Page 6 of Mark my Words

“Have a good afternoon, Sam.” She smiled as I wiped my towel up the back of my hair while opening the door.

I was sure I smelled nasty and knew I had sweat dripping down my neck, but I winked at her and gave her a slight head nod anyway. No point in burning bridges I never intended to cross. “You too, Sara.”

Thankfully, I’d taken my lunch a little late today, so I didn’t have to worry about any weird, half-naked locker room talk. I only wanted to get in, wash my junk and get out. It still amazed me how much some guys gossiped in the locker room. I knew high school and university athletes did, but some hard-nosed professionals who worked for other companies in our building weren’t much better than fifteen-year-old girls.

As the hot water beat down on my scalp, I pressed my hand against the wall and tried to relax. Adrian had been a total dick lately when Evan’s first draft came back and was a disaster. This was the first novel of his that I’d edited where I was left shaking my head. His plot was well developed—having the usually detailed finesse of his other books—but there wasn’t any spark between the main characters.

Being on Adrian’s team, I hadn’t worked with Chase—Chastity—whatever her name was, but she had a big following. If she could get through to Evan, she’d save all of us the hassle of scrapping a novel past its due date. Unfortunately, it meant subjecting myself to being in Kristine’s crosshairs until we were done.

With her tall, lithe body—that packed a surprising number of voluptuous curves—dark auburn hair, and those captivating hazel green eyes, I could admit that I was physically attracted to her the first time that I saw her, but that viper tongue of hers worried me. She was an expert at cutting people down to size with a few well-placed barbs, and I was not looking forward to dealing with her temperamental nature. That was one bear you did not want to poke.

But imagining riling her up to the point that she used her tongue for another kind of lashing made me pause my soapy hands to will away my response. Kristine was likely to be a minx in bed, or at least the fantasy version of her that’d been appearing in my head lately. No, that was a dangerous line of thought. Any attachment to her, especially a sexual one, would be not only suicide for my career–my cock as well.

I’d worked with plenty of attractive women in my career and kept things strictly professional; this was no different.

Adrian had sent through the first round of edits to Evan’s manuscript, and I was scrolling through to fix any minor grammatical errors. Evan’s writing was typically pretty clean, but there were still things that you missed in your own writing that editors caught with a fresh eye. Adrian couldn’t be fucked with going through the first draft of anything, typically refusing to look at a manuscript past a three-chapter preview until it’d been sent back as a second draft.

He’d earned it, though, working his way up from the bottom of the company as he played baseball on scholarship to pay for school. That was part of why I understood him. I knew how hard it was to earn a degree and deal with the rigorous schedule of a college athlete. I respected his work ethic, even if the chip on his shoulder had turned him into a prick.

“It’s good, right?” He was seated behind his desk, hands clasped behind his head, shiny dress shoes propped up on the corner of his worktop. I’d expected his office to be a disaster along with his personality, but he was meticulous about filing, and his desk was always tidy. It freaked me out when I needed to pull something from his filing cabinets when I started working for him, and everything had neatly labeled tabs in his handwriting. He was either the world’s neatest jackass or a secret serial killer.

Or both...

“Yeah, the text is clean. You can tell the writing style is a little different, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell that someone else helped him write this.” Authors changed their style slightly as they honed their craft; trying a new writing technique on a new project wasn’t unheard of. Given that the subject matter was a departure from his usual, passing the changes off to his readers would be easier.

“I have to admit, I thought he’d get all anxious and refuse to work with her, but they’ve already gotten through quite a few scenes we told him needed to be reworked.”

It irritated me a little how he spoke about some of the writers, but I knew he ultimately respected them. Creating characters out of your imagination took talent. The environments they developed with only a few sentences could transport readers to another world, sometimes literally. Editors were the backbone, polishing those stories so they shined, all while keeping the writers happy so they had something to edit.

“I’m marking up a few things I’ve noticed, but this shouldn’t have too many changes going back to him.”

Adrian nodded and swung his legs down, propping his elbows on the edge of his desk and leaning forward. “Oh, I’m supposed to have you send all your edits through her.”

My heart rate kicked up slightly, remembering my response to thinking about her earlier. Tamping it down quickly, I saved my notes and closed my laptop, looking up at Adrian. “Like every edit, or only the major ones?”

He sighed, pushing himself back in his chair and rolling his eyes. “Everything. Isobel told me you both needed full access.”

With her little tantrum in the elevator, Kristine had indicated she wanted more permissions to edit the files, but I was still controlling access to the document, which meant...I had to go to her.

“Am I supposed to email them to her, send them on the shared server, or—“ He started shaking his head, and I could tell by the self-satisfied smirk that he already knew what I’d deduced. I’d have to seek her out.

“Sucks to be you, man.”

KRISTINE

BOSTON

Many people in this building couldn’t handle multitasking, especially those lacking an X chromosome. I found focusing on one task at a time tedious, always working through issues with multiple projects. Isobel preferred to complete things one storyline at a time, but I could often edit or proof three, four, and even five manuscripts simultaneously and keep the storylines separate. I prided myself on knowing all the tiny details the authors threw into their plots to keep things interesting. Very few plot points slipped past me, and I often found some of the novels predictable, but I think some readers enjoyed that.

It wasn’t my job to judge if the story would sell to the general public; that was up to Isobel and the marketing department. I simply ensured that when they hit the shelves, there weren’t any glaring formatting issues that would make the publishing house look bad. Many authors had moved to self-publishing, and I found myself virtually pulling my hair out that some didn’t understand the value of having a good editing team behind you. Plenty of indie authors were kicking ass with the help of their editors. It didn’t make you weak to get help. It made you look like a professional.

“You ready to go through these new pages?”

My fingers tapped the table’s surface to the song’s beat in my ears as I scanned the page to ensure the punctuation issues had been resolved. It blew my mind how many people forgot spaces, missed commas, and omitted periods. It made me wonder how they made it through an introductory English class in high school.

“Kristine...”

I knew that quite a few authors hated working with me. I wasn’t naive to the point that they resented all the little notes and red marks I left all over their precious pages. I also didn’t give two shits. They excelled at their job of developing the plots and characters and all the tiny details, and I excelled at making sure they were written so people could understand them.

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