“So how many have you seen?” Taylor asked.
“You’re the third one today,” he admitted, “and the seven-teenth agent I’ve talked to since I got to town a week ago.”
“Any takers?” Taylor asked.
Michael’s face softened. Relaxed now after telling his story, he smiled at her. He had beautiful teeth, she noticed, and a charming smile. “Not so far,” he admitted.
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a stack of paper, a partial manuscript along with a synopsis as a proposal.
“This is something completely new and different,” he explained. “I’ve spent the last five years writing good books that went nowhere. I learned what made a good mystery, a good crime novel, and I used that to write books that got me great reviews, awards, prizes. Everything a writer could want, except one thing: a living. So I’m breaking molds here, Ms. Robinson. What I’ve got here is the first in a projected series of twenty-six novels, which means if we make this work, we’ve both got job security for the next couple of decades. This is something nobody’s ever seen before. At least not like this …”
He handed her the stack of papers. Taylor read the title page: The First Letter.
“So,” Taylor asked, “what’s the one-sentence pitch?”
Michael looked at her. “In the battle between good and evil,” he said, “evil wins.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. Is your series protagonist likable, sympathetic?”
“He’s a brutal, sadistic serial killer,” Michael answered.
“And you’re going to love him.”
Taylor pursed her lips, stared down at the manuscript, and let out a long sigh. “That’s a tall order, Mr. Schiftmann. Usually the bad guy loses and that makes people feel good. Af-firms their moral view of life.”
“This book’s going to change their moral view of life.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Again, tall order.”
“Give it a try,” he said, motioning toward the manuscript.
“It works.”
“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see.”
Taylor felt the manuscript in her hands, thumbed through the first few pages and saw that it was professionally prepared, that it had the feel of a manuscript done by a pro. You could tell a lot, Taylor knew, about the look of a manuscript.
When a novel came in typed single-spaced on onion-skin paper with handwritten corrections and hand-drawn illus-trations, it was almost always as badly written as it was prepared.
“So tell me, Mr. Schiftmann,” she asked casually. “Where do you want to be as a writer?”
“At the top,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “On The List.”
Neither of them had to elaborate about which list he was referring to. She eyed him for a second. He didn’t appear delusional or crazy, just determined. She wondered if he knew what he was in for. She found herself feeling protective toward him, as if she could somehow shelter him from the price one paid for that kind of success.
“Can you get me there?” he asked. “Can we go there together?”
“That depends,” Taylor said, looking down at the manuscript. “It all depends on the pages.”
“Fair enough,” Michael Schiftmann said. “I’m staying at the Midtown Motor Lodge on Eighth Avenue and Fifty-sixth. I’ve got enough money to stay two more days, and then I’m on the dog back home. I’d sure like to know something before I leave, if that’s possible.”
“And where is home?” Taylor asked.
“Barberton, Ohio,” Michael replied.
“Never heard of it,” Taylor admitted.
“Nobody has. It’s working class, industrial. Close to Cleveland.”
“Oh,” Taylor said.
“Yeah.”
Taylor stood up, offered him her hand. He took it and held it firmly as they shook.
“Mr. Schiftmann, I’ll call you.”
Perhaps it was that Taylor Robinson had only about a dozen clients on her roster, not one of which was actually making a living as a writer. Perhaps it was something in Michael Schiftmann’s eyes or voice or the way he stood or the way he sat that convinced her he was somehow different from the parade of frustrated novelists who moved from agent to agent like hungry wolves roaming an unforgiving landscape. In any case, Taylor spent the rest of the afternoon reading Michael Schiftmann’s book proposal, and after that she called a friend who worked at the publishing house that had published his first five books.
Taylor Robinson learned that Michael Schiftmann’s agent had never pushed for him, had sold him cheaply into a house that was famed for paying little and promoting even less.
His books had languished first in the warehouses, then on the shelves, and finally on the tables containing stacks of remaindered books that were sold practically by the pound in discount stores and buyers’ clubs. The ones that were still lying around after that were pulped, ground back into mash, and recycled for another writer’s words.
Not one of them was still in print. Michael Schiftmann’s career as a writer was history. The nominations and prizes, the reviews and the praise meant nothing. Taylor Robinson was experienced enough to know that there was a lot more to publishing success than writing well and producing good books. But never had she seen a writer more ill-treated.
After reading Michael’s manuscript, Taylor Robinson decided to change that. In The First Letter, the series debut, Michael introduced his protagonist, known only as Chaney.
In Chaney, Michael had created a protagonist who was the personification of true evil, a man for whom murder became an act of artistic and personal liberation. Yet he was also a charming, intelligent, and erudite man, with a sense of style and taste that couldn’t help but endear him to readers. As Michael was careful to establish from the beginning, Chaney’s victims never exactly deserved their fate, but they weren’t entirely innocent, either. It wasn’t what Taylor could call a new moral code-just as there are no new stories, there are no new moral codes-but the story, in its unusual approach to style and voice, reflected the ethically ambiguous state of the world today.
More important, the book was a damn good read. Taylor convinced Joan Delaney to let her take him on as a client.
That night she phoned Michael at his hotel and told him that if he’d have her, she was willing to take him on. And while she couldn’t guarantee him a slot on The List immediately, she could promise him that no matter what, she’d break her back for him if that’s what it took.
Taylor sold the first book for ten grand, not much in the pantheon of contemporary book deals, but it was a hardcover deal to a publishing house that took its writers seriously and promoted the hell out of them. The First Letter was published just in time to hit the bookstores for Christmas. The first reviews were astounding. The reviewers either loved the book more than anything that had come off the line in years, or they vilified the book so passionately that one couldn’t help but go buy a copy to see what all the hubbub was about. What the reviews didn’t do for the book, word of mouth-that most powerful of all publishing promotional tools-did. The book earned out its advance in a month and was sold to nine foreign publishers, then into a hefty paperback reprint deal that garnered enough to allow Michael to quit his job as a proofreader for good. The second in the series went for seventy-five thousand, the third for a hundred and a quarter. The fourth book sold for two hundred thousand dollars and missed The List by only a couple of slots. She’d gone back to contract for Michael Schiftmann a year and a half ago and gotten him a neat three hundred thousand for The Fifth Letter. By then, momentum alone carried the book onto The List.