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I got up, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and put on a t-shirt. I came back down to my study, hoping my mind was clear enough to get some real work done. I opened my Amazon analytics page, and hundreds of products lit up the screen. I stared at the monitor until the figures started running together.
Clicking off of Amazon and back to Facebook, I stalked Alise’s page for hours. Stopping to listen to a cover of Juris Fernandez’s “Forevermore,” I was about to leave
a comment when I thought better of it. I quickly created a fake profile for a woman named Jessica Newman. I left a comment on that song and some of her photos. I then inboxed her.
Jessica Newman: Hey, Alise. I love your work. I’m your biggest fan.
I pressed send and was shocked when she responded five minutes later.
Alise GoldenSongstress: Awww, thank you, Jessica. I appreciate your support. My biggest fan, wow. I take it that means you’ve listened to “Love Me Again?”
Jessica Newman: Of course, and your voice is so beautiful on that song. It always is so, so beautiful. You have a cover of Forevermore on your page. I love it, too. What inspired you to cover that song?”
Alise GoldenSongstress: It’s a long story. But I’ll say one thing, men. I was in love with someone who was supposed to be my forevermore, but if you’ve been following my original songs, you already know what happened to me in the love department.
Jessica Newman: Yeah… I know where you’re coming from. I know very well how easy it is to love and lose someone. You will find love soon. Hell, he’s probably already someone that’s trying to get your attention.
Alise GoldenSongstress: Awww, that would be great, Jessica. We’ll see.
Jessica Newman: Great talking to you. Well, keep up the great work. [heart emoji]
Alise GoldenSongstress: Thank you so much. Glad you reached out.
After chatting with Alise, I clicked over to iTunes and downloaded her entire catalog. She had seven singles in the app’s store. They were all packaged with high-quality images and designs, and she had excellent reviews. The more I dug into her world to find out about her, the more I was amazed by Alise. She was a remarkable woman.
For the next thirty minutes, I took the journey through her music as she described her past love experiences in detail—a friend to lover who was unfaithful, a man who didn’t support her dreams, a man who wanted her for her money. I would never do such a warm and loving soul like Alise that way. The more I listened to her music, the more I was convinced we were destined to be together. I was the man who could end her string of misery. It was time to become one.
She was more outspoken and outgoing than my Raven. That much was certain. But even that glaring difference grew on me. I went back to scanning pages and pages of her adventure to becoming a world-renown singer. I was inspired to do more to boost her sales ranking, so I went to Amazon and bought a thousand copies of “Love Me Again.” Hours later, the song’s sales rank had gone to number two just from the boost of my purchase. That made me smile. Then, I got an idea. I would market and promote her single and push her to number one. It’s what I did for my clients every single day. I invented bestsellers, and who was more deserving of such success than the golden songbird, Alise?
Chapter Six
Alise
On the Charts!
9:16 a.m.
Number one in the iTunes store. Number one on Amazon!
I repeated this thought over and over in my head, and still, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it being true. My eyes had to be deceiving me. I refreshed the screen, and again the bestseller’s pages of both iTunes and Amazon had my single, “Love Me Again,” listed as the top song in the nation.
Somehow, this had to be a glitch. Had to be.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in the song. I did. I’d spent hours in the studio perfecting it, and thousands of dollars went to the producer and promotions. But to see my solo “celebrity” name Alise at the top of the charts was surreal. It was a feeling out of this world, and I just couldn’t believe all of my dreams were coming true at this very moment.
My phone started chiming as if on cue with the fast fluttering of my heart. The blaring sound startled me and brought my attention from my laptop to my phone’s screen that flashed Tameka’s name.
“Tameka!!” I yelled into the phone. “I can’t breathe right now!”
“You did it! Oh my God, you did it, Alise! And I know you’re going nuts because I am. I got up and got mama and daddy to download a copy on their phones and then checked, and you were sitting on top!” Tameka yelled, and her excitement rivaled mine as if she were the one who hit number one.
“Really? Thank you for all of your support. I keep refreshing my screen because it just doesn’t seem real. This can’t be right, Tameka. There’s no way I have the number one single in the USA.” It was like I could, but yet couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of hitting number one in both the iTunes and Amazon music stores for all categories. I mean, I did it, but what did this mean for me? This was a huge deal for an independent artist. Was I ready for all that was to come?
“However in the hell you topped Taylor Swift’s “Lover” is what you need to keep doing forever,” Tameka said with wonderment in her tone. “That worked for you, sis. Yassss to it all!”
“Well, I hired this new promotional firm, and they have been heaven-sent. They pulled some strings to get the major bloggers to talk it up last week. But the biggest bump came from the Instagram couple who made a video about it. Sha-Sha and Kee-Kee, those two…”
“Are hi-fucking-larious. You need to cut the promotional firm and just hire them to do skits for you from now on.”
