Just Her Type (14 page)

Chapter 21

Kendra left the room when
her panel discussion ended and headed to the long table with complimentary
coffee. She helped herself to a cup. Her thoughts kept drifting to that
wonderful date with Dominic and how fun and hot he was. The perfect combo.

Although she could tell he had a great body from
the moment she saw him in person, she still wasn’t prepared for Dominic in all
his shirtless glory —the deep-cut perfection of his shoulders, abs,
chest, and those muscle thingies that ran along the sides of his midsection.
What were they called?
Well-honed cords
slanting toward one another until they resembled an inverted arrowhead, leading
to
wowsers!
 
Their lustful embraces and those
sweats of his left little doubt what he was working with.
 
A
lot.
A little flutter of excitement warmed her core. Enough with the racy
musing.
Obliques!
Yes, that’s what those muscles were called
.

It was time to get down to a different sort of
business. She finished the last of her coffee and tossed the paper cup in the
nearby trash.
 
With purpose and a
full tote bag, she strode to the restaurant on the hotel’s second level, where
Corinne awaited her. No sign of Momster Ostertag.
  
Hallelujah!
She’d asked Corinne to come alone, but Corinne hadn’t
been so sure she could manage it with Mrs. Ostertag practically shadowing her
every move at the resort. During their hike, Corinne had revealed she was
twenty-seven, but her mousy manner and obvious deference to her domineering
mother made her seem much younger.

“Glad you could make it,” Kendra said when she
reached the table and sat. “I know you’re missing a keynote luncheon speaker
for this.”

“Not a problem.” Anticipation brightened Corinne’s
eyes. “I’m getting the podcast.”

 
Since
landing in Maui, Kendra had lost count of the number of times conference
attendees had mentioned that option.

 
When
the waitress appeared to take their drink orders, Kendra complimented the
sparkler on her left hand. “Wow. It’s blinding.”

“I know! He done good,” the waitress replied. “But
the man is more awesome than the ring.”

 
Kendra
and Corinne offered their congratulations.

After the waitress departed, Kendra nixed
additional preamble. “I finished my early reads of
Four
Simple Wishes
.
 
I loved it!”

“You did?” Corinne’s jubilation was infectious.

“Yes, I did!”

 
“Oh,
thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You don’t know how much that means to me.”
Corinne welled up and tried to fan the tears away. “This is a dream come true!
You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined hearing this from a top-tier
agent!”
 
She reached for her purse
on the floor and removed a tissue to dab at her eyes. “I’m sorry!”

“Don’t apologize.” This was one of the best things
about Kendra’s job, reading excellent writing and praising the author.
 
“You took a well-trod,
coming-of-age-overcoming-seemingly-insurmountable-odds-to-succeed-in-America
tale and made it fresh and fascinating. Oh, the insight and realism… And the
way you expertly braided past and present is beyond skillful, especially for a
writer of your age. America and Africa, atmospheric. And what you did with Nse.
He’s a truly unforgettable, multifaceted character. You expertly handled his
character arc. And all the ways in which you depicted how his traumatic
childhood informs his adult life… Unconventional. Inspired.
 
Blew me away!”

“Really? Inspired? Blew you away? I loved Nse,
too. The young Sierra Leone emigrant came to me when I was in college. I was
inspired by stories of my roommate’s family. She was from that country.
 
I interviewed several members of her
family over the years. Nse haunted me until I finished his story.”

“But it’s not just Nse. You populated the
narrative with so many intriguing characters… And the colorful prodigiously
researched detail…I don’t know where to begin,” Kendra said breathlessly. “It’s
a wonderfully meaty story many will relish sinking their teeth into.”

“Wow! Best-seller lists here I come!”

Kendra smiled. Many new authors
 
had stars in their eyes, fantasizing
about quitting the day job, landing movie deals,
 
topping the national best-seller lists,
counting loads of cash rolling in, and generating book-signing lines snaking
around bookstores and extending a couple of blocks.
 
In reality relatively few published
authors actually made a living wage from their book earnings alone.
 
However, these fantasies were part of
the fun. Similar to the experience of buying a Powerball ticket and then
mentally spending the cash before the numbers were announced.

 
Kendra
made a practice of tempering those hopes with a few dollops of caution and
truth without completely dashing them. She did not immediately shift into
dream-crushing detail about how the most prestigious best-seller list worked.
Technically that list didn’t just report who sold the most, but who’d sold the
most the fastest in the span of a few days. Slow and steady did not win that
particular race, even if slow and steady actually sold more books in the long
run.
 
And there were lots of other
“mystery” ingredients that the average reader knew or cared nothing about:
 
sample selected stores and wholesalers,
advertising, store placement, pre-orders, bulk orders, and insiders, or rather,
tastemakers who ultimately decided which books were actually worthy of
consideration. However, this was still considered the preeminent list and a
career milestone that gave an author street cred, even among those who hadn’t
picked up a novel since
 
their high
school lit class
The Great Gatsby
assignment.

 
“For
now, let’s just say it’s the kind of book certain acquisitions editors will go
wild over. I have this feeling—”

“You think I have a shot at a deal?”

“Yes, I do. We wouldn’t be sitting here if I
didn’t.”

“A
big
money deal?”

“Well.” Kendra paused because she wasn’t
comfortable making predictions about a large advance even if the book had a
better than average chance of receiving one.

“So this must mean you’re going to,” Corinne
bounced on her seat, fanning herself, “represent me?”

 
Kendra
paused again because she had to play this just right. “I’d love to—”

 
“Omigosh!” Corinne clapped her hands and
squealed. “I can’t believe it!” When the waitress returned with their teas
Corinne blurted, “I’m going to have official representation by Porter Literary
Agency! Kendra Porter! This is Kendra Porter! And I’m going to be an
agented
author! This is my dream come
true!”

Before departing, their waitress offered her
congratulations, asked Corinne’s full name, and wrote it down on her pad so she
could keep an eye out for the book.

 
“So we
do a written contract?” Corinne asked. “Oh, wait. Is our agreement verbal for
now?”

“I do written one-year contracts that renew
automatically unless one of the parties chooses to end it.”
 
Kendra opened a packet of sugar and
sprinkled it in her glass of iced tea. “Everything is spelled out. It’s fair
and pretty standard as far as client/agent agreements go. A thirty-day written
notice is required if you want to opt out at any point for any reason. No in
perpetuity demands or other egregious terms, you’ll see. But I fully expect and
encourage you to have someone with knowledge of these things look it over.”

“Do you have it with you? After I sign, how soon
do you think we can send the manuscript to editors? Omigosh! Wait ’til Mother
hears you want to represent me!”

“Here’s the thing.” Kendra removed folded papers
from her tote and passed them to Corinne. “Before we get to the agency
retainer, you need to look over this first.”

Corinne’s brow furrowed as she scanned it. “What’s
this?”

“An editorial letter,” Kendra said casually, while
studying Corinne’s reaction. “Revision letter.”

Corinne’s eyes clouded with confusion as she
counted the thirty-five pages of dense single-spaced type. “But, but, you said
it’s a wonderful book.”

“It is! It
is
a wonderful book, Corinne, but I think it needs a little work. Tweaking to get
it in the best shape possible before it goes out on submission. I sometimes
jokingly refer to it as a spit shine to impart a nice gloss as a finishing
touch.”

“But thirty-five single-spaced pages of
spit shine
?” Corinne stared in aghast
silence for several protracted moments.

Kendra sipped her tea, giving Corinne a few
moments to absorb her request. “Remember, it’s nearly
one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-word manuscript. Overly long for the market for
this type of book, actually.
 
It needs
some trimming. That word count is a tough sale these days unless it’s epic
sword and sorcery or something along those lines. As you can see, the bulleted
suggestions contain notes explaining my reasoning in greater detail.”

“You want to change the title?”

“
Four
Simple
Wishes
sounds like a Thomas Kinkade painting,” Kendra said.

“But what’s wrong with Thomas Kinkade paintings?”

“Nothing, if you like that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

Kendra paused. A successful partnership required
full disclosure so she forged ahead. “It’s a little too, well, twee.”

“Twee?”

“You know, too precious. The layered world you’ve
created is not cast in soft glow sorbet colors. The title doesn’t match such a
powerful book. We’ll need something with more punch. I want this one marketed a
particular way. This story will appeal to book clubs who go for more literary
and commercial upmarket reads. These groups tend to be female, but I also see
male readers taking to this in a big way, too, if it’s packaged and positioned
just right.”

 
“I
don’t understand,” Corinne said, her eyes intently scanning the type. “Yoshe is
one of my favorite characters.”

“Ahhh, Yoshe and Sharif. Well,” Kendra paused to
choose the right words, “perhaps you would consider combining them.”

“Combining them?” Corinne’s befuddled expression
morphed into one of revulsion, as if Kendra had instructed her to rewrite them
as conjoined, three-legged leprechauns.

“You see, their purpose and dialogue felt a little
repetitive. You can take the most interesting and essential parts of both and
make the two of them one character. I’m thinking Yoshe could remain, but give
him the most interesting bits of Sharif.
 
The story moves at a nice clip, especially for one hundred and fifty
thousand words, which is a credit to your skill, believe me, but there are a
few places where I feel things stalled a bit. That’s where the trimming will
help.”

 
“Trim?”

Kendra might as well have requested that Corinne
hack off a limb. “Chapters four and five can be tightened or cut altogether.
They felt like throat-clearing, or rather, static padding for what happens in
your more dynamic chapters six and seven. And some of the foreshadowing is a
wee bit heavy-handed.”

“Oxymoron.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wee bit heavy-handed. You know, jumbo shrimp.”

Uh-oh.
Kendra took Corinne’s remark as a wry joke and continued, “Your imagery is
good, but it can be strengthened in chapter ten and—”

When Corinne’s lips trembled Kendra paused. All
this emotion about revisions did not bode well for a future partnership, but
she refused to give up on working with Corinne. She was a novice, after all.
Kendra wanted to offer her a big hug. But it was too soon to reach out with
such a gesture before she had established her place as the literary
representative of record and become better acquainted with Corinne. Though
Kendra had enjoyed their bonding chat during that hike, she needed more time to
get a better read on Corinne’s emotional stability.
 

Kendra delighted in the amiable relationships
she’d cultivated with all of her clients.
 
One of her closest friends was Aurora Chastain, an author whose work
Kendra had acquired and edited when she worked as a senior editor at
Winn-Aster.
 
But as an agent, she’d
made the mistake of venturing into “buddy” territory one time too many in the
past.

One colleague had callously, yet accurately, used
something similar to the Homeland Security Advisory System to rate such
clients’ annoyance levels. Under his system three particular clients of
Kendra’s would be considered “code red clingers.”
 
This had led to some uneasy and
exhausting incidents where boundaries had been blurred.

Who could forget Blake Spencer’s frequent TMI
bodily fluid updates:
That stuff they
make you drink before a colonoscopy is no joke, had me spewing like Mount
Vesuvius for the better part of the day.
 
By the time I was done, I had nothing left to crap out but my damn
balls.

Kendra was nobody’s prude, but she could do
without the endless references to Blake’s “damn balls” and “jimmy.” She
preferred to pretend every male client had the groin region of a Ken doll.

 
“It is
a great book, Corinne. You must believe me when I say I absolutely love it. But
you have to understand I rarely send any new client’s work out without offering
editorial suggestions in order to get the best deal possible. That’s how I
operate, and I wanted you to know this upfront. Many clients consider my
background as a senior editor at a top publishing house an asset. And based on
what you said during our hike, I thought that was one of the reasons you wanted
to work with me.” Kendra was well aware some people questioned her assessment
of certain weightier literary fiction because her list was primarily commercial
fiction and genre work. And it probably didn’t help that she had a tendency to
express herself in the vernacular, because it felt like donning a comfy pair of
slippers. If she was sometimes underestimated because slang of the “good googly
moogly!” sort sprang for her lips or because she verbified too many nouns, so
be it.
 
I gotta be me.
 
And
underestimation had frequently worked in her favor.