Yolanda the literary agent sat on the bus, staring at her inert smartphone.
Her thumb trembled over the screen. She simply couldn’t bring herself to check her email.
She was actually afraid of her inbox now, the endless uptick of New Messages she’d encounter each time. Was there a term for that? A fear of correspondence?
It was the need of the senders that overwhelmed her. Each message came to her overstuffed with hope and insecurity and ego. Choose me! No, me! Over here, me! Dozens a day, hundreds a week, each one representing a book-in-waiting. Millions of words that would probably never make their way between two covers.
