The Publicist (4 page)

“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 and especially when it came to something he hated.

During the meeting, each of the PR people was required to offer their status report. 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 and also 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 and 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 wanna-be. 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 words 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 and soon, copies of Sasha’s novel 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.

.

Chapter Seven

The phone shrieked to life at three a.m. Kate pushed through a fog of sleep and realized the shrilling was coming from her bedside table. A call in the middle of the night was never good. As she fought to fully clear her mind, she worried that it was her mother calling to tell her it was her father. A heart attack? Or maybe her brother in Afghanistan? None of it was good, she was certain of that.

“Hello?” she said hesitantly and still half-asleep. There was sobbing at the other end of the phone, which caused her to sit upright immediately.

“Mom?” she said to the female voice at the other end, “Mom, is that you? Are you ok?”

More sobbing.

“Mom, please answer me….”

“Kate, it’s me…. Sasha….” the sobbing continued. For a moment, Kate couldn’t recall the name. A childhood friend? Neighbor of her parents? Suddenly it hit her: Sasha, her author. But how could she…. “The review, Kate, it’s horrible, the whole world hates me….” Sasha interrupted her thoughts as she continued to sob through the phone.

“I just picked up an advance copy of the
Times
,” she explained, her breath coming out in heaving gasps, “everyone hates me.”

“Sasha, everyone doesn’t hate you, just the
Times
.” The minute the statement was out of her mouth, she realized it was a mistake. The sobbing grew more intense as though someone had suddenly cut off her right hand, thereby ending any future attempts at ever writing again. Kate frowned. She could write with her mouth, holding a pencil, Kate had seen someone do it on a reality show once, or maybe it was a biography on Lifetime. She couldn’t recall. The sobbing wore on. Kate knew she needed to say something, “Sasha, listen, I didn’t mean that, the
Times
doesn’t hate you, don’t put too much credibility in that reviewer, I hear he’s illiterate anyway and wouldn’t know a good book if it walked up and bit him in the ass.”

Sasha continued sobbing, “It’s my life’s work!” she screamed.

Kate wanted to bash her head in with the phone; it was not her life’s work, she was twenty-two and while the book wasn’t as horrible as the
Times
review would claim it to be, if this was the extent of her life’s work, they were all in trouble. MD had signed Sasha for a three-book deal but Kate was certain the minute Edward saw this review, he would be courting his lawyers to get them out of the deal unless she could produce something that would warrant a kind nod from the
Times
.

“Listen, Sasha, the
Washington Post
is doing a story on it, I saw the advanced copy and it’s a good one…”

“Who gives a crap about the
Post
? They’re not even in New York.” Sasha spat into the phone. Much like Edward, Sasha was a New York snob. And while she wanted everyone to believe she’d been born and raised in New York, her birth certificate begged to differ. Sasha, or Susan as she was named at birth, heralded from Lincoln, Nebraska but she refused to acknowledge either her real name or her birthplace.

“Sasha, don’t worry, it’ll be fine, I promise. We’ll fix this.” As soon as Kate said those words, she realized she’d been saying that a lot lately. She was just grateful she wasn’t on a rooftop somewhere trying to talk another author out of jumping. She might just let them jump next time. No, she couldn’t do that. They were just misguided. And self-absorbed. Yes, that too. But not all of them; just
her
authors. Or so it seemed. Sometimes she swore MD made all their authors take a personality test and the craziest, most unstable ones were given to Kate.

Sasha was speaking, but Kate was absorbed in her own thoughts: “How?!” Sasha screamed again; she hated it when people ignored her. Kate knew this from months back when an email Sasha had sent to her wasn’t responded to for an hour. Sasha finally called to see if Kate had left the company. She had been at lunch when the email came in, “Well, don’t you have an iPhone?” Sasha had insisted. Kate had gone to Mac to see if they could move up the street date of the book, thereby ending the length of time she’d have to work with Sasha. Mac just laughed and said it wasn’t possible, Kate knew this, of course, but it was worth a try.

“Sasha, it’s three a.m., I have an eight a.m. breakfast meeting with the head of Barnes & Noble on Fifth to talk about your signing, and I need to get my sleep. I will call you once the meeting is over and we’ve finalized the plans for your event.”

“What if they cancel?!” She was still yelling, Kate couldn’t take it anymore. It was now twenty after three and she needed to get this lunatic off the phone as quickly as she could.

“They won’t. Good night, Sasha, I’ll speak with you tomorrow.” Kate ended the call and turned her phone off. She lay in bed for a few minutes, recalling the irrational tone in Sasha’s voice and making a mental note to recommend to Mac that they assign her to a new PR person for her next book if MD decided to renew her option.

Kate drifted back off to sleep, wondering briefly how the hell Sasha had gotten a hold of her unlisted number.

.

Chapter Eight

“How did Sasha get my home phone number?” Kate stood in Mac’s doorway. He looked up and smiled.

“Good morning to you too, Katie.” Mac leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly.

“Seriously, Mac, she called me at home at three this morning. She was hysterical.”

“You didn’t know? Her father is CIA.” Mac said, emphasizing the “a.”

Kate walked into his office and dropped herself into a chair, “Great, why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“I would have but who would have known she’d use Daddy for her own personal gain?”

Kate rolled her eyes, “Come on, Mac, this is Sasha we’re talking about after all.”

“Well, listen, I’ll have a talk with her and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Was she calling about her review in the
Times
?”

“No, she was
wailing
about her review and yes, please do talk to her.” Kate got up to leave, “What the hell am I going to do with this, Mac?”

“Do with what, Katie? A bad review? This isn’t your fault, you know.”

Kate sighed, “I know, but I’m a publicist. People expect me to just magically make everything all right.”

“I think you used all of your magic up on Haley, Kate. You did a great job rescuing that by the way.”

Kate was so sick of talking about Haley should could scream, but she knew Mac meant well. “Thanks, Mac,” she said quietly and started to get up to leave.

“Katie, wait, I have something else I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Sure, what it is?”

“Not here, over dinner.” Mac let the word dinner hang in the air, almost intentionally.

Kate frowned, “What’s going on, Mac?”

“Nothing, but a big project for you and I think you’ll want to hear about it over dinner.” He smiled.

“A big project? How big?”

“Big.”

“Ok, does seven work for you for dinner?”

“I’ll make reservations.”

“Reservations? What’s this about? Can’t we just grab a sandwich somewhere?”

“No, Katie, this is big. You’ll want to celebrate this.”

Kate smiled and left Mac’s office, wondering what he was up to.

.

Chapter Nine

In every publisher’s career there is always at least one book that becomes a publishing legend. Morris & Dean was fortunate to have several such titles, but most recently it had been a book called
The Promise
. Written by a Texas housewife,
The Promise
was a runaway best seller, spending no less than 54 weeks in the top five of the
New York Times
best seller list and was the topic of several
Oprah
shows as well as being featured by Piers Morgan, Oprah, and Ellen DeGeneres. The book’s premise was based on the age-old law of attraction theory but packaged with numerous industry experts, each of whom brought their own flavor to the material. There was an interview-type movie, a workbook, several DVDs and the authors had each done their own spin-offs of the various theories cited in the book. Everyone, including MD, made millions. No one quite understood how a Texas housewife with no formal education could have pulled this off but the joke at cocktail parties was that apparently the law of attraction works, even in Texas.

Patroon was a quiet establishment just off of Lexington on 46
^th
Street. Mac loved it there for its intimate setting. It was his favorite spot to bring new authors who were so impressed by the setting, it was often all Mac needed to do to seal a publishing deal. From time to time Mac even brought a female guest there or two, none of them authors, none of them interested in anything but MacDermott Ellis.

He was early tonight, anxious to see Kate and tell her the news. Or so he convinced himself. But truth be told, he was eager to see her out of the office and relaxed.