutcase.

Mia had finished snarling. The man’s face was white and he had sprung away from Ruth’s car, hands held up like her words had convicted him.

After stabbing the man’s back with one last glare, Ruth checked me through the rearview mirror, her dark eyes seeking mine, her slightly rounded cheeks made pink by her outburst. “You okay, Fiona?”

I watched the man slink away, his shoulders hunched, our roles now reversed, and I was the one haunting him. “Yeah.” But I wasn’t, and we all knew it.

“Ghost Month isn’t anything like Halloween, really, but some of these kids try so hard to Americanize it.” Ruth rolled her eyes.

“It’s okay.” I cleared my throat, hating how my voice croaked.“It’s my fault, too, for being so jumpy.”

            Ruth shook her head so adamantly her short hair bounced. “Don’t think like that. You’re actually doing quite well, considering the circumstances.”

            The circumstances…It sounded better than the proverbial elephant, I supposed, and way much better than the truth of having my memories carved out by an accident.

            “So,” Mia said brightly, “did you like the clothes I bought for you?”

            “Umm…”

            Everyone – even Jonathan - burst into laughter. “All the stuff you bought for her was either pink or had ruffles. Only someone silly like you would like something like that,” her brother retorted.

            Mia grinned shamelessly. “I just wanted to make sure we could swap clothes. And besides, I knew she’d look good in them.” She chatted nonstop about the things we could do over the summer, keeping the mood lighthearted throughout the ride.

Outside, the lively colors of the festival had gradually disappeared and muddied into bland and ugly shades of brown and gray as Ruth drove deeper and deeper into the throat of Chinatown – Ong Pin, which was the area’s main road.

There were no houses but just one low-rise building after another, nothing that went past five stories. I couldn’t imagine memorizing the ins and outs of Chinatown when everything looked exactly the same. A few more minutes passed and then Ruth was maneuvering the car into an expansive parking lot, waving back to a uniformed guard as she did.

“Jonathan, get Fiona’s stuff,” Ruth said.

Without a word, Jonathan took my suitcase out of the trunk.

“I can do that---” I started but shut up at his look.  Five minutes later, and I was thankful I hadn’t insisted too hard. The Changs lived in the fourth floor, which would have been fine if their apartment building had an elevator. When I reached the fourth landing, I was breathing hard while the others still looked refreshed, like they had just stepped out of the shower.

I glanced down – the narrow, U-shaped stairs prevented me from seeing beyond the last two flights but its sight still made me dizzy. The thought of having to climb them every day made me feel even dizzier.

“Welcome to home sweet home,” Ruth said as she unlocked the door and pushed it open with her shoulder. A tall, dark shadow slipped past her, and the hairs on my nape stood up.

I glanced at Mia and Jonathan, wondering if they had seen it, too.

Jonathan caught me looking. “What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.” And there was nothing, I told myself, because I didn’t have the ability to see ghosts. I didn’t. I didn’t. 

Once upon a time, there was an ordinary girl who grew up listening to bedtime stories that sounded very much like Harlequin paperbacks.

And so instead of dreaming about Prince Charming or a knight in shining armor, she dreamt of one day finding Her Own Greek Billionaire and living happily ever after with him.

When this little girl grew up, she did what she could to make her dream come true.

This is my story. 
I mean your story. 
I mean, Mairi Tanner's story.

Last week we were made aware that a number of unacceptable titles were
appearing on our website through the Kobo website that has an automated
feed to ours. This is an industry wide issue impacting retailers that
sell self published eBooks due to the explosion of self publishing,
which in the main is good as it gives new authors the opportunity to get
their content published. However we are disgusted by these particular
titles, find this  unacceptable and we in no way whatsoever condone
them.    

It is our policy not to feature titles like those highlighted and we
have processes in place to screen them out. We offer over one million
titles through our eBooks partner Kobo, many of which are self-published
titles. Due to the massive amount of self publishing a number of these
titles have got through the screening process.    

We are taking immediate steps to have them all removed. While we are
doing this we have decided to take our website off-line to best protect
our customers and the public. Our website will become live again once
all self published eBooks have been removed and we are totally sure that
there are no offending titles available. When our website goes back
online it will not display any self published material until we are
completely confident that inappropriate books can never be shown again.

We sincerely apologise for any offence caused.

Mr. Lefebvre,

I have been, in the past, close to delisting all of my books from Kobo, because it has just been issue after issue with your website. Today I have finally taken that step.

First it was the terrible search engine which only seems to list the same five authors in my genres. Sometimes, even when typing in the exact title of a book of mine, it would list another book before it.

Second, it was payment issues. From your ridiculously high $100 monthly threshold for payment, to your constantly late payments. Recently, there was an instance where every indie author in our community was paid late by you, and the excuse was the same. "Oh, there was one batch which got delayed but most went out on time." An obvious lie unless that particular batch contained the payments of every author in our community. In addition, bank details which have been fine for months have been needed to be repeatedly confirmed, sometimes input by your line employees because your own automated input system is so broken that it won't accept valid routing and SWIFT numbers.

I could go on about other issues having to do with the retailers you push to not changing prices when the price is changed on WritingLife, not pulling books when asked, and incorrectly formatting the descriptions that directly impact our sales negatively, but I'd prefer to focus on what Kobo is doing wrong. Don't mistake this for a pass, this is also a factor in this decision and your retailers are actively making your company look extremely unprofessional.

And now, due to a muckraking "journalist" who hasn't looked at books beyond their cover and title, you've banned the entire library of books of anyone who was publishing erotica. Many in my community have not published erotica, but had resorted to publishing through Draft2Digital to ensure that they would actually get paid for the books they sold, and their books are gone as well. All because of a vocal minority of Internet personalities who, honestly, don't have a clue.

I have delisted every book from WritingLife that I am not contractually obligated to continue to try to list on there. In the future, I will be specifically writing into contracts that I do not publish to Kobo. Kobo does not support independent publishers and I will not continue to support them. It will take a lot to undo the past sixteen months of ill will that your company has generated throughout the community of writers, and I will encourage my fellow writers to follow my lead. I wouldn't blame any of them for distributing everywhere that they can, every dollar counts to many of them. However, I will not be returning until a major effort is made to fix the major issues at your company.

I mentioned earlier that your other retailers have problems delisting titles that I have asked to be delisted before. Today is Monday, October 14, and if my books are not removed by Monday, October 21, I'll be sending DMCA notices to each of them stating that you are not authorized to distribute the books that I have delisted.

Thank you for your time and I hope that the next time I email you, it will be to congratulate you and your company for cleaning up your act.

Signed,...