Publishing: Sex
The Horny Romance Writer
Love is blind, love is kind
It was unmistakably a curl of pubic hair. Ruddy-gold, it caught the morning sun as I lifted it from between the pages of the manuscript and held it up on the point of my fountain pen.
This was a far more generous lock than the previous effort.
“Jeff.”
The mailroom clerk, poised to leave, turned to look at me.
“Not a word about this. You know what writers are like. If we publish this, they’ll all be doing it, and that’s never going to end well. Could you ask Miss Pell to step this way when she has a moment, please?”
While I waited, I skimmed through the pages. As expected, Marjorie Rose had produced an eminently publishable story.
A thought struck me. I turned to what I now considered the money page, bent my head over it and gently sniffed. Yes, that scent was unmistakable.
A footfall in the hall outside. I hurriedly put the manuscript back in order and looked up to see Gemma Pell, our most senior junior editor, looking in at me, one eyebrow lifted in a serene arch.
“Come in. Close the door.”
I gestured to a chair and passed the bundle toward her. Manuscript, cover sheet, envelope and return cover.
She glanced at it, smiled, leafed through the pages and stopped when she got to the pubes. “Damn!”
“Yeah, I know.”
“No, I had a rubber in the pool. I think a couple of the guys are the big winners this round.”
I groaned. “I was hoping to keep a lid on this.”
“Fat chance. The sports editor’s holding the money.”
“Well, you’re the lucky winner in the reading sweep. I had a quick look through. She’s up to her regular snuff but I’d still like a summary.”
“My pleasure. I’ve been wading through slush all morning.”
Rose Romances
Marjorie Rose — long before she changed her name and became a bestselling author of corporate skullduggery novels — was a graduate from the romance slush pile. The never-ending stack of unsolicited manuscripts that arrive at any publishing house. Our True Hearts magazine was a nice steady seller but the readers all thought they had a sweet romance story inside them and they loved nothing more than to type it up and send it in for us to publish in the next issue and set them on the path to glory.
Well, to be honest, they loved one thing more than writing, and that was to ring us up when we had had it for longer than a week and ask if we had read their masterpiece and repeat this every seven days until it was either accepted or returned to them
Consequently, the major concern of our junior editors who had the shared task of keeping the slush heap down to a manageable mountain was to find good reasons to reject manuscripts, preferably on the first page, if not in the first paragraph.
Otherwise, they would be all day fielding phone calls from frustrated writers wondering why their genius and talent was not being recognised.
Of course, once a story had been rejected by us and the writer had the manuscript back in their outraged hands, they would send it off to the next magazine on the list and the cycle repeated.
Sometimes we’d see the same story two or three times. They would throw in a few spicy pages and submit to our Love’s Passion title, for example.
Never a thought that we had rejected their masterpiece because we didn’t want to publish shoddy writing or, if it wasn’t a piece of steaming crap, that it was exactly like all the other stories we published and we’d like something that didn’t bore the socks off our readers, please.
It was no bed of roses being a slush pile reader. The fact that I’d dragged myself out of that endless swamp was the highlight of my career as an editor.
Miss Rose — this was in the days before “Ms” had become mandatory, and you may call me a hide-bound dinosaur but female marital status is important in the romance game — had escaped rejection until the final page of her first submission, a rare enough occurrence that it had been bumped up for a second look from a senior editor. Me.
I liked what I saw. After all the slushpile’s usual forced exposition, the wooden characters, the execrable grammar, and the contrived plots — not to mention the retchingly sugary descriptions of flowers, sun, doggies, birdies, kiddies, and anything else that happened to cross the paths of the fated lovers — Marjorie’s innocence and yearning was exactly what would sell.
A bit of polish and pacing and the story would fill our letters column with praise. Women — it’s a very odd man who admits to reading this kind of thing — are always keen to try someone fresh and new.
That’s one reason why any romance writer worth the name has a string of pseudonyms.
We sent that first story back with a few pages of notes and reassurance that we would love to publish a polished piece.
A rare writer who actually accepted and acted on criticism. I fell in love with her when her story came back to us for a second bite of the cherry — which was also an apt description of the plot, come to think of it — freshly typed on clean paper.
(You’d think that submitting your story on paper without tear stains or bite marks would be the first rule of romance writing but trust me, romance writers are an emotional herd. Better than some of the stuff we got for our Western Ranges magazine, that’s all I can say. Read the submission guidelines, people!)
No tear stains, but a sweet paper love heart with some words of thanks on the back, tucked away between pages 7 and 8.
The heights of love
Gemma was leafing through the manuscript as if keen to read one more soppy romance story.
“She’s good,” she said.
Myra watched the headlights touch the flowers, glide over the lawn with a sweeping caress, and penetrate for a sharp moment the dark spaces between the trees. There was the bench under the oak, revealed for a passing glance.
The light moved on as the Jaguar crunched down the driveway and with it all her hopes. Myra’s thoughts remained on the bench and in her mind it became more than a cold slab of granite. It was a sun-kissed couch, shared laughter, a golden-haired little girl holding a doll and snuggling into her father as he read her a story, his twinkling eyes lifting now and then to meet Myra’s.
Now, forever, a cold shadow. A cheerless rock for a grey woman growing old and lonely as the years passed.
The red taillights winked as the car passed the gate and disappeared onto the highway. Aubrey would never return.
“I took a look at the end,” I reassured her. “It was all a misunderstanding. He comes back a week later and they talk it out. The final paragraph is all about shopping for a wedding dress.”
“Hey, spoilers!” Gemma said, her own eyes sparkling. “Way to kill the story.”
“Remember the rose petals?”
“Her second manuscript, wasn’t it?”
The “inclusions” in the stories Marjorie Rose submitted became bolder as her success grew. Now up to her sixth submission, and I wondered what might come with number seven. If there was a pool going on, I should probably stake a claim…
“We need to talk to her,” I said.
“Yes. I’m glad it’s not my job.”
I looked at her, unblinking.
“Hey, no way! What about Paul and Brendan? They won the pool; they must have a good idea of what makes her tick.”
I considered her suggestion. Yes, that would work. Besotted editors mooning over a randy writer and ringing her up to talk about her tight golden curls.
“God, no.” We might publish tales of true love, but that didn’t mean we were in favour of it actually taking place on the premises. “I’m not going to talk about pubic bouquets and um, rubbers with a young woman I’ve never met. And it’s not something I can kick up to the managing editor.”
The common We
“How about we ring her up, put her on the speaker, and we both tell her what’s what?”
“Gang up on her, you mean. Good thinking, Gem.”
I flipped through my rolodex, found the number, and together we listened to the rings at the other end. A long time.
Eventually, someone picked up.
“There’s a good girl, hush, Mommy’s busy. Hello?”
“Hello, Miss Rose?”
“Um, you must be wanting Marjorie?”
“Yes, please. May we speak to her?”
“Not until she gets home. She’s at the hospital.”
“Oh no! Is she okay?”
There was a pause.
“Who is this?”
“My name’s Duncan Klein. I’m from True Hearts magazine, and Gemma Pell, an editor, here too. We’d like to speak to Miss Rose.”
“Oh, Bonjour.”
“Yes, hello,” Gemma said. “We’ve got her latest story and we need to talk about it.”
“Oh, Moonlight Promise? What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s a matter of some delicacy,” I said. “We really need to talk to the author herself.”
“I’m her sister,” the voice on the speaker said. “Just a moment, honey. I do all her typing, handle the postage and so on. I can speak for her.”
“Is she okay?” Gemma asked. “You said she was at the hospital…”
“No, she’s fine. She goes in to the clinic now and then. But you know all that.”
I looked at Gemma. She spread her hands out. No, she didn’t know “all that”.
“Is this about the, ah, locks of hair? Mr Dawe seemed to like them.”
“Mister Dawe?”
“Yes. The editor at the magazine. You know. The one you publish.”
Again Gemma and I looked at each other.
“This is True Hearts magazine,” I said. God, was she sending snippets of herself to every magazine in the field?
“Yes, that’s right. Can’t it wait, sweetie?”
“Could you tell your sister,” Gemma broke in, “that we love her stories, but she’s got to stop sending in, um, extras.”
“But she’s so happy nowadays! She doesn’t get out much, and now she’s got people who love her. Look. I’ve got to go. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Anything else?”
“No, that’s the main thing,” I said. “We’ll be in touch in the regular way if we decide to publish her latest. Thank you.”
“Au revoir,” Gemma said, and we ended the call.
I looked at Gemma. “Au revoir?”
“Sorry, I was thinking about French letters.”
A happy ending
As it turned out, we liked Moonlight Promise and it was published in due course.
And, in due course, her seventh story arrived on my desk. The Artist’s Vision. I leafed through it, wondering if there was a bonus with this one. Meaningful glances in life class, the gentle touch of a camelhair brush on bare skin, stolen kisses in the supply room… Looked good.
And yes, a little extra, tucked in between two pages.
Good lord. A clipping from the newspaper.
Marjorie Rose and Jeffrey Dawe are excited to announce they’re engaged.
I looked up at the mailroom clerk, grinning at the door.
“Jeff. Come in. Shut the door. Sit down.”
Duncan Klein
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