Wes Hollis has written fifty-three romance novels under the pen name Jessa Wynne. The problem is that Jessa doesn't exist, and his publisher wants to fix that by hiring an actress to be her.

The bigger problem is that Jessa does exist, in Wes's head, very specifically, and has for years. She's not just a brand identity. She's the imaginary woman he built his emotional life around, part muse, part obsession, part the relationship he's never quite managed to have in real life.

Enter the auditions. Ten-minute slots. A parade of candidates who can smile for photos and sign paperbacks but have never read a single one of his books. Wes is deeply unimpressed, mildly horrified, and absolutely not prepared for what happens when someone walks through that door who actually fits.

Funny, self-aware, and a little uncomfortably honest about the ways creative people fall in love with the things they invent, The Manifestation of Jessa Wynne is a romance about authorship, obsession, and what it takes to stop writing the perfect person and start letting a real one in.