And somewhere, someone was already waiting to read it.

He signed that night. A year later, The Clockwork Heart was on shelves. Not bestseller shelves—but shelves. Real ones. Leo did a signing at a local shop. Twenty people came. Samira from next door showed up with her mom and asked him to draw a robot in her sketchbook. He did.

Then he opened his laptop.

People weren’t just reading it. They were drawing fan art. They were tagging friends. A teenager in Brazil translated the first ten pages into Portuguese. A librarian in Ohio printed a copy for her graphic novel book club.