You asked for it, so I delivered! Escape to Punta Maya this week with PAYBACK – only $.99 through Sunday, then I’m calling off the “cheap” part of “thrills,” because spoiler alert: writers do want/need/like to make a little money off of their books sometimes! 😜 Today I’m sharing another excerpt from PAYBACK I think you’ll enjoy, plus a bit of behind-the-scenes PAYBACK banter – this time, Frank Lotello’s got a thing or two to say to me. Am I losing my mind, or do all writers feel like they’ve got dueling banjos in the brain? Enjoy, and click here to take advantage of this extended, but still very limited discount! 🤩📚

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PAYBACK EXCERPT

Genevieve Lasko sat there, staring ahead at the rubble in front of her, shaking her head. Her partner-sized stainless steel and glass desk—piled high with stacks of paper, too many in number to count and each of them one to two feet high—sat in front of her, painfully reminding her of all she had on her plate.

Lasko’s pending presence every year at TJ, short for Thriller Jubilee, was a must. Like all literary agents, she and her partners were compensated on a contingent fee basis. If they invested their time and money in a writer they couldn’t sell to one of the traditional publishing houses, they didn’t make a dime. In contrast to the thousands of individual query submissions they reviewed every year on an individual basis to come up with one or two possible new clients on whom to gamble, a highly visible presence at established writing conferences like TJ offered a far more efficient opportunity to meet and evaluate promising new talent in person. In one week, Lasko typically generated more worthwhile new clients than she did throughout the rest of the year.

Lasko chaired one of the most popular panel presentations at TJ every year: “What Literary Agents Want to See in an Effective Query Letter Submission Requesting Agency Representation.” Several hundred rapt writers—hungry, if not desperate, for an agent to “rep” them—hung on Lasko’s every word. And with good reason: in the literary world, Lasko’s gatekeeper influence between writer hopefuls and the publishing houses was unparalleled. Year in and year out, no literary agent negotiated more successful deals between authors and publishing houses than she did.

Just then, Lasko’s interior line buzzed. “Hey, Heidi?” she said to her secretary.

“Jonathan on line one,” Heidi replied. “Jonathan” was Jonathan Connor, one of Lasko’s clients and the author of three New York Times bestsellers over the past three, but none of them number one.

“Right, just what I need, Jonathan frigging pain in the ass Connor, who thinks he’s the only one who matters and who wants everyone right there at his beck and call. Tell him I’m tied up and can’t possibly break away right now. Try to soften the blow by telling him I said we’ll get together at TJ.” Or not.

* * *

Jonathan Connor clicked off his mobile phone. And exploded! “Ms. Lasko’s tied up and can’t be interrupted right now,” he mimicked Lasko’s secretary. “She said to tell you she’d get together with you at Thriller Jubilee.” Connor sat all alone in his home office, staring at the walls. “If she was so fucking ‘tied up’ and ‘couldn’t possibly be interrupted,’” he fumed and shouted out loud to no one but those walls, “how was her secretary able to speak with her and relay Lasko’s message to me? Well, Ms. Lasko can bet her sweet ass that ‘we’ll get together’ at TJ, a get together she won’t soon forget!”

BEHIND-THE-SCENES BANTER

“Hey, Barak, I can just see you’re at it again,” Frank Lotello said. “This may be the set up for another one of your fancy novels. Great for your readers, but not for me. I was supposed to be on vacation. You aren’t paying me enough to handle another one of your clever whodunit murder cases. All so you can look good and score points with your loyal fans. How about the loyalty you’re supposed to show me?”

“Not paying you enough?” responded Barak. Hell, I’ve made you famous, Lotello, got you out of that boring office of yours back in D.C. where no one had ever heard of you and given you, and your wife, an all-expenses paid vacation at a luxury hotel on a lush tropical island in the Mediterranean to boot. And, don’t forget, if not for me, you would never have met your wife.

“Yeah, right. Not much of a vacation, putting me in harm’s way and expecting me to work every day I’m on this lush tropical island. What good is that if I don’t have any free time to enjoy it? And you think you’ve made me famous? I’d say it’s the other way around. Without me, Barak, no one would ever have heard of you.