The Publicist Book One and Two (3 page)

Chapter Five

In 1969, Morris & Dean published an iconic bestseller called
The Fall
. It was written by Allan Lavigne, a timid but wildly talented writer. In order to get the contract, MD signed him for a two-book deal; the next book was due the following year. But 1970 came and went and no book. Thirty years later, the second book still hadn’t arrived. If it did, MD was obligated to publish it. Clive Morris, one of the founders of the company, was so fond of Lavigne’s work that he had his attorneys put together an ironclad contract that no amount of legal wrangling could get them out of. So, Lavigne became somewhat of a legend around MD—the only author with a two-book contract who had yet to deliver on his second title. No one believed they’d ever see the book, and Allan was still living off of whatever residual sales came from the first book, the movie, and the foreign rights that had been sold off years before.

Kate met Allan one day while she stopped to get Chinese food in the East Village. Without realizing who he was, she struck up a conversation with him. That was almost three years ago, and they had been friends ever since. Allan lived in a small, stuffy, fourth-floor walk-up. The stairs were getting harder and harder for him to navigate, and he swore to Kate that one of these days he would move to the country and live in the cottage he’d always dreamed of owning.

Kate had studied Lavigne’s work in college, writing her creative thesis on his only book. When she realized whom she befriended, she decided not to tell people at MD, lest she become the butt of their jokes as well: The poor little publicist helping the author who lost all creative spin. But Allan hadn’t lost his creativity, Kate was certain of it. During her weekly visits to his apartment, she’d make sure his food was stocked, that he was taking his blood pressure pills, and that he was writing. He promised her he was, and he would occasionally tempt her with a paragraph or two from his second book. The truth was, Allan was as afraid of another success as he was not living up to the expectations of the reviewers who would surely decide his fate. His first book had taken him by storm, and his life had never been the same. Now, he was a forgotten footnote on the literary world. He feared another book would either send him to the bottom of the book barrel or launch him into a spotlight he no longer wanted to be a part of.

Kate walked up Twenty-Second Street to Allan’s apartment. Her arms were heavy with groceries she’d picked up knowing that if Allan had shopped, he’d probably forgotten to get anything green, fresh, or healthy. When Kate arrived, she found Allan’s door ajar and the aging author on the phone. Kate let herself in, trying not to startle Allan, who sat in his easy chair cradling the phone. He spotted Kate and smiled, “Listen, Nicholas, I need to go. Kate’s here. I look forward to seeing you next week.”

Allan clicked off the phone. Getting up from his chair, he hugged Kate, which had become their greeting.

“Katie, good to see you. How are things in your world?”

Kate smiled. She loved Allan. He was at once her friend, mentor, and confidant. She respected his insight and wisdom. His advice related to her career or books she was working on had been spot on. Allan could sniff out a good title and knew almost instinctively what would sell in publishing and what wouldn’t. Although he had abandoned anything to do with the literary world years ago, he would frequent his library to read copies of
Publishers Weekly,
and kept up on the latest goings on in the industry.

“I’m good. Well, now I am. Things are much better.”

“Tough week, I know. But you solved the Haley situation. Good job.” He winked. Kate smiled; his approval meant the world to her. While they talked, Allan helped her unload the groceries. It was almost five and Kate noticed he was still in his bathrobe.

Allan suffered from occasional bouts of depression that he refused to get any help for. It was all Kate could do to get him to take his blood pressure medicine on time. He refused anything else.

“Just a bit blue,” he’d say and brush it off. But Kate knew better. Growing old alone in a busy city that favored socializing wasn’t easy. Allan had a few friends; most of them lived outside the city and rarely visited. His nephew Nicholas, who lived in Monterey, would fly out every six weeks or so to visit his uncle, but that was the extent of his family. His sister had died years before, leaving his nephew to care for an uncle he barely knew.

“So, Nicholas is coming for another visit?”

“Yes,” Allan smiled. “I hope you get a chance to meet him someday. He’s a good kid. You’d like him.” A soft smile pressed to Allan’s lips. He was forever trying to fix Kate up with people he met. Most of them were too old for Kate or unemployed writers—the last thing Kate needed in her life. Someone else with a book to sell. Kate wanted to meet someone who wasn’t in the book business; the industry was far too incestuous. Having someone who knew everyone she knew just seemed a tad too close for comfort. She’d tried dating in the industry and each time it had failed, badly. Not only that, but when it ended, everyone knew. In a few cases, her flagging love life ended up on a blog or two.
Galley Cat
, a widely read industry blog, had been discreet enough to stay away from break ups, but she knew it was only a matter of time before love-fatalities ended up there as well. If they did, she was certain to be one of them. Kate had the knack of picking perfectly wrong men for her. But not just wrong, wrong by anyone’s measure— even her old high school friend Sofie, who she now only heard from when she pinged her on Facebook. Sofie used to “grade on a curve,” Even her lower-grade-point-average couldn’t justify some of Kate’s choices in men. So, Kate set her love life aside and decided to focus on her career, which was going. Although, at times she wasn’t sure it was headed in the right direction.

“So, will you come by and meet Nicholas when he’s in town?” Allan asked, pulling Kate from her thoughts.

“I’ll try, Allan.” She offered, “Now let’s make sure you take your meds.”

Chapter Six

Sales meetings were held each Wednesday at MD, and everyone from the sales departments to the editors in charge of the new titles to the marketing and publicity departments were required to attend. The meetings were long and often painful. Despite MD’s willingness to back the titles they worked with, not every book was paid equal attention. With all the titles they published each year it just wasn’t possible. At times, Kate hated the meetings, especially when she had a special connection to an author, as she did with Janet Easter who wrote the kind of romance novels that were believable and ended happily. Janet never used a single cuss word or sex scene, but she still managed to leave the reader fulfilled. Kate wasn’t sure how she did it but always marveled at her work. Kate had worked with Janet almost her entire career at MD. She was astonished that despite the sales Janet pulled in for her books year after year, she was never considered an MD star—just one of their long list of authors, a stable provider of “sure sells.” Janet was a sure thing. After forty-five books, she had a following and an almost guarantee of sales for each book. MD didn’t see why anything more had to be invested in the author; she was on working off her own momentum. Also, she wasn’t sexy. Her books were sweet but not racy—not the kind that “made the list” as the bestseller lists were often called.

Over the years, Kate and Janet had become friends. Kate knew all the goings-on with Janet’s eleven children and as many grandchildren. Kate had once asked Janet why she didn’t succumb to a flashier style of writing, to which Janet replied, “I don’t want to write anything I’d be ashamed for my grandchildren to read. Frankly, I don’t know how Jackie Collins sleeps at night.”

Kate doodled on her lined pad, waiting for the meeting to start. Mac walked in and took the empty seat beside her, which he often did. She liked Mac, despite his rumored reputation. She found him to be honest and sincere, and, of course, dangerously handsome. Kate loved to watch the sales staff, which was largely female, try to sidle up to Mac or smile sweetly from across the room. Mac tended to ignore open displays of flirtation. Kate assumed he was classier than that, or perhaps he was just more careful. If the rumors were to be believed, he clearly was.

Mac leaned into her; she could smell his cologne, which was almost intoxicating.

“So what’s new in Katie’s world?” His voice was soft and almost seductive; he was so close, she could feel his breath on her neck. He voice carried the slightest hint of an accent that revealed the truth about Mac. He wasn’t from New York originally, but then again, who was? Everyone seemed to collect on this island from all over the world.

“Just keeping busy, eager to hear what tomorrow’s review of Sasha’s book will be like. I wish they hadn’t been so tightlipped about it.”

At that moment, Edward Sherman entered the room. He was often called “The King.” Edward was a graying man of sixty-five, a legend in the industry, and CEO of Morris & Dean Publishing. It was rumored that he could sniff out a bestselling book from a sea of unedited manuscripts. If Edward wanted to publish it, you could bet it would hit the list. But, there was a time or two when even The King would pick a book that just couldn’t carry its weight. On the rare occasion when something didn’t hit the mark, it was quickly forgotten amidst the other wildly successful titles. Edward carried himself like the New York royalty he was—one of the few people who could say he was born and raised on the Island. He often joked that there was no world outside Manhattan, well, no world that mattered anyway. He lived with his wife of almost forty years on the Upper East Side, in a sprawling and expensive apartment overlooking his favorite city in the world. Edward came from old money and good breeding. He had an air of dignity that was only marred by an occasional wrist slapping when he got too close or too friendly with one of his female co-workers—something that Edward did whenever the mood struck him. And often, considering his status, he got exactly what he wanted. The minute he did, however, the girl would vanish, either into the bowels of the company or some far-flung publishing house no one had ever heard of. Sex with Edward Sherman was not a corporate climb but a descent into professional oblivion. Still, there were women who were willing to risk it—who were enamored with the idea of being close to power. And Edward was powerful. A single call could get him anything, from dinner with Madonna to golf at a private club with whoever was currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Shall we begin?”

It was how Edward always started these meetings. He would smile, welcome his team, and listen as the various teams presented their reports. Mac got up from where he was sitting and headed to the front of the room.

“We’ve got a lot to focus on, team, so let’s get started. Before I hand this over to our salespeople, I wanted to alert you to the fact that we are currently in the works to get a few very high-profile titles.” Mac ran through the list, and Kate wondered how many of these she’d actually end up with. All of them sounded exciting and perfect for her. Mac sat down and turned it over to the head of their sales team, Charlie Manning, who’d been with MD for ten years and was one of the best sales leaders the company had ever seen.

Charlie began, “Let’s talk about electronic rights.” He knew this wasn’t Edward’s favorite topic. “We need to move several of our older titles into eBooks and determine their pricing, which, as you know, remains challenging.”

“I fucking hate eBooks,” Edward said. “When I was first in this business, there was no discussion of electronic rights. Who wants to read a book on a fucking contraption?”

“If I may, Sir,” Charlie ventured, “the number of eBooks sold continues to rise. We need to get our backlist out there. It’ll be a great extra revenue stream for MD.”

Charlie knew how to reach Edward.

“It’s all Amazon’s fault,” he said and then paused. “Fine. Send me the list of books you want to convert and I’ll go over them. eBooks, what a fucking joke.” Edward was never one to silence his opinions, especially when it came to something he hated.

During the meeting, all of the PR people were required to offer their status reports. When Kate got up to give her five-minute run-through, Mac leaned into her and said, “Go get ’em, Tiger.”

Mac always said something to make her giggle. This meeting was no exception. Usually, he joked about some lame thing someone else had just said, but this time he sensed that she needed his support, especially since this was the first sales meeting since the dreaded “Haley incident.”

Kate rattled off the list of her authors and the media she’d secured for all of them. plus media for those authors who had hired outside PR firms to supplement what MD was doing.

“Now, to Sasha…” she paused to thumb through her notes. “We’re expecting a review in
The
Times
tomorrow.” She smiled triumphantly. A review in
The
New York Times
was hard to come by, but she’d called in a few favors for this title, knowing how much she needed it to succeed. Since it was Mac’s book, she wanted it to succeed for him as well.

“Oh, bad news, Kate,” Pete spoke up from the back of the room. Without even seeing his face, Kate would know his scratchy voice anywhere. “We just got an advance copy of the review. It’s not good.”

Kate hated it when Pete embarrassed her in meetings, and she could never figure out why he did it, other than he was just a vicious little wannabe. Mac reached over to touch her hand and then pulled back, knowing a room full of eyes was on them both.

Kate composed herself before speaking; a bad review in
The
Times
could sink a title,

“How do you know, Pete?” she eyed the little twerp in the back as he sucked on his canned soda.

Pete pushed a thread of red hair out of his face and smiled. “The reviewer called for you earlier, and you weren’t there. So I took a message.” He seemed almost triumphant. The room was silent.

“Thank you, Pete,” Kate said quietly. “That’s the end of my report.” Kate lowered herself in her seat and Mac leaned over. “
The Times
is a bunch of illiterate know-it-alls, anyway, but everyone here is too stuffy to admit they’re passé.” Kate chuckled, a few heads turned in their direction, and Kate averted her eyes. Mac could always make her laugh.

Later that afternoon, Kate had a copy of the dreaded review emailed over to her. It was horrible; the reviewer used phrases like “hideously stagnant.” Kate shredded the review the minute she read it and then realized how stupid it was to do that. By tomorrow, millions of people would have a copy of it in their hot little hands. Soon, copies of Sasha’s novella would come screaming back into their warehouses by the carton load. Book returns: The scourge of the publishing industry and the quickest way to end any writer’s career.

It was now two o’clock, and Kate wondered if it was too early to start drinking.