1
Speculation
"No, I'm sorry, but Ms. Nightshade isn't available tomorrow morning. Can we tape the interview in the afternoon and air it the next day?" The details that went into an author's book tour were tedious at best. "Or better yet, why don't you come down to the signing with a crew? You can get some great B-roll, interview a few of the fans you know, capture the whole Nightshade fan phenomenon. Then I'll set up Jackie Stewart's interview at a restaurant or a club -- something more interesting than Bella's hotel suite."
I was pitching my author to an NCN producer named Diane and she was considering it. I pictured her as young, mousy, a big fan of the Von Rastenbourg family novels. She probably never got into hip restaurants or swank clubs. I sweetened the pot. "How about we set up the actual interview at Sweat? It'd be the perfect setting -- candles, lots of red velvet, beautiful people..."
I knew I had her. I sat back in my chair, biding my time while she swallowed my purple Kool-Aid. If you weren't Paris or the Olsen twins, or of course my client the esteemed Ms. Nightshade, you weren't allowed anywhere near the velvet rope at Sweat.
Diane could barely keep the excitement out of her voice when she agreed. "Great. I'll tell the bookstore to expect you and the camera crew at about seven o'clock for a setup, and tell Sweat to put the crew and Jackie Stewart on the list as Ms. Nightshade's entourage."
All in a day's work.
I should probably introduce myself. My name is Giovanna Felice, book publicist at Speculation. Speculation is a science fiction and fantasy book-publishing house. We publish novels about aliens, elves, and all sorts of things that go bump in the night. Over the last ten years, my specialty has been horror. I suppose it's because of my rapport with the authors and my ability to deal with the scary megafans.
Like any publicist, I have to handle the egos, the bizarre requests for specialty items, the always-annoying travel arrangements, and contend with a million details at once. But working with the Fangoria set creates a unique set of additional problems. Although 99 percent of the fans are delightful, I also get to deal with psychos who tried everything from presenting my authors with dead cats to actually trying to bite them.
Tonight's event was with Belladonna Nightshade, a novelist who wrote about the Von Rastenbourg vampire family. The characters were ancient, sage, painfully elegant vampires who ran around in lace and velvet. They agonized about the bitterness of immortality and the heartbreak of being so beautiful, all the while slipping into the bedrooms of attractive mortals and vacillating over whether or not to make them beautiful, tragic vampires, too. I know, it sounds trite, but she was a really good writer and the fans couldn't get enough of it.
Her latest and second in the series, The Honor of Lady Von Rastenbourg, was already number five on the New York Times bestseller list and the author's tour hadn't even started yet. Tonight's event was bound to push it to number one. We got hundreds of book-buying fans at every signing. We used to do her events at midnight as a gimmick, but so many fans showed up that they sometimes lasted until 4:00 a.m. Now the book signings begin at sunset. It was still gimmicky and it got us out of there in time for the inevitable afterparty with her adoring entourage. To be honest, it got harder and harder to tell the difference between the fans and her "people." I used to be able simply to check for fangs, but a clear lack of ethics among dental professionals had made that trick useless. Now I had to check for an actual pulse.
In case you haven't guessed by now, Ms. Belladonna Nightshade really is a vampire, though pretends to be a mortal who caters to the growing trend in vampire novels. You know what they say: write what you know. She wasn't my only vampire author, but she was my favorite.
It was four p.m. and in addition to the NCN interview with Jackie Stewart I'd just booked, I wanted to try to get Bill Hoffmann from the New York Post's "Page Six" to come down to the club tonight, too. I put my headset back on and called him.
My assistant instant-messaged me that Jonathan, Belladonna's "manager," right-hand vampire, and my total obsession, was on line two. I told her to have him hold, and quickly left a message for Bill.
I always took Jonathan's calls -- pathetic, huh? I'd been back from my intervention/vacation for less than seventy-two hours and already I was dying to hear from him. Okay, so now you see why Lola was trying to talk me out of him. And now you see why it can never work between us. Still, my heart raced when I saw his phone number on my caller ID.
"Hey, Johnny, you're up early."
Contrary to popular belief, vampires can be awake at any time, but they usually sleep during the day since they can't be in the sunlight without experiencing considerable pain. So while I could have Belladonna do her interviews live in the morning, getting her there while avoiding the sunlight was a logistical nightmare. I did have her do live morning radio interviews from her hotel with the curtains drawn, and occasionally I'd go through the logistical sunlight nightmare if the interview was network and couldn't accommodate my request to pretape. That threw off the suspicious few who got the idea she really was a vampire. And now you're beginning to see what a Twilight Zone episode my life had become.
I checked my e-mail while Jonathan started complaining about the quality of the sheets in the hotel and the terrible room service. I knew he really didn't give a damn about the sheets, and since when did vampires care about room service? He was pissed off about something and wasn't coming clean with me.
He had a deep, rumbling, baritone that I could listen to all day, and normally I'd be happy listening to him bitch and moan in his sexy, velvety voice. But I didn't have time for it this afternoon. "Listen, Johnny, just shut up and guess what I've got lined up for us tonight?"
"What?" He seemed irritated that I'd interrupted his tirade.
"NCN news! That's right, Johnny-boy, Jackie Stewart -- the big time. It's the next best thing to Diane Sawyer -- like she'd be caught dead at Sweat, which is where Bella will be doing the interview. Thank you very much."
I got ready for the inevitable praise for my skill as überpublicist.
"First of all, don't get me all excited with thoughts about icing Diane Sawyer, and second, Gia, you're a fucking rock star!"
This is one of the things I loved about him. I had no idea how old he really was, but he spoke like he was from this century, and unlike some of his more dramatic cohorts, he wasn't always so damn serious.
"That's a really good get. Can I do something for you in return?" I heard a smile/leer in his voice, and figured he was getting over whatever bug had crawled up his ass earlier.
"I'm not looking for a master or for everlasting life at the moment, but you'll be the first to know if I change my mind." I twirled my pen and leaned back in my chair again. Regardless of my ridiculous crush, I always loved working with him. And I'd missed him. "For now, I'll settle for you not bitching about the hotel since it's costing Speculation a friggin' fortune. Come on -- room service and bad sheets? You can do better that that."
Yeah, I was a flirt, but I was feeling a little more confident after my intervention/vacation, and I truly wasn't interested in giving up daylight. Not that I still wasn't tempted to have Jonathan give me just a little love bite. Imagine every sexy vampire stereotype you can think of, and that's Johnny. I once told him he looked like he had just stepped out of central casting, and he shot back "where do you think Hollywood got that look?" Which was a good point. He had dark hair, pale skin, brooding dark eyes, full lips, broad shoulders, and a lean, slender physique. He usually wore leather pants that clung to his hips just right, with the clichéd silk shirt unbuttoned just a little too much. I'd harped on the absurdity of his wardrobe so much that I think he now wore these outfits just to get a rise out of me. He had a standard Goth choppy haircut, but what most Goths don't realize is that only real vampires could pull off that sort of thing. And did I mention he was funny? He kept me laughing all the time.
Anyhow, that was my Johnny. I was the only one who called him that, because he reminded me of Johnny Depp in a Pirates of the Caribbean kind of way. Who knew, he may have been a pirate once. He never talked about his past, and that would certainly explain the goofy silk shirts.
He was completely delicious, and even if it did take all my strength after a few drinks not to present my neck to him, one thing about these Old World types was that he respected me, and I knew I could trust him never to take advantage of me. So for now, he was just my eye candy. My incredibly sexy, cool, bloodless eye candy.
"So what time do you want us downstairs?" he asked me.
"Be in the garage at six. I'll call you from the limo and I'm taking you to the back entrance of Books Inc., so you'll have some time to decompress before the event." I spun around in my chair and checked my elaborate wall calendar. The sun sets at seven oh seven tonight, so it'll be dark by the time we get there."
Being a publicist at Speculation required that, in addition to monitoring the sunsets and full moons, I had to make sure every hotel had an enclosed garage that could be accessed from the hotel without passing a sunny window. But that wasn't a problem -- due to paparazzi and obsessed fans, it was a standard request among normal celebrities.
"Hey, Johnny." I couldn't keep the smile out of my voice.
"Yeah?"
"What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire?"
He laughed. "Frostbite. You're trying to trip me up with fuckin' vampire jokes? I wasn't exactly born yesterday."
"Nobody likes a wiseass." I was sure he could hear me smiling.
"Okay, fellow wiseass, so what do you call a blonde with half a brain?"
"Must we do blonde jokes?" I tried to sound exasperated, but I loved this goofy part of our flirtation.
"Oh, it's fine for you to make fun of my people, but blondes are off-limits?"
"I'm not so sure your crowd are really considered people, but I'll cut you some slack." I gave in. "Okay, I'll bite."
"Promise?"
I gave him another dramatically exasperated sigh. "Okay, so what do you call a blonde with half a brain?"
"A golden retriever."
"On that note, I'll see you tonight." I hung up on him and smiled. He always made me smile.
I had to be out of the office by 5:30 and I still needed to check on the bookstore security and call my guy at Sweat, but I had time to check in on Lola.
In addition to being the best friend a girl could ever have (who else would fly me down to Jamaica and talk me down from ruining my life?), Lola was a very talented writer and I really enjoyed working with her. She wrote werewolf novels for Speculation and, yes, she was also a werewolf. We had returned from our vacation just in time for the new moon. Both new moons and full moons had special meanings for werewolves, and I was worried about her. She sometimes had a hard time recovering.
"Hello?" Her voice was raspy and weak.
"Hey, Lola, how're you feeling?"
"Hungover, without the fond fuzzy memories. But I'll be fine in a few hours. What are you up to, Chickpea?"
"Eh, same shit, different day." I was rifling through my purse, looking for the special red-ink pens I had bought for Bella's event tonight. The fans got off on that kind of thing.
"You've got that Bella signing in Long Island tonight, right? How's that going? Is she demanding AB negative in the limo?"
Lola was so normal, so grounded, so honest. She and I were instant friends since the first book we worked on together six years ago. She really understood the business, and appreciated all that went into going that extra mile.
"No, nothing like that. You know how it is with the vampires -- it's not the details, it's the late hours."
She laughed. "Have you talked to Jonathan since you've been back?"
I loved her, but she had the annoying knack of knowing me a little too well.
"Yeah, and I'm fine. Don't worry; I'm not enlisting in the army of the undead anytime soon."
Werewolves had a heightened sense of...well, everything. Smell, sight, and sound, which included an acute perception of emotions. Until she asked about Johnny, I hadn't even noticed my pulse was racing; she had probably heard it over the phone.
"Listen, Giovanna my love, you didn't just call to check up on me, you needed me to talk you down again. Don't try to fool me. Despite that whole week on the beach trying to deprogram you, you're still totally into him. He's turning on the ol' bloodsucking charm, and you're already falling for it. Did I miss anything?"
Lola could be a real pain in the ass. "I hate you, Bitch." The nickname was always said with total affection, I assure you.
She laughed at me. Typical. "You're going out with them after your event tonight, aren't you?"
"You know I have to."
"Don't sound like it's such a fucking chore; you know you love it. Tell me where and when, and I'll meet you there and hold your hand."
"I don't need you to hold my hand, and you know you're not the most popular cat with some of that crowd." Traditionally, vampires and other beings (especially werewolves) didn't always get along. Luckily, most werewolves stayed in the wilderness and the vampires tended to gravitate to the cities, for obvious feeding benefits. Most of my immediate vampire friends were cool with Lola, but who knew who else would be at the club tonight?
"Bella isn't threatened by me since I've always been a midlist author, and Jonathan likes me. All her other minions can kiss my hairy werewolf ass."
I gave her the details about the club and she agreed to meet me there.
Speculation Publishing was a great place to work if you a) liked to read a lot, b) could keep a grip on reality once you realized that half of your clients were the real deal, and c) could keep your mouth shut about the fact that half of your clients were the real deal.
It was time to get the heck out of there. I grabbed my publicist's bag of tricks: extra pens, Post-its, digital camera, sewing kit, wooden stake, silver bullets -- don't be so sure that I'm kidding. Then I went to the ladies' room to freshen up my makeup before heading down to the limo. It had nothing to do with seeing Johnny; I was primping because of the NCN cameras. Even if Johnny was off-limits, I could still look good enough to raise the dead.Copyright © 2008 by Chris Salvatore