Alan's lies had to progress. In some family gatherings, he'd never be forced to answer, as his grandmother would become obsess about some “liberal conspiracy” or another Fox News talking point, but in others, far away from a television or radio, when his more successful or ambitious cousins hadn't found their way into the conversations, he had to continue.
He'd list off a bunch of local publishers, leaving plenty of space between the names. If his uncles raised their brows at “McMillan”, he'd start talking about academic publishing, about the entire ecosystem his professors occupied, about the way money flowed into academia, while carefully avoiding the fact that it was all in paltry amounts. If they perked up at “Houghton Mifflin”, he'd talk about literary fiction, and about his experiences editing his classmates' work. He never wanted to talk about his own. It was shameful. It was bad enough to admit to his family that he wanted, longed, needed to find the grace of an editor at TOR to publish his fantasy works, let alone admit just how influenced by the Japanese cartoons he consumed those works were.
Alan had grown practiced at these lies. Each time, each family gathering, he'd gotten better and better at it, watching the disappointment grow or shrink at ever word, and shaping his replies accordingly.
And frankly, he was fucking tired of it.