Smart as Hell. Not a Presence
Caroline “Cary” Valente has done everything right: low error rates, immaculate decks, carefully calibrated tone. She’s the dependable one in the open-plan office; the “perfectly useful ghost” who keeps the machine running while louder people get the promotions, the credit, and the corner offices.
But the night she grabs a wedding mic and torches her “steady” career, she has to decide whether to keep cleaning up the numbers, or finally cross the bridge to a life where she counts, too.
Set in the fluorescent glare of corporate life, Crossing in One Piece is corporate women’s fiction with bite: an office satire about burnout recovery, midlife career change, imposter syndrome, and what happens when a woman decides that being “too much” is exactly enough.
Now available on Kindle & Paperback
I didn’t write Crossing in One Piece just to tell a “corporate” story. I wrote it for every woman who has ever made herself smaller to survive.
A recent reviewer said the book “shook something awake in me… a call to stop shrinking, and start seeing myself clearly.” That’s exactly the kind of disruption Cary’s story was meant to spark.
We do this every day—minimize, edit, carve away the parts of ourselves that feel “too much” or “not enough.” But enough is enough.
If you’ve ever felt invisible at work, in a relationship, or in your own life, Crossing in One Piece is my love letter and wake-up call to you: you were never meant to be small.
Table of contents
Each Chapter starts with a haiku… here are a few samples
Chapters
1
Rows of names align. Table nine becomes a trapdoor. Logic fails me now.
2
Champagne and candle, the mask begins to crumble. Seen, yet still alone.
4
Shame tastes like vodka. Headache, bagel, hazelnut. I can’t swallow time.
7
Logic forms a spine. The shaky ladder holds firm. Bridges call me home.
15
Route One neon glows. Roast beef, tiki, hometown truths. Bridges lead me back.
19
Five faces, one ask. Cost words tug, offer glimmers. Miss you or lose me.
About the author
colleen hoskins
Colleen Hoskins is a recovering Sales & Revenue Operations leader who spent 17+ years turning messy pipeline data into neat executive decks while quietly wondering if she’d ever be brave enough to blow up a life that looked great on paper. A Boston College grad who meant to be a kindergarten teacher and accidentally built a tech career instead, she worked her way from admin to Director before taking a planned break to raise her two sons and relocate to Las Vegas.
Crossing in One Piece is her debut novel, inspired by the women who fix everything for everyone else and only later ask what they actually want. She loves early 90s R&B, tarot cards, and any story where a woman stops shrinking to fit other people’s comfort and finally takes up her full, complicated, glorious space.
What readers said
★★★★★
I didn’t just love this book-I felt it. It shook something awake in me.
★★★★★
Reading Colleen’s writing is like having a friend tell you her secrets.
★★★★★
Well written, empowering, and entertaining – this is women’s fiction at its finest.
Colleen Hoskins 