FOURTEEN

Sam

The woman is a menace.

She’s like a woman made of iron – everything about her is so shielded, even her gaze is steely – and that’s to say nothing about her attitude.

I often find my gaze drifting to her involuntarily, like a planet being dragged toward a scorching hot sun, my eyes land on her, and then I hear her voice, scathing and clipped.

It is not wise, Mr. King, to put ultimatums in place if you are not willing to follow them through when needed.

And then I tear my gaze away.

Yet still, it’s as if I cannot escape her. Not that this is surprising, I hired her, after all.

Every day for the next week, when I arrive at the office at 7 am, I find Dani already there, bent over her desk. Reading manuscripts, making notes, typing emails.

It’s on the Saturday when I finally say something.

I’m not even supposed to be in on a Saturday, as a rule, I keep my weekends free to read at home or play football with Vic. Only I realized I’d left my laptop in my office and had decided to pop in and get it on my way back from jogging.

And then, there she is. In exactly the same position and posture she’s been in all week. When I enter, she looks up from the pages, and her eyes widen slightly.

I clear my throat. “What are you doing here?”

Dani coughs, she’s barely blinking, her eyes fixed firmly on my face as if scared to look elsewhere. I cast a glance down at myself, I suppose I do look a little worse for wear, red-faced and sweating and in loose black jogging gear as opposed to my usual work-suits.

Dani coughs again, blinks rapidly, and then says; “My first acquisitions meeting is next week, I need to prepare myself as much as possible,” she clears her throat. “There are two fresh new authors I want to take on from the submissions pile. I can’t miss the opportunity to pitch well.”

I can feel my eyebrows lifting. I’m not in the habit of questioning others’ work ethics, particularly when they’re working hard, but I’m beginning to wonder if this woman ever spends any time sleeping.

“How long do you plan on being here?”

Dani continues to blink up at my face, as if refusing to allow her gaze to drift lower than my chin. “Another couple of hours and then I have to go check on my –” she cuts herself off. “Then I need to go home.”

I nod and continue to stand there for another moment, and so for a few heartbeats, we’re simply looking at each other. Dani, serious and perplexed, me… confused as all hell.

I pull my gaze away and then, without ceremony, walk into my office and grab my laptop. On my way out, I pause again – just for a fraction of a second – and then keep walking.

I march my way down all the flights of stairs to the foyer. My laptop bag is heavy slung over my shoulder, and my legs are aching from my run, but it’s my head that’s whirring.

Even the way she tilts her head… it puts me in mind of that girl from so very long ago.

I pause when I reach the foyer front doors.

The coffee stand is still open.

Within moments, I find myself standing in line.

Fifteen minutes later I’m back at her desk.

“You like coffee, right?” I say, placing a cup in front of her. “I mean, you always seem to be drinking the stuff.”

Dani smiles, only briefly, it’s there and then gone. But I could have sworn I saw it. “Thank you… I didn’t realize you took much notice of me.”

I clear my throat. “It’s not that I overly notice you… it’s just that you’re loud in everything you do.”

Dani tilts her head to the side. “Right… I’ll try to be quieter.”

That’s not what I mean.

But I’m not sure what I do mean.

“Don’t overwork yourself,” I say, “It won’t do me any good if one of my employees passes out from exhaustion.”

Dani laughs. “I promise to pass out somewhere off premises.”

Again, I’m not sure that’s what I mean. “I look forward to hearing your pitches.”

Dani nods. “I aim to impress.”

Again, I can’t think of anything more to say, so I nod once more and leave, and this time I make it all the way to the foyer doors.

 ---

I'm always interested to see what my editors bring to the acquisitions meetings. I'm always interested to see what has caught their eye and what they think would be a good fit for the publishing house.

But I've never felt… nervous before.

And why should I?  It’s not like I’m the one presenting, all I have to do is answer yes or no.

I take my usual position between Christine and Mark and watch eagle-eyed as the editors file in to take their seats around the table.

Dani walks in last, I watch as she makes to close the door, but then she catches my eye and leaves it just a little bit ajar.

My hands suddenly seem to want to move – to tap the table or rub the back of my neck.

The meeting starts and Christine begins it as she always does, while Mark prepares to make notes about the projects pitched to be passed onto the marketing team. My only job is to sit there and look stern.

Not many of the editors are pitching. Many of them are far too preoccupied with their already existing lists to take on any new work. Aside from Dani, only Malcom is pitching. Malcolm goes first, in a flustered chaotic way that requires a lot of flitting back and forth in his notepad. On the projector, there's one slide with information on the author. It's a sci-fi novel about space pirates committing an intergalactic heist, a standalone. He argues that it would be a start toward filling the SciFi gap that we currently have in the house.

I don’t disagree.

When it's Dani’s turn, I can feel my own breath hitch inside my throat – my whole body stills, as though every fibre of me is simply waiting to hear her speak.

She wasn’t lying when she said she wanted to be prepared.

When she stands up, she faces the room, picks up the projector remote, with a polite smile and a satisfying click, her presentation begins.

And just like that, I can breathe again.

“The first of my authors is Jermaine Cloud. He is twenty-nine-years-old, from a rural village and currently works as a teaching assistant at a school for disadvantaged kids. He has a degree in English Lit and is, as of yet, completely unpublished. However, he has a great online presence, he runs a blog called the Middle of Middle Earth where he reviews fantasy worlds. His following is relatively small, a couple of thousand, but there’s a real community feel, and he has posted consistently for the past three years. As an author, he feels like a safe bet. Easily marketable, safe background, accessible, likeable and genuinely passionate.”

Click.

“But it’s the work that is the real winner here. He’s represented by an agent that I’ve worked with before, I’m sure a lot of you know Sally Flint from Atticus? She sent it to me ahead of time because she knows gold when she sees it. Jermaine has not only written one of the most polished manuscripts I’ve ever seen, but he also has detailed outlines of the first three novels of a seven-book series.”

Click.

“Thor’s Legacy is a fantasy series following the life and trials of Thor, from his perspective. It is dark and comedic with extensive world-building. The first book covers Thor stealing the Mjolnir and his first feud with Loki. The brother’s relationship and dynamic is introduced here as purely antagonistic but with some solid foreshadowing of the way it might develop in the future.”

Click.

“I truly believe that this could be the next big fantasy series for Lonely Fox and would compete nicely alongside with other giants in the market. There’s room for spin-off novels and merchandise and even a webtoon.”

Click.

Dani stops talking for a moment, and the screen is filled with statistics and artwork. It takes me a moment to realize that she has already contacted an artist who would be willing to adapt the novels into a webtoon.

“As a marketing strategy, this would mean that it could easily hit two different markets at once and give it a longevity that some of our other flagship series lack.”

Click.

Another slide shows our three highest-selling authors and their own marketing strategies.

My God, I think, she’s doing the sales and marketing team’s job for them.

Click.

“On a personal level, I found his writing sharp and engaging and I burned through this 110,000-word novel in less than three days.”

Behind her, there are quotes from the manuscript blown up big on the screen.

I am a god. And I will take what is mine.

If you are going to give me grief, let it be at my funeral.

If something is worth having, then it is worth stealing.

There is one final click, and there is another screen filled with potential release dates and strategies with a mock cover sporting a large and cursive title, THOR’S LEGACY: THE SNARING OF MJOLNIR.

“Thank you for listening. Any questions?”

For a moment, there is silence, and then Mark asks; “Does it have to be a series?”

Dani nods immediately. “Yes. The series follows all Thor’s adventures from stealing back his hammer, to fighting the snake at Midgard all the way to Ragnarok. This series is for fans of epic fantasy, the ones who enjoy slipping into other worlds and immersing themselves in that world fully and completely. Also, from a publishing level, adding another epic fantasy series to our backlist could establish us as even bigger players in the high fantasy market.”

I'm vaguely aware of Mark nodding next to me, but I don’t take much notice. Instead, I hear the echo of a young girl’s voice in my head.

I find that when this world gets too unbearable, there are other worlds to slip into.

It can’t be a coincidence, all these similarities between them. It can’t be.

No other questions follow, and so Dani smiles her polite smile again and clicks the projector.

“As Malcolm already stated with his pitch. Lonely Fox specializes in fantasy, but the kind of fantasy we publish is relatively narrow. While we do have some fantasy romance books, we are woefully behind the trend when it comes to the ever-growing romantasy genre.”

She clicks the projector remote once more, and another title is thrust upon the screen.

HEART OF THE DEMON QUEEN.

“Written by Sonja Scarlet, previous winner of the Juicy Tales Short Story comp, this follows the story of an overthrown Demon Queen who is banished to the mortal world as a mortal with a curse. She must kill every full moon to stay alive. In her attempt to make her way back to the underworld and regain her rightful place, she recruits the help of a Demonology Professor and, to her horror, starts to fall in love.”

Across the table, Melody scoffs. When all eyes turn to her, she flushes red. “I’m sorry, it just…it kind of seems like… chick-flick.”

Dani nods. “It’s a romantasy. It’s supposed to be a hot and steamy fantasy to entertain and binge. And it is bingeable. It’s a standalone, but I asked the author whether she has ideas to set more romances in the same world and she does. There’s a lot of scope here to have a solid romantasy writer who can consistently write different types of romances set in the same magical world, it’ll broaden our general reading audience and besides… it’s fun.” This time there’s a tinge of pink to Dani’s cheeks.

She goes through the rest of the slides with less panache, but they are just as extensively researched as her first, and by the end, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that we will be publishing both.

Christine clears her throat. “This was an excellent session team, let’s take a break and reconvene after lunch, okay?”

I'm watching people leave the room in a haze. Mark and Christine are clearly talking to me, but I’m not hearing a single word.

“Hold on a moment,” I say.

I’m not sure what I’m doing until I find myself watching Dani hop in the elevator. I hesitate, watch as the doors ping close, and then take the stairs instead.

I don’t know what I’m going to say to her, congratulate her, maybe? Tell her just how impressed I am with her presentations?

When I get to the ground floor, I can just make out the back of her head next to Malcolm as they walk toward the coffee cart, I’m just about to call for her when -

“Samwell!”

I freeze in my tracks. I know that voice.

I hate that voice.

There is the click-clack of heels, the waft of an apple-spiced perfume, and then my sister is standing beside me. Tall and pretty and poisonous and perfect.

“You are a hard man to reach, little brother.”

Apparently, not hard enough.