"Hey Jezza! Jezza Jerome? You out there and wanna fuck me on camera?"
The meeting with George and Finn (My 'vanilla' mass-market publishers.) did not go well.
Well, okay, it started decently but, by the end, turned into a real shitshow.
I'll fully admit to being on edge leading right up to the meeting- I had a new book coming out that week that was already getting some good reviews and, after some discussion back and forth between Tabitha and Jessica, I was ready to sign a deal with Screamdreamer for the Baskerville rights.
Reality setting in, I think we all knew it wasn't a deal that would make the studio billions of dollars, but I'd get a solid chunk of money for what had already been written and some points when they went to press. There was even a chance that I'd get a bump for the e-books once the studio design team started working on newer covers and word got out they existed. Would I be set for life? No. Would I do ok? As long as I kept writing them to a certain standard and they wanted to make movies of them, I'd get by.
Could I quit my regular writing and make a living off of writing smut?
No.
Now my editor Finn I can deal with. He's about my age and a decent guy. He's tossed out a few ideas that I was able to run with and turn into books. One of my better sellers came out of his suggestions. I like Finn. I've had beers with Finn. I've played with Finn's kids at their family barbeque. Finn and I are cool.
George and I are not cool. George is old school money and he lets you know it. It's not even HIS money! It's family money from ventures going... hold up, that's going to come up later so I'm not going to double dip this early. George is in charge of the House' History Division, mostly because he's been around for most of it. If you aren't wearing a suit when talking with George, even if you're discussing the best-seller idea that actually IS a best-seller story, you might as well be asking him if he needs more breadsticks. Stuffy, arrogant, bigoted- you name it. But it's HIS money that runs the House and if you don't like it? There's the window. He doesn't want you taking up space in his door.
You see where this is going, right?
Oh, and if you think I have something against people with money? You'd be partially right. I'm not immune to wanting to be rich. I just want to live comfortably in a style of my own choosing and have enough to help people out without squeezing every penny into copper wire. It's not what you HAVE that pisses me off, it's what you DO with it that puts my teeth on edge.
(Just the sort of high concept stuff you were looking forward to reading in a story about tits and ass, right? We're getting there, I just need to set the stage first.)
So there we are, in a small meeting room in the publishing house office, gathered around a table. I'm in a suit. Tabitha's in a suit. George and Finn are in their suits. We look very fancy. We're talking- okay, mostly Tabitha and Finn are talking about the release of my latest book, already at the stores in hardcover, paperbacks to follow in six months. George is chewing on a cigar he's not allowed to light (He deliberately tips over the No Smoking sign on the table every time we meet.) being professionally disinterested. And my mind is going back and forth from Finn and Tabitha to the Clinic a few nights before.
The follow-up was...intense. Like 'Holy Fuck' intense.
Finn then asked me a few questions about my work on Number Fifteen and I gave an update (Already three chapters done and the full outline finished.) as to when I thought I'd reasonably be finished the first draft. Then I confessed to mixing up my work on it and what would eventually become the next Baskerville Bunch book. Tabitha and I had discussed how to bring up the Baskerville work and this is where we'd settled on it.
"'Baskerville Bunch'?" rumbled George, finally giving the conversation some direct attention. "Sounds like some sort of children's mystery series. why haven't you brought this to our Young Adult division yet?"
"Because it's not FOR children," I told him directly, folding my hands in front of me for fear they would turn into fists. George and I have not really gotten along. The only reason I got published here in the first place is my early novels deal with the Civil War period, which he is particularly fond of, and once I started making them money, there was no reason to get rid of me. "They are, in a word- porn."
That's when I turned back to Finn and gave him a very sanitized version of how I came to write and self-publish the Baskerville novellas, meeting Jessica at the writers' panel at Exxxotica and again at a regular signing. How she put two and two together, brought the material to HER boss (We used Tawny's real name instead of her more well-known stage name) and how they presented me with a proposal for that work to be used at the studio and it did not include anything I'd written for and published through the House. We showed him the contract (I hadn't signed it yet just to provide him the peace of mind that I was still THINKING about it when, in reality, it was pretty much a done deal.) and did our best to answer any questions he had.
Meanwhile, George turned interesting shades of red and purple and bit through his unlit cigar.
"And what are you going to do now?" Finn asked, closing the contract and pushing it back to Tabitha. I'd watched him steal glances at George and we both knew an explosion was coming. Or his heart would give out. Fifty-fifty either way. Suddenly I couldn't remember how to do CPR.
"Well, we wanted to get your input before making a move," Tabitha replied, tucking the contract back in her briefcase. "But I think we should take it. It's getting his name out there and more money rolling in. There might even be a bump in your sal..."
"PORNOGRAPHER!" George finally railed, stabbing a sausage finger accusingly at me. "If...if you think for one minute that..."
"Now George," started Finn soothingly.
"Oh please," Tabitha jumped in, pointing at a framed advertisement on the wall showing this month's collection of Romance novels offered by the house. "What he wrote is only slightly dirtier than those, and your name isn't even attached to them. You're just pissed that porn is a billion dollar a year industry and you aren't getting a dime of it through my client."
George glared at Tabitha in a way that made me want to put something heavy between them, lest he attack.
"You," he growled at last, ready to spit nails. "You were easier to deal with when you still had a dick...
