Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
But it’s too late to start over again, and the truth is, I’ll miss all of this and far more if I don’t figure out what the fuck I’m going to do about work.
four FIZZY
The first time I ever met a producer to discuss adapting one of my books into a film, I was so excited I barely slept the night before. I spent hours picking out what I would wear. I told every person I knew that my book was being adapted into a movie. I gave myself five hours to drive the 124 miles to Los Angeles and then paid forty dollars to park so I’d have a place to wait because I’d arrived three hours early. I sat there and thought about what I might wear on the red carpet, who might be cast as the hero, and how it would feel to see him on the screen for the very first time. I walked in with big smiles and big plans and big hopes.
That collaboration didn’t go anywhere, and neither did the next meeting, or the next, and the meetings that were productive were about projects that eventually languished in predevelopment for years. I had to learn the hard way that everyone in Hollywood is excited about a project until it’s time for the wallets to open. Now I know this song and dance; the meeting my film agent set up for me this morning at the unknown-to-me North Star Media doesn’t even register as a blip with my adrenals.
North Star’s administrative assistant is a sweet twentysomething cutie-pie who offers me coffee and a doughnut from a pink mom-and-pop-shop box on her desk when I arrive. I consider answering a few DMs while I wait, but what my readers want is an update on the book, and I’ve got nothing for them. I put my phone away and busy myself with a doughnut instead.
Looking around, I must admit the vibe in this small San Diego production company is much beachier and chill than all the glossy glass-walled or intentionally industrial bluster of LA. But when the dude I’m meeting steps out of his office, I’m reminded that Hollywood is Hollywood, even in San Diego.
I think I know him from somewhere, but I can’t place where—this is not a man who would hang out in any of my favorite coffee shops or bars. His hair is so perfectly coiffed that from a distance it looks like a Lego hair block. I’m distracted by his height, so I don’t catch his name, but I smile as if I did. White gleaming teeth, glimmering eyes that would get the sparkle sound effect in a cartoon, and muscles bunchy and flexing under his white dress shirt. He is hot in a very obvious way. If I were writing this book, I’d immediately cast him as Hot Millionaire Executive. Sadly, my mental Rolodex tells me three important things about this hero archetype: He will talk a lot about whatever sport he played in college. He is, at best, a performative feminist. And, relatedly, he does not enjoy going down on women.
But I follow him into his office anyway because if I stay in the waiting area, I’ll eat a second doughnut.
Hot Millionaire Executive’s office is tidy and sparse. Unlike many other film executives’ workspaces, it doesn’t have a framed collection of signed rare comic books, a coffee table book about vintage sneakers, or a vanity wall of film posters. He has a few framed black-and-white photographs of what looks like the Central California coastline, some other framed photos facing away from me on his desk, and then nothing but clean walls and surfaces.
The hot, boring man gestures that I should sit in one of the expensive leather chairs grouped around a low wood coffee table, and I really do try to fall effortlessly into the seat, but the rip in my jeans hits at the worst place in my knee and the second I sit it makes an audible tearing sound. A moment passes where I can see him debating whether he should react to it.
He seems to decide against it, smiling instead. I add nice smile to his character description. “Thanks for coming in today, Felicity.”
“Oh. A Brit.” I feel the first, tiny pants flutter in ages and update my mental archetype Rolodex.
“Born and raised in Blackpool.”
“I don’t know where that is, but it sounds piratey.”
He laughs at this, a low, rumbling sound. “Northwestern England.”
I nod, looking around, trying to figure out how a man looking like that left his pirate hometown, ended up in an office this bland, and eventually found his way to my books. What a journey. When my eyes return to his face, I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve met before. “Do we know each other?”