Monday sat up and took a second to situate the location of her body and mind. Her head throbbed; drinking wasn't her forte.

Her phone screen displayed 8:30 AM; she had time.

Monday disliked pulling her coils out to decide what outfit deserved coming out of her closet. She already knew what she would wear. Monday chose pieces she could dress up if necessary for the voyage. The day's winner was a floral print dress with a heart-shaped neckline. As for the rest, she wore her jean jacket and 1490 black boots like the day before.

Her shoe choices always made her cousin Luce laugh. This time her reason was to anticipate a zombie attack.

The soon-to-be thirty-year-old author's wild imagination always conjured the strangest situations in the oddest spaces, as if such a thing could occur at a book fair, some would say, while Monday would opt for a one never knows sentence.

She was in the midst of putting on her makeup when she stopped.

"Dammit."

Tuna sandwich, the sudden term's appearance oiled the mechanics of her reasoning, and Monday found herself wanting an answer once more.

Kenneth kept randomly popping up on her mind like a hiccup building up an unconscious desire to see him.

His booth was empty at ten upon her arrival. Monday regularly threw a glance while the clock ticked.

At noon his spot was still vacant. Where was he?

Monday checked the fair's program. The man had a forum at one, and visitors were frustrated.

Hungover, Kenneth finally arrived at quarter to one. Knocked out cold by the beers, he overslept. All of this was Robs' fault; he knew Kenneth avoided drinks for this exact reason.

Now Kenneth only had fifteen minutes before his conference. He hoped to rest a few minutes once seated, but a hard thump on the desk startled the man in snooze mode.

The first page of his book laid open, "can you write the signification of the tuna sandwich, please?" Monday said between gritted teeth.

Kenneth looked up; nothing prepared him for Mondays' lightning attack. The woman was a Rotweiller, she refused to let go of Kenneths' leg, and the sadist in Kenneth thrived, "good morning."

"It's the afternoon, Kenneth."

The man wanted to jiggle on the spot. His name sounded so scrumptious in her mouth, thought Kenneth, whose eyes settled on the heartline of Monday's dress and heaving chest.

Red.

The roses on her dress were a mashup of pink, violet, and red that caught one's eye, just as her violent red lipstick got Kenneth.

"Are you coming to my conference?"

Monday stood up, "why can't you just tell me here and now?"

"Iㅡ."

"Kenneth, you need to go."

Meredith seemed to be Kenneth's equivalent of Ben. She appeared to mentor the man's schedule like a personal assistant, yet she also looked as though she had some power over him.

The man got up, "sorry, I've got a conference to give. It's not too late to join."

Monday rolled her eyes before storming back to her booth.

Kenneth shrugged and hurried to the auditorium, where he transformed from dead-man-walking to a fizzy-pop orator between the first and the last step leading to the stage.

"Hi, wow, how time flies. Eh, I know you're all here for Schedule Love, sorry," Kenneth pressed his palms together to apologize, "I'll do that, but before, I'd like to make a little detour and talk about books. Not mine, just stories in general, which makes sense because we're at bookInc. A couple of years ago, twenty to be exact." Kenneth paused, "oh, it's longer than I thought," the man said with a bewildered stare that made the auditorium laugh.

"It doesn't make me younger, anyway. So, twenty years ago, when I was young and careless, Kenneth, a friend, and I traveled to Mexico. We partied and drank all night. People kept inviting us, and someone said, let's go to the beach at some point. My friend and I said okay, and we woke up the next day at a beach in the Gulf of Mexico in the oddest town ever. Every restaurant, commerce, or logo had tuna associated. The town was a tuna attraction park. I don't remember the name, unfortunately. My friend and I were hungry. So we chose a restaurant among the ones open. And guess what they served in this restaurant?" Kenneth paused once more.

He left space for people to giggle before resuming and enumerating at high speed, "tuna pizza, tuna salad, tuna pie, tuna cake, tuna sandwich, anything with tuna, you name it, they had it."

A tremendous wave of laughter flooded the halls, startling visitors who read in quiet spots of the fair.

"My friend and I opted for a tuna sandwich. It seemed the safest choice. We sat down at a table, and I observed the people. All looked happy, and they were all local customers. They probably ate in every restaurant and knew every menu off by heart, but they harbored the expression of people who tasted the dishes for the first time. I took a bite of my tuna sandwich, and guess what? ㅡ till this day, it remains the tastiest sandwich I've ever tasted.

"The taste blew me away, and I approached the owner and said, do all the restaurants serve the same thing? Yes, he replied. Haven't you ever thought of, I don't know, selling chicken or pastrami sandwiches? No, why change when the formula works, he said, but everyone here does the same, I retorted. True, but none make theirs like mine."

Kenneth paused to let the audience absorb his last sentence.

"At the time, I thought profit and reeling in the competitions customers as they taught me in my college courses. It took the young business major I was then a moment to understand what the owner meant. Why change a recipe that works?

"As writers, editors challenge us. We challenge ourselves to find new and exciting plots. Like readers, we advocate against the overrated troops. Fiction writers will get this, all these first encounters, love, and hate, betrothed, breakups, high school projects, all these situations are recipes that form the tuna sandwich.

"Every day, there's another tuna sandwich on the market causing outrage with its seemingly overdone plot, and despite all the critics, the tuna sandwich reigns supreme.

"I'm very critical concerning tuna scenarios. One knows as soon as they read when June meets Adrian, or Sora is a quiet introvert, Dylan is your six-pack quarterback with bad grades, Chloe is a single thirty-year-old community manager. We know where we're heading with those synopses. Still, people will read because of the multitude of combinations and twists authors muster.

"Love it or hate it, the tuna sandwich is here to stay. Even I found myself confronted with this. I don't know how many books there are, sorry, I do know. I stalk my book rankings, too; hey, I'm only human.

"So there's an incalculable number of books on management, self-help, etc. And when I started, friends told me, Kenneth, don't do it. You'll be one amongst, true, but my books hit different, at least that's what readers tell me. My books cater to a specific type of reader. My tuna sandwich is sometimes the flavor of the month," the man said while nodding at his statement.

"The tuna sandwich phenomenon happens in every field. Music cinema, Christophe Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Guy Ritchie have the sandwich formula. If you analyze their movies, you will find patterns they constantly repeat. We constantly buy tickets to see their latest tuna sandwich in theaters. Eh, I hope they don't sue me for this," Kenneth smiled and continued.

"All this to say there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a basic equation that works, as long as it adds up to what you desire and you're reeling in the profit you want from it.

"Now I know we all have the pressure to write that one book no one has ever done. Some manage with success, but that is a privilege in the writing world. Yes, you have to earn the right to become an exception.

"You can't debark with something new and have publishers diving in headfirst. Most will ask you to produce a tuna sandwich before allowing you to make one with pistachios. And if you're lucky, your public will follow. Most of the time, the book hooks another audience. So you have a former and latter who don't mingle.

My final word for this is, as long as you're happy, go for it."