Chapter 1
Taron
The city feels like it’s about to collapse in around me. All the skyscrapers, historical buildings, the kinds of places that I used to relish seeing when I first moved here suddenly feel oppressive and glum.
I can’t believe this is happening.
Again.
Just when I thought that I was finally about to cross over from indie author to mainstream success, everything has come crashing down around me.
“Argh! Why now?” I ask, stomping my foot on the ground as I storm out of my literary agent’s office. “What the hell have I done to deserve this?”
I’m angry, sad, and super-frustrated all rolled into one as I turn and look at the sign above the office window.
Pace Literary: Leading Lights in Publishing.
I thought that signing with Pace Literary would be my route to the top. I’ve put in so much hard work over the years.
Grad school?Yup.
Credit card busting online courses?Oh yes.
Endless hours in front of my laptop?You’d better believe it.
And I was super-lucky that my hard work paid off with a short story of mine winning a pretty big prize too. I mean, the financial reward wasn’t exactly great but there was a certain prestige that came with the win. And it was this very prestige that saw my inbox filling up with requests from exactly the kinds of agents that had previously ignored my query letters.
Enter: Pace Literary.
Or, more specifically, Pace Slade.
Pace promised me the world. He said that I was the most talented twenty-four-year-old he’d ever come across in his twenty years in the business. I mean, who wouldn’t be flattered? Pace was smooth, big on the compliments, and kind of handsome too. I mean, I can’t deny that I wasn’t a little blown away by his slicked back style and smooth talk.
Sigh.
But a few months after I signed with him and turned in my novel in progress over to him, all Pace did was criticize me. Nothing I wrote and showed to Pace was good enough. He would pick through things and scrawl his red pen all over my work, telling me that I needed to change this, that, and pretty much everything.
Sometimes I even wondered if he was reading my work at all or simply just taking me down a peg or two as some kind of power play. But at the end of the day, he was the bigshot agent and I’m just little old me.
But…
It was like he didn’t like my writingat all.
All Pace seemed to focus on was me writing something steamier and apparently sexier to appeal to a wider audience.
I mean, I’ve got nothing against that kind of writing. But it’s just not what I do. I’ve definitely got a steamy and spicy side to me, but I keep that for my personal life. Not that I exactly have much of that right now either. With holding down a boring office job and spending the rest of my spare time writing, I really haven’t been able to find that special someone or even come close.
But less of my non-existent love life and back to Pace…
And it wasn’t like Pace’s sleazy side ended with his demands on my writing either. Despite the fact that Pace was my agent and apparently meant to be looking out for me, he kept sending me on these photoshoots where the goal was apparently to get me wearing as few clothes as possible.
These photoshoots were invariably with so-called close friends of his in the industry, the kinds of people who were at all the right parties and had the best networks. Well, that’s how Pace sold it. He said I needed to increase my profile by any way possible. And being young, cute, and a ‘sweet boy’ apparently this was the best way to do it.
Honestly, I felt super uncomfortable and insulted too.
I’m an author, it’s what I’ve worked hard for since I was barely in my teens. It really shouldn’t need me to pose in revealing clothes or in so-called sexy poses to get eyes on my work or, apparently, improve my profile.
Anyway, I guess I had enough and this morning decided that I was going to tell Pace exactly what I thought. After waking up nice and early and doing my usual walk around the small park near my apartment, I headed over to the Pace Literary office and told Pace that from now on there would be no more photoshoots and I’d be writing what I wanted, not what he deemed to be suitable.