The Publicist Read online

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  Chapter Three

  The road to Katharine Mitchell’s illustrious career in publicity hadn’t always been as glamorous as some would think. Most people think that being a publicist means a series of exciting parties, rubbing elbows with celebrities, and trips to exotic places to promote whatever book they were working on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Generally Kate spent lunches at her desk and evenings thumb-dancing on her iPhone, responding to whatever media queries came in after hours. She lived and died by whatever news hook she could use to promote her authors and unlike most people, she hated Fridays. Because on Fridays, the sales reports would be shared with the publicity department. Sales numbers were always tricky. A feature on a major show didn’t always translate into book sales, in fact, book sales were almost an act of God these days. But regardless, a book with flagging sales was something no publicist wanted to see.

  Kate landed her first official job as a publicist after struggling on her own as a freelancer for a number of years. She was accepted into Morris & Dean Publishing, one of the most esteemed publishing companies in the industry, and was brought in to assist their publicity department. Soon after she was hired, and through a series of circumstances and staffers leaving, Kate was promoted to a publicist, officially. There were five people in total who worked in the department, which was unheard of in publishing. While most of its competitors were cutting their marketing and publicity departments in half, Morris & Dean was expanding. They believed that a good book was like a tree falling in the forest, unless someone issued a press release, who was going to know? Kate liked that about Morris & Dean or MD as they were referred to within the industry. She gave herself five years to build her reputation, that was seven years ago. Now she was so deep into corporate publishing, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get out. Things, however, were changing in publishing. Sexier books, racier authors, smaller advances and less fanfare per campaign spelled trouble for MD and despite their original intent to lead books with grand publicity campaigns, the publisher was starting to bow to the pressures of a fickle society and topics that ten years ago seemed impossible to imagine. Books told entirely in tweets and sex between a man and the hot new alien down the street seemed to be the norm.

  Kate was often at the mercy of whatever the editors fancied and, consequently, whatever books they decided to produce. Kate missed being able to pick and choose her projects. When you’re with a publishing company, you get what you get and that’s that. Often Kate found herself making a silk purse out of some mess of a book someone handed her. Sometimes she’d get lucky and hit pay dirt with a title the other marketing and publicity people would die for, and other times she was told to market something of which she was certain had about a three percent audience if she was lucky. Because everyone in publishing wanted to get into MD, most of the people who were there were stuck it out. Unless someone died, she wasn’t getting seniority anytime soon. Publicity people more senior than her got pick of the litter. More often than not, Kate got the runts. Like any New York publisher, Morris & Dean had a number of imprints that were smaller divisions of the larger company. Each imprint published a certain category. MD had about twelve imprints at last count but Kate didn’t work with all of them. She supported five, which was more than enough. They focused their core publicity efforts on the top three imprints that made the most in revenue, but in accordance with the way MD was run, all books got some marketing and publicity, even if it was less than their top titles. Sometimes though, all it took was one wildly successful title to carry the entire firm for the year.

  Kate was born and raised in a hot, dusty town in central Arizona called Top-of-the-World. It wasn’t really the top of the world, not even close. It got its name from the Indians that settled there years ago although Kate could never remember exactly how the legend went. Located just south of Phoenix, the town was the smallest in all of Arizona. In the 2010 census, Top-of-the-World boasted a whopping 300 residents. Given the ones who moved away and a few that were born, Kate guessed the count to be around 330 now, give or take.

  Kate had hated every minute of her life there and when the opportunity presented itself, she applied to every college as far away from the Arizona desert as possible. Unfortunately, her parents still loved it there and she was usually forced to visit them on every major holiday unless an author or major book launch prevented her from traveling. Kate welcomed the anonymity that a big city brought with it. There was no one to observe her every move and that’s just the way Kate liked it. She loved her parents and missed being around them, but she hated the thought of leaving New York. There was nothing cultural about Top-of-the-World, unlike some of the other cities in Arizona, but regardless, there were casinos everywhere. Her parents refused to be a part of anything upscale or cultural, despite Kate’s attempts to get them to move to a better part of the state. They preferred the quiet their twenty-acre property brought with it and the seclusion a small town offered.

  Kate had two brothers, Billy, who was working in the Doctors without Borders program and David, who was a photographer for Newsweek. Much to her family’s chagrin David had taken a job in Afghanistan over a year ago. He loved it but Kate swore her mom had aged ten years since David’s departure. It wasn’t easy being the youngest of three siblings and being the only one who wasn’t in a noble profession. She wasn’t saving the world, or risking her life (well, if you didn’t count the occasional suicidal author). She was just Kate Mitchell, Publicist for Morris & Dean Publishing. She was thirty-four, unmarried but hopeful, and the most exciting moment in her life had been getting Rosie O’Donnell’s autograph for her mother when she was still on The View. Her parents seemed happy with her career choice but she knew she could be slinging hash and they’d say the same thing: “We’re so proud of you, Katie.”

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  Chapter Four

  “Listen, if I have to read another tell-all written by a celebrity parent, I’m gonna choke. The Spears-mother book tanked before it even hit the streets. It’s too risky.” Mac drummed his fingers on the desk, impatient with the caller at the other end.

  “But Mac, if we can package it right, I’m betting we can sell some copies.”

  “No, Liz, I’m not taking it, I’m sorry. No more celebrity mothers crying because they were lousy parents and now their little bundles of joy are racing the streets like tramps. I’m sorry. This is a Judith Regan title, not an MD one.”

  “Judith isn’t in publishing anymore.” Liz felt the need to remind him, as if anyone could forget the OJ Simpson book debacle and Judith’s timely demise from publishing.

  “I know, Liz.” Mac smiled sarcastically, “I guess that means you’re out of luck until she comes back.” The line went dead. Liz would be pissed, he knew, but eventually she’d get over it. She had to. She was an agent and she needed MD more than they needed her.

  Mac leaned back in his expensive leather chair and ran his fingers through his jet-black hair. Nearing fifty, the grey was starting to come in on the sides, which only served to offset the cobalt blue in his eyes. He was a brutally handsome man, tall, and firmly built. Mac could have just about any woman he wanted, and most of the time, he did.

  Mac had been with Morris & Dean for over twenty years, building himself up from an associate editor to being part of the senior editorial staff. In the span of twenty years, Mac had over a thousand best sellers to his name, most of the books he had handpicked for his imprint. He had made MD millions of dollars and now could virtually write his own ticket with the company. Mac’s main focus was on non-fiction and literary fiction titles, “snob books” as he often referred to them. Books written by authors that, while being good reads, were often pushed by people who felt they were better than most. Mac didn’t like most of the authors he worked with, occasionally one slipped in that didn’t have a God-complex and he did whatever he could to give those authors an extra push.

  Last year Mac had asked to add another imprint to his line, he wanted to work
with more mainstream titles and so the Avalon imprint was born. Avalon published the kind of books that may never become movies but were solid “plane reads,” as Mac referred to them. They did well in airport stores and had strong sales year after year. Most of these authors would never hit the national best seller lists or never be interviewed by Oprah but despite that, they still brought in a lot of dollars for the company. Along with this line Mac also wanted to take more celebrity titles, but not the crap Liz was trying to push, he wanted the “serious” stuff (if that was even possible when it came to celebrities). Mac had taken some “green” titles, children’s books, even the occasional cookbook.

  His eye fell to the picture on his desk. A smiling blond woman was hugging two young boys. The picture was taken almost twenty years ago but it was his favorite. They were happy then. The boys were young and he and Carolyn were still in love. When Carolyn got pregnant again, they were overjoyed, Mac hoped for a girl and when the doctors told him that his wife was, in fact, expecting a girl, he was elated. But this pregnancy didn’t go as smoothly as the other two. In her third trimester, Carolyn was experiencing pre-term labor and was ordered to stay off her feet. Mac organized it so that he was either home with Carolyn and the boys, or the nanny was there to make sure Carolyn got the bed rest she needed. But then there was an emergency at the office that Edward said only Mac could handle.

  A quick phone call to the nanny who promised to come right away, and Mac was out the door. A few minutes later, one of the boys, spinning in circles and laughing in the living room, lost his balance and fell against the corner of their sleek metal coffee table. Wailing uncontrollably, Carolyn rushed to pick him up and comfort him. When the nanny finally arrived, she found Carolyn on the floor crying and clutching her stomach, and the older boy calling 911. The paramedics rushed her to the hospital, but the doctors couldn’t stop her labor. Isabella was too tiny to survive. She died an hour after her birth. Mac never forgave himself for not being there. Carolyn retreated from him and no amount of therapy could bring her back. As if Mac wasn’t carrying enough of the burden, she also blamed her husband for leaving her alone. Where was he when she needed him? Their precious, tiny Isabella had struggled to live but finally gave up and ever since, the pieces of their marriage died with her. Year after year crumbling further until there was nothing left. Carolyn was cordial like a roommate but right after they lost Isabella she insisted on moving into the guest room until she could get her head together. She had slept there ever since. That was nearly twenty years ago.

  Therapy had helped for a while but then Carolyn had sunk back into a deep state of disrepair. She lived for their boys, her tennis game, and her garden. Beyond that she cared about little else. Mac was nothing more than a footnote on her life.

  It was shortly after the ten-year mark of losing their daughter that Mac began reaching out to other women for comfort. He did it once, just to see what it was like to feel another woman move beneath him. To caress her hair and her skin. At first his actions had disgusted him. He swore he’d never do it again until he realized he started craving the feel of another human being and soon he faced the fact that he couldn’t live without it, not ever again. Divorce for Carolyn’s Italian Catholic family would have been the last straw on her sanity, so Mac never brought it up. They remained the dutiful couple all the while Mac pursued other women. But he never fell in love. That was his rule. He could have fun, they could go on trips and spend romantic weekends making love in an antique four-poster bed but that was the extent of it. The women he was with understood that and when they didn’t, or when they asked more from him than he could reasonably give, he would end it, afraid of getting too tangled in the emotional side of his affairs. He was also careful to outline the rules of the game: no touching in public, no hand-holding, and absolutely no public displays of affection. But when he was alone with a woman, he made them forget their half-relationship and made her the center of his world. Mac wasn’t proud of the life he’d carved out for himself but after years of no longer being in love with his wife, nor she with him, he convinced himself that he did it to survive a marriage most people would have crumbled under. And a broken home wouldn’t have served his two boys either who were thriving at two of the best colleges in the country.

  His thoughts drifted to Kate. She was special. Feisty, hardworking, and smart. It was a lethal combination for Mac and he knew he needed to be careful. He was keenly aware that Kate was just the kind of woman who could get Mac to break all of his rules. He had seen her around the office quite a bit over the years, but over the course of the last six months she’d been assigned to more and more of his titles. He looked at the picture of Carolyn again; wishing things could have been different. Wishing they could have had the family they had talked about in college and stayed madly in love till the day they died. They promised each other the night before their wedding that they would be together forever. Ironically, they probably would be, only it was not how Mac had expected it to be.

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  Chapter Five

  In 1969 Morris & Dean published an iconic best seller called The Fall. It was written by Allan Lavigne, a timid but wildly talented writer. In order to get the contract, MD signed him for a two-book deal; the next book was due the following year. But 1970 came and went and no book. Forty years later the second book still hadn’t arrived, but if it did, MD was obligated to publish it. Clive Morris, one of the founders of the company, was so fond of Lavigne’s work, he had his attorneys put together an ironclad contract that no amount of legal wrangling could get them out of. So Lavigne became somewhat of a legend around MD, the only author with a two-book contract who had yet to deliver on his second title. No one believed they’d ever see the book and Allan was still living off of whatever residual sales came from the first book, the movie, and the foreign rights that had been sold off years before.

  Kate met Allan one day while she stopped to get Chinese food in the East Village and without realizing who he was, struck up a conversation with him. That was almost three years ago and they had been friends ever since. Allan lived in a small, stuffy, fourth floor walk-up. The stairs were getting harder and harder for him to navigate and he swore to Kate that one of these days he would move to the country and live in the cottage he’d always dreamed of owning.

  Kate had studied Lavigne’s work in college, writing her creative thesis on his only book. When she realized who she befriended, she decided not to tell anyone at MD, lest she become the butt of their jokes as well. The poor little publicist helping the author who lost all creative spin. But Allan hadn’t lost his creativity, Kate was certain of it. During her weekly visits to his apartment, she’d make sure his food was stocked, that he was taking his blood pressure pills, and that he was writing. He promised her he was and would occasionally tempt her with a paragraph or two from his second book. The truth was, Allan was as afraid of another success as he was not living up to the expectations of the reviewers who would surely decide his fate. His first book had taken him by storm and his life had never been the same. Now he was a forgotten footnote on the literary world and he feared another book would either send him to the bottom of the book barrel or launch him into a spotlight he no longer wanted to be a part of.

  Kate walked up 22nd Street to Allan’s apartment. Her arms were heavy with groceries she’d picked up knowing that if Allan had shopped, he’d probably forgotten to get anything green, fresh, or healthy. When Kate arrived, she found Allan’s door ajar and the aging author on the phone. Kate let herself in, trying not to startle Allan, who sat in his easy chair, cradling the phone. He spotted Kate and smiled, “Listen, Nicholas, I need to go, Kate’s here. I look forward to seeing you next week.” Allan clicked off the phone and getting up from his chair, he hugged Kate, which had become their greeting. “Katie, good to see you, how are things in your world?”

  Kate smiled, she loved Allan. He was at once her friend, mentor, and confidant. She respected his insight and wisdom. His advice related to
her career or books she was working on had been spot on. Allan could sniff out a good title and knew almost instinctively what would sell in publishing and what wouldn’t. Even though he had abandoned anything to do with the literary world years ago, he would frequent his library to read copies of Publisher’s Weekly and keep up on all the latest goings on in the industry.

  “I’m good, well, now I am. Things are much better.”

  “Tough week, I know. But you solved the Haley situation. Good job.” He winked. Kate smiled; his approval meant the world to her. While they talked, Allan helped her unload the groceries. It was almost five and Kate noticed he was still in his bathrobe.

  Allan suffered from occasional bouts of depression that he refused to get any help for. It was all Kate could do to get him to take his blood pressure medicine on time, he refused anything else. “Just a bit blue.” He’d say and brush it off. But Kate knew better. Growing old alone in a busy city that favored socializing wasn’t easy. Allan had a few friends; most of them lived outside the city and rarely visited. His nephew Nicholas, who lives in Santa Monica, would fly out every six weeks or so to visit his uncle but that was the extent of his family. His sister had died years before, leaving his nephew to care for an uncle he barely knew.

  “So, Nicholas’s coming for another visit?”

  “Yes,” Allan smiled, “I hope you get a chance to meet him someday. He’s a good kid, you’d like him.” A soft smile pressed to Allan’s lips. He was forever trying to fix Kate up with people he met. Most of them were too old for Kate, or unemployed writers—the last thing Kate needed in her life. Someone else with a book to sell. Kate wanted to meet someone who wasn’t in the book business; the industry was far too incestuous and having someone who knew everyone she knew just seemed a tad too close for comfort. She’d tried dating in the industry and each time it had failed, badly. Not only that but when it ended, everyone knew, and in a few cases, her flagging love life ended up on a blog or two. Galley Cat, a widely read industry blog had been discreet enough to stay away from break ups but she knew it was only a matter of time before love-fatalities ended up there as well. If they did, she was certain to be one of them. Kate had the knack of picking perfectly wrong men for her. But not just wrong, wrong by anyone’s measure, even her old high school friend Sofie who she now only heard from when she pinged her on Facebook. Sofie used to “grade on a curve,” but even her lower-grade-point-average couldn’t justify some of Kate’s choices in men. So Kate set her love life aside and decided to focus on her career, which was going, although at times she wasn’t sure it was headed in the right direction.