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"What? Madness?" Zach asked, nodding toward the book

"No Happiness"

"Happiness?" Zach allowed hiood for that"

Zach returned to his office His assistant, Mary, had left Nora Sutherlin’swith a file folder

Zach flipped the file open and barely glanced at Sutherlin’s bio She was thirty-three, about a decade younger than him Her first book had come out when she enty-nine She’d released five titles since then; her second book, entitled Red, had created a reat sales, lots of buzz Zach studied the nuer to acquire her With each subsequent release, her sales had nearly doubled Zach ran through the little he knew of erotica writers in his rowthBut it shouldn’t be about the money Just the art

Zach threw Sutherlin’s bio and sales projections in the trash He’d stolen his philosophy of editing from the old New Critics--it’s just about the book Not the author, not the ed a book only by the book He shouldn’t care that Nora Sutherlin’s personal life was rumored to be as torrid as her prose Only her book h

Zach examined the manuscript with suspicion Mary knew he preferred to read his books in hard copy versions But she’d obviously had a little tooout this one for him Across the scarlet-red cover blazed the title in a lurid Gothic font--The Consolation Prize Editors aled a book’s title, but he had to concede it was an interesting choice for a work of erotica He opened the manuscript and read the first sentence: "I don’t want to write this story anyas he felt the shadow of so old and familiar whisper across his shoulder He brushed the sensation off and read the line again Then the next one and the next one…

2

So he loved, taking a novel with pretensions of greatness and actually et crises, having to let a brillianthack… And now here he was, hauling his arse into Connecticut to meet some loony smut writer who’d so that she deserved one of the best editors in literary fiction Yes, some days he hated his job Today he felt quite certain it hated him back

Zach parked JP’s car in front of a rather quaint two-story Tudor cottage in the tame and pedestrian suburb He checked the address, his directions and stared at the house Nora Sutherlin--the notorious erotica writer whose books were banned as often as they were translated lived here? Zach could i tea and biscuits on sh, he strode to the front door and rang the bell Shortly after, he heard footsteps approaching--sturdy, ining that Nora Sutherlin ht bloke in his mid-fifties