When Treatment Means Losing Your Gig
Business keeps making hard choices
Cara Lockwood had survived 20 years in publishing — an industry where most authors never see a second contract. She’d written 35 novels, hit bestseller lists, and built a sustainable freelance career. Then breast cancer arrived, and she discovered something the oncologists don’t tell you: sometimes the treatment plan includes unemployment.
“My editor felt horrible,” Cara told me, her voice surprisingly steady. “She’s human. She’s very sweet. But I was three rounds from finishing chemo when they said the numbers weren’t what they’d hoped.”
The timing was deliberate cruelty. Not deliberate by her publisher — just by circumstance. In publishing, decisions about spring contracts happen in fall. Cara’s diagnosis came in September. By the time she was deep in treatment, wearing wigs to book signings and fighting nausea during interviews, the spreadsheets were already being calculated.
The Perfect Storm
“My insurance was running out,” Cara explained. “My COBRA was running out, and I was about to promote my newest book, The Takeover. Now doctors were saying mastectomy and chemotherapy. How was I going to do that and promote my book?”
Her oncologist had a simple solution: “You’ll just put it off.”
“She was a wonderful doctor,” Cara said, “but she doesn’t understand the publishing industry. They’d already put 200 books in reviewers’ hands. There was momentum. In this time when nobody has attention and attention spans are microscopic, if you say ‘don’t worry, it’ll be three to six months,’ you’ve lost the audience. You’re not getting them back.”
This is the invisible bind of cancer in the gig economy. No employer means no short-term disability. No HR department means no accommodations. Your choice becomes stark: disappear and lose everything you’ve built, or show up sick and hope nobody notices.
The Framework That Saved Her
When I asked Cara how she navigated being fired mid-treatment, she returned to what became her North Star: “Cancer doesn’t get to decide — you do.”
“My counselor gave me that gift early,” she said. “She’d had cancer herself — a hysterectomy to get rid of it. She just really helped me see: cancer doesn’t get to decide.”
This isn’t toxic positivity. This is about recognizing what remains in your control when so much isn’t.
“Up until then, I was in a tailspin. Cancer’s in control. I just have to react constantly. But she said cancer doesn’t get to decide. You get to decide your treatment. You get to decide how you feel about it. Cancer doesn’t decide any of those things.”
The Real Test
Cara tested this philosophy immediately. Despite her oncologist’s advice, she did the book tour.
“I had to keep to the schedule if I wanted the book to succeed, which I did. It was my baby. I’d spent a year on it.”
She showed up to signings. Posted on Instagram. Made promotional videos. All while wondering: “My life wasn’t a romcom, and I was promoting a romcom. How is that gonna work?”
It worked because she made a choice: her book mattered as much as her treatment. Both were about survival — one physical, one professional.
“I had an amazing support system,” she acknowledged. “My husband PJ is a rock star. Former little league soccer coach, so his pep talks were in that vein — ‘Come on, let’s go, let’s do this!’ It was hard to stay down on myself.”
When the Hammer Fell
The Takeover hit the USA Today bestseller list. Cara had done it — dragged herself through treatment without missing a deadline. Her reward? A pink slip.
“I not only had cancer, not only in the middle of chemotherapy, but also had no job.”
Here’s where Cara’s framework proved its worth. She could have crumbled. Instead: “That’s not gonna kill me.”
“In the middle of it, I was just like, okay, that’s not gonna kill me. I’m focused on getting healthy, and then I’m gonna pick myself up just like I have many times before.”
The Unspoken Truth About Comebacks
“I’ve been fired and rehired by one publisher twice,” Cara revealed. “Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Hachette is my current publisher, St. Martin’s Macmillan — I’ve worked for all of them.”
This wasn’t her first time being dropped. But it was her first time being dropped while potentially dying.
“It’s a numbers game. What’s trendy? What are people reading now? Do they want more mysteries than romance? Do they want fantasy romance and not contemporary romance?”
The difference this time was perspective.
“Am I dying? Like literally, am I dying? No? Okay, then it’s fine.”
The Deeper Reckoning
What struck me most was Cara’s revelation about self-talk. “The mindset I have now, I didn’t always have. I had a lot of self-doubt when I was younger. A lot of imposter syndrome. Those negative thoughts played on a playlist in my head straight up through until my diagnosis.”
After her double mastectomy, something shifted. “I gave myself, internally, like a good job. You did a good job. And there was no backhanded compliment. There was no passive aggressiveness. It was a genuine compliment. And I just cried because it was maybe the first time in my adult life I had given myself a genuine compliment.”
Cancer stripped away more than her breasts. It stripped away decades of self-sabotage.
“No more of this negative talk. I had really come to see how damaging it was. It was just on autopilot in the background the whole time.”
The New Contract
Six months after being dropped, Cara signed with Hachette. New book coming in 2026. She knew she would — not because of magical thinking, but because of history.
“I knew it would be okay because I was focused on getting healthy. Because if I wasn’t healthy and I wasn’t here, then there would be no books anyway.”
The Questions That Matter
As I talked with Cara, I kept thinking about everyone facing similar “perfect storms” — illness meets livelihood, treatment meets career death. Her story raises questions we need to ask:
When your industry doesn’t understand illness, how do you advocate for yourself?
What’s worth fighting for during treatment, and what isn’t?
How do you rebuild professionally when you can’t hide what happened?
Where does “cancer doesn’t get to decide” meet “cancer is reality”?
The real revelation isn’t that Cara got a new contract. It’s that she gave herself permission to matter as much as her disease. Her books. Her career. Her identity is more than a patient.
“Am I dying? No? Okay, then it’s fine.”
Sometimes the most radical act is refusing to let cancer be the most interesting thing about you.