Bell, Book, and Scandal jj-14

by Jill Churchill

  Jane was hard-pressed not to put her face in her plate and weep.

  "Finish your desserts and we'll replace our plates and round up some of the stragglers to sit at our table and mingle," Shelley said. "Maybe we can talk loudly enough to drown her out."

  Corwin, Sophie Smith's assistant, came into the dessert room, picked up two little pieces of bread pudding, and sat down at a corner table, first putting the other three chairs against the table as if he was saving them for someone else.

  Vernetta dragged Gaylord across the room and grabbed two chairs, setting them upright and settling in. "How swell of you to have kept chairs for Gaylord and I."

  Gaylord grabbed her arm again and whispered. Vernetta lowered her voice to his command, leaning forward and resting her enormous breasts on her crossed arms on the table while chatting to Corwin, asking him pointed questions about how Sophie was doing. In a few moments Corwin rose and leaned over Vernetta and said something to her.

  Vernetta and Gaylord rose and left the table. The young man tilted the chairs back toward the table to finish his desserts. "Toodle-loo, Corwin!" Vernetta said in a little girl voice as they drifted away.

  "I wonder what he told them?" Shelley said. "They don't look angry about being dismissed." Jane said, "He probably said they could talk

  with her editor later in private, or some such tactful remark. I'm amazed it sunk into the Strausmanns' brains — such as they are."

  The two minglers Shelley and Jane had hijacked were trying to convince Shelley to buy a book by their favorite author. He apparently wrote very blunt and hard-boiled police novels, a type of literature Shelley didn't like.

  Their new tablemates finally rose and left, giving one last order that Shelley buy the book they liked. As they departed, Jane looked around the room and realized the crowd was thinning a little. She and Shelley went for their third course of desserts, but there wasn't anything left that they hadn't already tried. They went back to the booksellers' room. Unfortunately, it was shut down for the night, so they had no choice but to either keep mingling in the lobby or go upstairs to the suite.

  "I'm mingled out," Jane said. "And I want to have a good night's sleep so I don't look half dead in the morning. My first appointment is at nine o'clock."

  Eight

  Sophie Smith had endured what were probably the three worst hours of her life. She'd had her stomach pumped because the first resident to see her thought she'd been poisoned. The full-fledged doctor who saw her next put it down to a virus and took blood samples. Between and after these ministrations, Sophie had spent two and a half disgusting hours in the hospital room bathroom. She was afraid of leaving the tiny tiled room for fear of disgracing herself.

  By seven o'clock in the evening, she was finally able to crawl into the extremely uncomfortable bed.

  She rang the hotel and gave her own room number. "Corwin?"

  "Yes?" her assistant said. "Who's calling?" "It's Sophie, you ass."

  "Sorry. You don't sound like yourself."

  "Of course I don't, Corwin. I've been through a wringer."

  "I've called the hospital three times and nobody

  would tell me anything about your condition," Corwin complained.

  "They're insisting on keeping me in here overnight for observation. No point, really. I'm feeling better already."

  "Do they know what was wrong?"

  "They have half a dozen theories. But I'm tempted to find where they've hidden my clothes and make a break for it. Whatever it was, I'm nearly over it."

  "Sophie, you must stay there. What if you have a relapse of whatever it was?"

  She'd actually considered this and said, as if she were graciously taking his advice, "I guess I might as well stay until morning, though I fear these horrible sheets will take a layer of skin off me. Meanwhile, Corwin, bring me that book bag, would you? And my purse. I need to show these people my health insurance card. Both are in the bottom of the closet. Make sure that thing Zac Zebra handed me is still in the book bag."

  "Let me look right now," Corwin said.

  He came back in a moment. "Are we talking about the paperback book?"

  "Yes."

  "It isn't in the book bag. Could you have put it somewhere else?"

  Sophie, for all her bravado, knew she still wasn't quite up to par mentally.

  "I may have taken it out of the book bag. I don't remember doing so. Perhaps I set it aside some-where. Take a good look around the suite and bring the bag and my purse," she said, knowing she was whining.

  "If you don't find it," she went on, "ask Zac Zebra to find another copy. I simply can't imagine being stuck here without something to read, and since I don't know where my clothes are, I can't even walk down to the gift shop. My hospital gown gaps in the back. Come over as soon as you can. And bring along a small bottle of Merlot. Carefully hidden, of course."

  Early Friday morning, while Jane was drying her hair, she was astonished when a phone rang in the bathroom. She hadn't even noticed it was there.

  "Hello?"

  "Mom," Mike said, "I've been told that you, Katie, and Todd all have cell phones. Why don't I have one?"

  Jane laughed. "Because you were in college instead of home the day I went haywire and bought them."

  "Are you still haywire?"

  "Yes, but for different reasons. I'm at this mystery conference, as you obviously know because you have the telephone number to my room. I have appointments with two agents and one editor today."

  "I know. Katie told me. Congratulations. But about the cell phone…?"

  "You'll be out for summer vacation soon. I'll buy you one then. Okay?"

  "Okay. Good luck, Mom. I have to be in class in five minutes. Gotta go. There's a test today and I have the crib sheet up my sleeve. Just kidding, Mom."

  A moment later, Shelley turned up in Jane's room. "I heard the phone. There's nothing wrong, is there?"

  "No. Just Mike wanting to know why the whole family except him received cell phones."

  Shelley laughed. "What a good grapevine your kids have. Do you have time for breakfast before your first interview?"

  Jane looked at her watch. "Nope. How about we meet after the interview? It's only twenty minutes from now and only fifteen minutes long."

  "I'll meet you at the registration booth then. Do you have everything you need for the interview?"

  Jane rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mommy."

  When Jane arrived in the interview area early, she peeked in the door. Three tables had been set up in the room where the dessert party had been held. Each had two people sitting on opposite sides and a placard with the name of the editor or agent. She was early, so she sat down on a chair in the hallway, waiting with the two other eager, nervous interviewees. They exchanged smiles all around, but didn't speak.

  A few minutes later, the door opened and twowomen and one man walked out. One woman was smiling. The other two people looked disappointed.

  Jane and the other two women she'd waited with rose and entered the room. Jane went to the desk with a card saying "Gretta Green." This was the first agent she had an interview with.

  Jane leaned across the table and shook the woman's hand. "I'm Jane Jeffry, and I'm pleased to meet you, Ms. Green." She handed over the folder with the first three chapters and the outline.

  The agent pulled out the papers, set aside the chapters, and went to the outline first.

  "Oh, it's an historical novel, isn't it?"

  "Yes, but it has a mystery element, too."

  "But it's historical," Ms. Green said with a frown. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but historicals are dead and gone. Nobody's doing them anymore."

  Jane didn't know quite what to say to this, but pulled herself together and managed, "But I've read a lot of historical mysteries that have been recently published."

  "Yes, maybe so. But mystery is the main thrust of the books, not the historical element. And the outline suggests that's almost all historical. I'm sorry. It's not some
thing our agency does. Good luck. It's been nice meeting you. Take my business card in case you decide to rewrite it as a pure mystery."

  She handed back the folder, gave Jane her business card, and smiled dismissal.

  There was nothing for Jane to do but thank her and get the hell out of the room.

  She glanced at her watch once she was outside in the hall. Her fifteen-minute interview hadn't lasted quite four minutes.

  Shelley could tell it hadn't gone well when she spotted Jane moping at the registration area.

  "Struck out?" she asked sympathetically.

  "I was in there less than four minutes, Shelley. She said it's too much of an historical novel and not enough of a mystery. Odd how fast someone can devastate someone's hopes."

  "How could she tell that fast?"

  "She skimmed the outline and made a prune face."

  "She's an ignorant child, Jane. I took a look at her through a crack in the door. She can't be more than seventeen. Pay no attention. You still have two interviews to go. And you need to put this one out of your mind. When is the next one?"

  "At the break at three this afternoon. This little girl who tossed me out had the nerve to give me her business card and said I could contact her if I rewrote the book."

  "No! That sure takes a lot of gall. She obviously isn't the agent you'd want, no matter what. The other agent is a baby agent, too, isn't she?"

  "Yes, and she's named Tiffany. She's probably fifteen years old," Jane said.

  "Buck up, Jane. Breakfast will give you the en-ergy. The first session starts in an hour and we need to coordinate who goes to which seminar. You go to your first choice, of course. And tell me your second choice and I'll go to it and take notes like mad."

  Shelley's brisk orders helped Jane over her disappointment. But only a little bit.

  The restaurant was crowded. Fortunately, most of the guests were finishing up breakfast and Shelley and Jane were served in a relatively short time. In the brief spell between the ordering and the arrival of the food, they'd worked out the schedule for the morning seminars.

  Jane would attend "Time and Again," about historical mysteries, and Shelley would take notes on "Brightening Up Your Submission."

  They wolfed down their food and headed to separate meeting rooms. Unfortunately, Gretta Green was one of the speakers and cited Jane's book proposal, though not by specific name, as a perfect example of what her agency didn't want to handle. She was the first speaker and Jane wanted to bolt to the suite and have a good cry. But she stuck it out.

  The second speaker was a grown-up editor. At

  least thirty-five years old. And as politely as she

  could, she told the group that Gretta was wrong.

  "Readers of both sexes like a strong sense of

  different times and circumstances. It's a wider

  audience than most agents realize." She listed by

  name several of her publishing house's bestsellers that were as much history as mystery.

  Gretta just smiled condescendingly through this part of the introduction as if she knew better than the seasoned editor. Jane was glad she'd stayed.

  The third speaker was an historical writer of some renown for yet another publisher, and she backed up what the editor before her had said.

  "I've received more fan mail for the first two books in my historical series than I earned from all ten of my first books, which had a contemporary setting," she said.

  She also went on to explain that she'd cut her publishing teeth on category romances, as many other writers had, and she and they had come to mysteries or thrillers with a lot of experience in writing and found it a wonderful change from the restrictions of short romances. Many of these former romance writers, including herself, had done historical romances and knew their way around research.

  Although Jane wasn't among this group, she found the information very interesting and enlightening. Maybe Gretta, the baby agent, had spoken a shred of truth. Jane told herself that when she went home in a couple of days she'd look over her manuscript one more time.

  The author went on to give some even better advice. "Lots of research into the period is vital, of course. You have to like doing this. More im-

  BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL 75

  portant, though, don't put in everything you know. It makes it a history text, not a novel. My own rule of thumb is when I find some fact that makes me slap my head and say 'I never knew that,' it's what should go into the book. If I didn't know it before, probably many readers don't know it either and will be pleased to learn it."

  Jane wrote this down in her notebook and underlined it. She remembered making a house plan and leaving out bathrooms. She had had to do a lot of research to find out what sort of "facilities" her imaginary house would have had in the time period and may have gone a bit overboard describing them in her manuscript.

  The introductory remarks having been made, the speakers then called for questions from the audience. Jane was surprised to learn that many of the aspiring writers in attendance were quite ignorant about the world of publishing. Some of them asked downright silly questions, like would submitting their work on pretty colored paper make them noticed.

  The panel overwhelmingly agreed this wasn't to be done.

  Another asked if she should copyright the work herself before submitting so nobody could steal her work. This struck Jane as absurdly arrogant.

  This also met with a negative reply from all three of the speakers. "If the work is good enough, it will be purchased, not stolen. And the

  publisher will see to having it copyrighted," the grown-up editor said.

  Most of the rest of the questions were either trivial or about technical things, like whether to use single or multiple viewpoint.

  Jane came out of the session revived and cheerful. For one thing, she'd realized she still had a lot to learn. More important, she already knew more than most of the other aspiring writers.

  Shelley's session had ended slightly earlier than Jane's, and she was waiting outside the door of the meeting room with a big batch of notes to hand on. "It's a good thing I'm a fast note taker."

  Jane glanced at the notes and said, "You sure are. But some of this you're going to have to translate for me. What does 'D and A' mean?"

  "Delivery and Acceptance of the finished manuscript, of course. Was your session good? You look like yourself again instead of half dead."

  "It was wonderful. I can't wait to tell you about it." Jane pulled out the brochure to double-check. "I've changed my mind. I'm going to the viewpoint meeting. I think I still have a lot to learn about that. You can still go to the one about 'The Grammar Demon,' whatever that means."

  Shelley gave Jane a quick hug. "I'm so glad you came and let me come along. This is so good for you, and even I'm enjoying it a lot. See you at the luncheon."

  Nine

  Jane discovered that the seminar called "Everything about Viewpoint" was more interesting than she'd expected and was glad she'd picked it out to attend.

  There were only two speakers, both successful writers.

  The first speaker was a very pleasant woman in her mid-forties, who, like one of the speakers in the previous seminar, had started in romance before turning to mystery. Orla Witherspoon said, "I was used to third person, single viewpoint. If you're not familiar with this term, it means the whole story is told from one person's point of view. But in the third person, as in 'Susan looked around in awe at the scenery and found it beautiful.' "

  People in the group either nodded or scribbled in their notebooks.

  Jane smiled. The reactions told a lot about who were the "girls" and who were the "women." Ms. Witherspoon went on, "When I started the

  first book of my first mystery series, I continued this just because I was in the habit of doing so. But it became onerous. I was ending up with all sorts of convoluted statements like 'Susan looked at Joe and suspected that he wasn't telling the truth.' "

  "Or," she went on,
" 'Andrianna was apparently a very shy woman.' Having a whole book full of `suspecteds' and 'apparentlys' and 'possiblys' and 'almost-certainlys' and 'it-seemed-asifs' is tedious and boring to both the writer and the reader. And it puts too much emphasis, in my opinion, on one character. The richness of fiction, to my mind, is learning how characters feel in their own minds.

  "I was fortunate to discover this," she continued, "before I turned in the manuscript. It's always best to start as you mean to go on. I decided I, and the reader, would both like the book better if I did multiple viewpoints. I had to do a monster of a rewrite, but it was a much better book.

  "However, I only go into two, or occasionally three, viewpoints in any given scene. If you have a crowd of people interacting, you don't want to know what every single one of them is thinking."

  She went on, "Now, I warn you, this is only my opinion, strong as it is. Our other esteemed author, Daisy Ellis, does third-person single viewpoint and I love her books. She's much better at it than I was," she added with a big smile as she introduced the other speaker and sat down.

  Daisy Ellis, probably a good ten years older than Orla, stood at the microphone and was just as gracious. "Orla and I have been good friends and fans of each other's work for about ten years, and we've learned to agree to disagree."

  "I'll say!" Ms. Witherspoon agreed heartily.

  Ms. Ellis spoke just as confidently as Ms. Witherspoon had. "My purpose is to make the reader identify with the sleuth. Really be in his or her mind. Know what she or he knows, suspects, or concludes. I think it makes for a stronger story line as the sleuth investigates, finds dead ends, identifies and broods over what may or may not be genuine clues to the mystery."