Miss South

by Kay Williams

  Miss South

  K F Williams

  TEXT COPYRIGHT 2013© KAY FRANCES WILLIAMS

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  London, United Kingdom.

  2338, Seventy Five Years Post Pause

  Harriet South.

  “I am sorry, Harriet, but we are going to have to let you go,” Caspian apologised.

  I was grateful that my agency had called me a few days before to warn me that this moment was quite probable.

  I had only been with the firm six weeks, temping for someone on maternity leave, but the gossip amongst the permanent staff was that the job was going to be culled because of the poor sales figures in the previous months.

  “I see.”

  “We have spoken to your agency, and we will be keeping you on until the end of the month.”

  “That is good news,” I replied, grateful for the fact I was going to have three weeks in order for my agency to find me another job. “But I am a little disappointed. I was really enjoying the role.”

  “You have been a breath of fresh air to have around.” Caspian smiled. “I wish we were keeping you. I'm going to miss your stories.”

  I managed not to blush, but couldn't help the nervous chuckle. I had only been with them a week when Caspian had discovered my writing hobby and had managed to prise a sample out of me with her gentle nagging. She had winced when she had found out that it was science-fiction but had said she had liked it and wanted to read more. I hadn't told her that I was in the process of being published and very soon she would be able to buy a copy of the completed novel.

  Not that I felt my story was going to make me any money in a real, life-changing sense of the word, and I was going to need another job if I wanted to pay my bills, but it was going to be an experience, and I was looking forward to working with my new publisher.

  We rounded up the meeting with a hand shake and smiles. I went back to my desk and got on with my work while it was still mine.

  # # #

  “That boat is enormous!” I laughed.

  “Ship, sweetheart,” my mum, Angela, corrected me with an excited smile of her own.

  “Cruise liner,” my dad, Rupert, corrected us both.

  I helped them unpack their cases out of the back of the car. I had lost my job three days ago but I had another temporary one lined up. The timing couldn't have been better, my publisher had been ready to go before they expected to be and we were launching the promotions early; meaning I was going to be able to take part in a few before I had to start work again. Plus, I was able to drive my parents to the docks and see them off on their mammoth holiday.

  “An around the world cruise.” I bit my bottom lip, still insanely jealous that they were going. “I cannot believe that you are actually going.”

  “One hundred and eighteen nights.” My father rubbed his hands together impatiently.

  They amazed me; they were landscape gardeners and worked hard all their lives to build a reputable and profitable little company.

  They had met on a cruise and been together for nearly thirty years. When I had come along earlier than expected they had put off marriage to raise me. I had been five when they eventually tied the knot and I had murky memories of wearing a pale cream dress and preceding Angela down the aisle with a bouquet of sunflowers. They were due to celebrate twenty-five years of married bliss next month and had spent all of those years saving a little bit at a time to spend on this adventure.

  “Are you sure that everything is sorted?” Angela asked me.

  “Lucy has taken care of it all,” I promised them.

  Lucy Sharp had been my best friend since pre-school. She was one of seven Sharp children; being one of natural septuplets she was the only girl amongst six brothers, they were all extremely loyal and family orientated and they took care of their own, and when they had found out I had no siblings they had ‘adopted’ me. I had never known any other Wildlings until I had met Lucy and her brothers, they shared their body with the soul of an animal and had the ability to 'shift' into that form if they wished to. I had no idea that stoats could be so nosey, feral, bullying and loving.

  Our families were still close even though we had moved to London and they lived and worked in Luton. She ran her own company doing web design, accounting, payroll, security and a host other clever things with the internet I couldn't even begin to understand.

  “She has blocked off your calendar and set up warnings on all your online forms, she has programmed your voicemail and your out of office emails, she is going to upload any photos and blog posts you send to her for your website to give people inspiration. And the Temple has found you a very trustworthy temporary tenant to keep an eye on the house and the work tools. It is going to be fine.”

  “And you?” Rupert frowned.

  “I've got promotions and I start my new job. There is no reason not to get on that boat and just enjoy yourselves.”

  “Ship,” Angela teased.

  “Liner,” Rupert corrected.

  “I don't want to hear one word about this not being a good time to go,” I said firmly but smiled at them. “This book thing isn't going to be life-changing and you are still only a phone call away. Forget about me and enjoy your anniversary.”

  “But are you sure it’s a good deal?” Angela frowned as one of the terminal staff came to help them load their luggage on to a trolley.

  “You saw the contract, and Simon made sure that everything was above board,” I replied.

  Simon Cornwall was a land and property lawyer and had always been my parents go-to man when they were asked to work spaces of public land. The depth of trust they had in him was so sincere that it was Cornwall they had encouraged me to talk to him before accepting any publishing deal. Rather than throw me out of his office as I expected, Simon had not only relished the challenge but had risen to it and had negotiated me a more than fair contract.

  Pacified they both hugged me good-bye and I kept waving until they had vanished into the terminal.

  # # #

  I knocked on the door hidden up a dead-end alley that bore a simple plaque 'Lemon Grove Publishing.'

  It had been almost three years ago when during an argument with one of my London friends that my hobby had been called worthless. I had been stung and hurt by their verbal attack and in a fit of stubborn and drunken pique I had set out to prove her wrong. Within two months I had been over-whelmed by the sheer number of people who were willing to take my raw manuscript and turn it into a novel.

  Some of the offers were so bad even I could tell they were fake, others had wanted more start-up investment money than it would have taken me to secure a mortgage, others Simon had cast away after reading the small print, others had never come back after they found out I had the back-up of a legal advisor, and out of the few that were left Lemon Grove Publishing had been the most willing to work with me for a deal I could live with.

  There was no start-up investment from me, but there was also no advance for the manuscript; I didn't mind that. If I had self-published I wouldn't have had an advance and I had no idea how to go about advertising either the book or myself. If they were going to use the advance to do those things, then it was a win as far as I was concerned.

  Once we had agreed on the cost of the digital copy of the books Simon had negotiated a less than average deal on the sales, I had been happy with accepting less money on the condition that my royalty payments would come weekly, no matter how much of an account I had. It meant that even if I only sold one book in seven days I would be paid for the sale. This was good for me, I doubted that it would be a best seller and I didn't want to have to wait months to hit a minimum threshold before my royalties were paid. The only down-side to it was that if lots of people wanted a refund at the same ti
me I could end up owing previously credited royalties back to the Lemon Grove, but that was a risk I was willing to take. I honestly didn't think there would be enough sales for me to worry about having to return the royalties.

  After eReaders and ePub files had taken over the commercial world of books before the Pause the industry of printing books had been made almost extinct. There were now only a select few places that printed books and it was extremely expensive to do. Most publishing companies didn't do it unless they knew the book would be a success. Thankfully, Lemon Grove Publishing believed in print books, regardless of the book, and though there was only a tiny run of fifty first editions ordered I would be given two and Simon had made sure I would earn a fair share of royalties here too.

  The door was answered by a young women who looked in her early twenties, she was striking with her dark brown eyes and her prefect corkscrew curls that bounced like little springs with every movement she made.

  Her name was Rosemary Shay, she and her uncle, Jonathan, ran the small company, and wherever I had visited the pair had showed a tight, cheerful and teasing relationship that been welcoming. They were an unusual pair even by modern standards, Jonathan Shay was a Blood Dependant, like vampires of fiction before the Pause he was classified as being medically dead as he was without a pulse, heartbeat or body temperature. However, by ingesting blood on a frequent basis meant the Dependant virus he was infected with was able to turn the unusual nourishment into energy and he was able to keep ‘living’.

  The state of life he was in would be Eternal, driven by the need for blood the virus would perpetuate his condition of feeding and living, in never-ending cycle unless he lost his head by design or in some freak accident.

  Carrying the Dependant Virus made him highly contagious, and I had been warned not to touch him even if he had the tiniest of paper cuts. Any mingling of his infected blood into my system and I would become like him.

  It was highly unusual for Dependants to mix with the living after they became infected, instead they preferred to live with those of their own kind were they didn’t have to worry about infecting someone by accident and condemning them to a kind of endless life of living death.

  The fact that Jonathan lived comfortably with his niece and not with his own people was irregular, but they made such a good family I could see why they would want to run the risks and be together.

  I had thought it would awkward to visit them after Simon had muscled the kind of deal he had out of them, but Rosemary had laughed it off and Jonathan had said it made a change to deal with someone who had his client's best interests at heart and who wanted to argue in fair negotiations.

  “Harriet,” Rosemary smiled. “Come in, we've been expecting you.”

  I walked along the short dark hallway into the main office while Rosemary shut the door. It was a large space with a work side of desks, computers and stacks of paperwork, and a relaxing side with a vending machine, sofas and coffee table. Sunlight brightened the room through several windows down one wall, while the rest of the wall space was taken up with large posters of book covers. Several potted plants dotted the room making it green and homey.

  Perhaps it was because of my parents' occupation and growing up surrounded by germinating seedlings, but there was nothing like a few plants of any description to put me at my ease in strange places.

  Jonathan was hanging up a new poster as Rosemary beckoned me to the sofa side of the office and it was both embarrassing and exhilarating to see it was the cover of my book that was going up on their wall.

  “It looks good there,” Rosemary smiled.

  “There is a big part of me that can't actually believe that this is happening,” I admitted.

  Jonathan took a step back to frown at his work and make sure it was straight.

  The background was of a field of stars, with a bight nebular and a glowing planet in the distance, a large space station dominated the centre, while spaceships of all shapes were depicted attending the station giving it a sense of frenzy.

  “Perfect,” Jonathan nodded at his own work.

  After all the hard work this small company had put into publishing my offering and having seen some of the offerings that artists had half-heartedly put forward I hadn’t had the courage to tell them I hated the cover. My book was crime thriller there was nothing depicting and sense of tension, stress or mystery in the image.

  “What if it flops?” I couldn't help the question. “No one has written a well-received science-fiction novel since before the Pause.”

  After myth and magic came to take up residence on Earth, most writers had found that their imagination hadn't matched the true scope of Spells and fantasy. Books that had once described breath-taking places never before assumed real were now holiday destinations. While elves and people racing through page-turning escapes from reality were now sitting next to you on the bus to work and were trying to pretend they weren’t reading your paper over your shoulder.

  Many authors had turned to the stars for a way to develop, but those stories were mocked and laughed at. The diversity of the two worlds had been created in the instant that the two Old Gods had collided on the battlefield and rained their power down as magic on the Race of Man beneath. Favlians in general, magic users, and plenty of Earthlings considered intelligent life on other worlds as laughable, and arguments that those life-forms could be more technologically advanced then us even more absurd.

  “Your book might be set up there,” Jonathan used a finger to point up at the sky, “but at its heart it is a thriller and a puzzling detective story. That is what people will buy it for. I had no trouble in suspending my disbelief, enjoying it and failing in working out who had done it, and I am sure that many others will too.”

  “So, insecurities to one side, what do we do next?”

  “An interview.” Rosemary beckoned me to one of the sofas. “We email our newsletter to our customer base tomorrow and we are going to put you and your book on it to drum up interest and hopefully get a few pre-orders before the sales go live. As you are out of work we also managed to get you into an event tomorrow afternoon. It’s being held at a hotel and it’s about marketing for new authors, so it is going to be lots of people in the same boat you are. No one famous and nothing heavy. A few short presentations from successful businessmen about their marketing strategies to give those self-publishing a few ideas and it’ll be a good chance to mix and expand your social circle a bit before the novel hits the stores the day after.”

  Lemon Grove Publishing sold digital copies of their books through several main-stream online book stores, but they also ran their own site and book library for digital copies and only sold the printed books direct. They had their own loyal customer base, newsletters they used for marketing and a quarterly magazine they published with a more in depth look at new titles as well as looking after loyal authors who had been on their books for some time; it was the controlled set-up of their business along with the agreement to Simon’s terms and conditions hadn't made choosing to publish with them hard.

  “Doesn’t sound too scary,” I said, only to hesitate when I saw Jonathan setting up a camera. “You are going to record this?”

  “Yeah. We'll also being putting the video on the website and on a few popular new author channels to spread your coverage about.” Rosemary grinned at me. “Don't look so worried. We'll go over several questions repeatedly to cut out the frowns and words like 'um', it'll be fine.”

  “If you warned me I would have worn something more professional,” I said.

  “You always look smart, we didn't have to worry.” Jonathan was finished playing with the camera. Setting it up so that when I sat where Rosemary was indicating the poster of my book would be in the background of the video.

  Taking off my coat, I tried not to be self-conscious in the cream roll neck jumper that was three years old, and wished that I had at least been told to bring a hair brush. I took the seat that Rosemary offered and frowned at the little
red light on the camera.

  “Look at me,” Rosemary laughed. “Talk to me.”

  The next couple of hours were spent going over the interview, giving the same answers to the same questions, but trying to remember not to say 'um' or 'err', to not fuss with the roll over collar of the jumper when I worried I was giving a boring answer, and being mindful of the way I rubbed at my jaw when I knew I wasn't giving completely honest ones.

  It took most of the afternoon, but in the end even I had to admit that the spliced together interview was surprisingly good.

  # # #

  Henry Heronsgate

  I sipped the chilled water from the bottle and read through the list of names on the sheet in front of me again while trying to relax. It had been a long time since I had given a speech in front of strangers, and I had never given a speech without proper time to prepare.

  One of my company's media directors was supposed to be giving a speech about popular advertising to a group of writers on the verge of publishing or self-publishing their work into main-stream media. My company only published one magazine and it was dedicated to performance cars and motor-racing. It was hardly the same thing but advertising in a general sense was universal and my director had some clean and clear notes. The woman was nothing if not thorough and she had even taken the names of those attending and managed to find websites, bios and even a few free downloads.

  I had spent the better part of the night before reading a few of them.

  Most of them had been good and the one in my favourite crime thriller genre had been interesting but the sample far too short for me to get to grips with.

  I subtly glanced at the other speakers all of whom had their heads downs and were rereading their notes. I didn't recognise any of them. My director really had no business in setting up this speech at all and I was more than a little perturbed that a senior member of my company’s board would have been taking time off for it. I had already ordered my executive assistant, Greyson Adams, to access her diary and found out just how many of these public appearances she had been performing.