The Patron Saint of Broken Toasters: 1

If bad luck were a currency, twenty-six-year-old Chloe Miller would be a billionaire. Instead, she's a broke stand-up comedian living in Pine Ridge, a sleepy town where the most exciting event is a rain-soaked sidewalk-chalk festival. After her toaster catches fire and she bombs a local comedy set to an audience of four senior citizens and a single dog, Chloe decides she's had enough. She packs her three mismatched suitcases and takes a one-way bus to New York City to chase her big break.Enter Julian-her new, intensely eccentric roommate. Julian wears emerald-green silk kimonos at 7:00 AM, argues with his houseplants in French, and cooks gourmet pasta based on the daily lunar calendar. He is everything Chloe never knew she needed. He listens to her practice her routines, nurses her through a chaotic Central Park skateboarding sprain, and treats her like a true artistic muse. Naturally, Chloe falls head over heels in love with him, convinced that her lifelong streak of terrible luck has finally been broken.When Julian pulls some strings to land her a premium, prime-time slot at The Velvet Curtain-one of the hottest downtown performance clubs in Manhattan-Chloe thinks her moment has arrived. She steps onto the grand stage under the blinding white spotlights, ready to deliver her absolute best, battle-tested material: a twenty-minute roasting of toxic boyfriends, terrible straight dating apps, and the mundane frustrations of heterosexual relationships.The resulting silence in the room is deafening.It turns out, The Velvet Curtain is a historic, ultra-trendy gay club, and her routine about straight boyfriends falls spectacularly, hilariously flat. To make matters worse, when she flees the stage in tears and pours her heart out to Julian in a damp alleyway, he drops a double-bomb: he is explicitly gay, and he actually owns the club.The Patron Saint of Broken Toasters is the hilarious, lightning-fast first volume in Cristina B.'s Fast-Forward Fiction Series. Written explicitly for busy people, tired minds, and anyone trapped in a brutal reading slump, this 15-chapter romantic comedy delivers zero filler, maximum laughs, and a relatable reminder that sometimes, your absolute worst catastrophes make the absolute best punchlines.