Invisible String

Chapter 1 - Welcome to New York

Three things I knew with one-hundred-percent certainty as I paced my small, over-priced NYC apartment with my phone burning in my hand:

1) I could no longer work with my editor Beth, who was, let's face it, a middle-aged-Karen-of-a-woman. Loyalty and gratitude could only take a relationship so far. Ours was four years past its expiration, which coincidentally was the same length of the relationship itself.

2) My work-in-progress would not be accepted through my current publisher which meant I'd either wind up scrapping it or finding another way to get it out in the world.

3) There was no way in hell I was making it through the day without a glass of wine. I'd been trying to cut back and now my hands were already breaking a bottle open at eleven in the morning.

"If I'm honest, Hannah, this wasn't what we were shooting for," Beth said.

"You told me to write my next book and I wrote it." I stood with my back towards the reclining-chair and fell into it, landing thunderously. "You wanted me to write and I did."

"Yes... you did. However, when we discussed you writing something fresh and new, I did not intend for you to write a horror novel. You are a young adult author. What you've written is too scary for your demographic."

Beth, somewhere in her mid-to-late sixties with graying hair and sagging skin, worked seventy hours a week, bare minimum. When my agent first negotiated our contract, I was blown away by money and excitement, I hadn't taken the time to consider who I'd be working endless hours with for presumably the rest of my carrier. With the caveat that I remain successful obviously. Back in those days, I was her number one client and she wanted to milk the liquid that was my books for every penny they were worth. 

"Everything I write does not have to be for teens." I sighed and she didn't reply, so I continued, "This story came to me, so I wrote it. And it's good. Damn good if I do say so myself."

She hesitated before saying, "It's... well, it's certainly interesting. And vivid. But we're afraid that you're not distinguished enough among older adult readers for this novel to be successful."

"So what is it that you're saying, Beth?"

During the next lengthy seconds of silence I wanted to jump through space and time to strangle her with a phone cord until words came squeaking out. However, she finally said, "I'm sorry, Hannah, but we need you to fulfill your contact. And in it, it states that we must approve your books. This one, as it is, can't be approved. You'll have to write something else."

Fed up, I chucked the phone across the room at the wall and watched as its shattered bits fell to the floor.

My blood burned hot as I took a long pull of the bottle of wine in my hand. After, I belched, excused myself in the empty space around me.

I could easily sign with a new publisher. It's not like I hadn't had offers from them. They'd even offered me a lot of money. But I was loyal. Or at least I liked to think I was.

What made me more furious than anything was that the book I'd written was terrifying, but it was also good. Yes, it had given me nightmares for months. But it was well-written. It was everything a horror novel should be. It was suspenseful and intriguing, without much of a lull here or there. Not to mention the fact that it wasn't even that gory. It was thrilling. Now, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but by now I've learned to recognize good work.

I grabbed my laptop off the coffee table and rested it on my lap. I logged on and opened a new Word document, hoping I could do what she'd asked even though I'd doubted it with every fiber of my being. I wasn't in the mood for love or romance. I was in the mood for pain and destruction. However, I had to try. And try I had. I wrote thousands of words. And every one of them I had hated.

The first step she took led her further than she'd ever been...

"No. It's crap," I mumbled to my empty apartment, irritated by what I considered to be a complete waste of time. "Crap. Crap. Crap." 

I'd been at it for hours. Although I'd put in the effort, I was failing to get a new book started. Perhaps some would say the multiple bottles of wine I'd put away weren't helping but I'd tell those people to steer far from this business then.

I sat back and deleted the first sentence of my story for the hundredth time. I picked up the large glass of wine sitting on the nearby end table and took a  greedy gulp, then laid my head against the comfy, warm couch. I set the laptop back on the coffee table and pulled my legs up, wrapping my arms around them and fell sideways, pulling a plush "Friends" blanket spotted with the Central Perk logo over myself.

As my body relaxed and my eyelids fell, a loud thudding came from my front door. I sat up, eyes wide as I looked across the room at the door, startled, hoping whoever it was would go away.

After a few minutes of silence, the man shouted, "Hannah, I know you're in there."