In the grim limp of late January, a week after I took my Sacred Oath, the other Paige Cooper released another book. The plot concerned a voluptuous border guard who shared a telepathic and erotic bond with a pegasus named Ibidem. I was, as always, both ragingly envious of the idea and mortified that someone—my dental hygienist, a friend’s student, a conversion-rate optimization consultant at work—would mistake the horse porn book for mine. It had happened before. Frequently enough, in fact, that whenever I identified myself as a writer I’d barely mutter the name of my own juvenile effort before pivoting to describe and decry the other Paige Cooper’s massive oeuvre. Most recently, I’d cast Ensnaring Strike—my go-to hook-up spell—on a halfling fingersmith after an evening of queer francophone stand-up. I took his arm in the drifting snow, invited him up for ...