Original Publication Date: July 01, 2012
Sherri’s contribution is: A Day In The Life. A Twilight Zone style short story that she wrote as a joke for her St. Martin’s editor. It’s quirky, but a lot of fun.
ebook, mass market paperback,
“Ding dong, the bitch is dead.”
Elliot Lawson looked up from her Blackberry email to laugh at her assistant Lesley Dane. “And there is much rejoicing.”
Dressed in a pink sweater and floral skirt, Lesley flounced around Elliot’s tiny office with a wide smile before she added yet nother bulging manuscript to the top of the mountain of manuscripts in Elliot’s inbox. Was it just her or did that thing grow higher by the heartbeat? It was like some bad horror movie.
The stack that wouldn’t die.
“Just think,” Lesley continued, “no more emails with her calling us names and complaining about everything from title to synopsis to… you know, everything.”
That was the upside.
The downside? “And no more selling three million copies the opening day either.” While Helga East had been the biggest pain in the ass to ever write a book, her thrillers had set so many records for sales that her unexpected death left a huge hole in their publishing program. One that would take twenty or more authors to fill.
Elliot’s stomach cramped at that reality and at the fact that she’d just lost her star pony in the publishing race. “What are we going to do?”
“We’ll build another blockbuster.”
She scoffed at her assistant. “You say that like it’s an easy thing to do. Trust me, if it was, every book we published would be one.” And that didn’t happen by a long shot. They didn’t even break even on ninety percent of them.
“Yeah, but still the bitch is dead.”
It was probably wrong to be happy about that, but like Lesley, she couldn’t help feeling a little relief. Helga had been a handful.
Oh who was she fooling? Helga had been the biggest bitch on the planet. A chronic thorn who had given Elliot two ulcers and a permanent migraine for four solid months around the release of any of Helga’s books. In fact, Helga had been screaming at her over the phone when she’d had a heart attack and keeled over. It was creepy really. One second she’d been calling Elliot’s intelligence and parentage into question and in the next…
Dead.
Life was so fragile and tragedies like this rammed that home.
Lesley’s phone rang. She left to answer it while Elliot stared out her tiny window at the red brick building next door where another drone like her worked a sixty hour a week job at the bank. She didn’t know his name and yet she knew a lot about him. He brought his lunch to work, preferred a brown tweed jacket, and he tugged at his hair whenever he was frustrated. It made her wonder what unconscious habits she had that he’d pegged about her. They’d never waved to or acknowledged each other in any way, yet they could see enough personal details about him that she’d know him anywhere.
Not wanting to think about that depressing fact, she returned her attention to the cover proofs piled in front of her. One was for Helga’s next book- the one she’d been working on when she’d died.
Her phone dinged, letting her know she had a new email.
Sighing, she picked up her Blackberry and looked at it.
For a full minute she couldn’t breathe as she saw the last name she’d ever expected to see again.
Helga East.
