Apollo's Curse

Copyright © 2014 by the author

All rights reserved.

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1499332599

Paperback ISBN-10: 1499332599

Contents

CHAPTER ONE – AND THEY ALL LIVED…

CHAPTER TWO – ENTER THE MATRIX

CHAPTER THREE – I AM VENUS AMOUR!

CHAPTER FOUR – HER BLAZING LOVE

CHAPTER FIVE – WHO’S THAT GUY?

CHAPTER SIX – THE RISE OF PAMELA CLARICE

CHAPTER SEVEN –LOST IN THOSE SEA GREEN EYES

CHAPTER EIGHT – WANTED: GRIFTERELLA

CHAPTER NINE – THE MIRACLE DAY

CHAPTER TEN – THE NEXT KEITH

CHAPTER ELEVEN – NOT VENICE, CALIFORNIA

CHAPTER TWELVE – SOMETHING WONDERFUL

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – YES, IT DOES SOUND CRAZY

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – TO THE QUEST!

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – A THOUSAND WHYS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN – THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – A FEE FOR THE SEA

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – MR. SCHEHERAZADE

CHAPTER NINETEEN – THE LAST EMPRESS

CHAPTER TWENTY – THE LAST ROMANCE

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE – DENIAL, ANGER, BARGAINING

CHAPTER ONE – AND THEY ALL LIVED…

Every romance has a happy ending – right? I should know, I’ve written enough of them now. But I don’t think I get to pick the ending to this one. This is not the book I wanted to write, but then again, since last summer, I haven’t had any choice about what I write. Paul got inside me, and he’s been calling the shots ever since.

And now? My new career has brought me here, to a classic True Love spot. The Piazza San Marco is nearly deserted this time of day in early May, its grey stones shiny with light misty rain. The only customers sitting outside of Caffe Florian are me, the pigeons and the old men with their copies of Il Gazzettino and their espressos.

I’ve got my cappuccino, my biscotti, and my notebook. I look like a total tourist, wrapped up in my North Face shell against the gentle sting of the cool, moist Adriatic morning. My notebook is open, my pen uncapped. And now what?

Now I’ve got to write a story where I track Paul down, and all is explained, and he frees me from this curse, and the story ends just like the old school romance novels, remember those? Back when there wasn’t any sex, back when they ended with the first kiss and a HEA. That’s Happily Ever After in the professional lingo.

If. It’s a big if. If Jackson-don’t-call-me-Jack’s theory is correct, and writing down all that’s happened so far will lead me to Paul. That’s when we find out if what happened to me was an enormous coincidence, a subtle psychological game I’ve been playing with myself to keep writing…or if there really is a curse. If everything that’s happened to me since the summer solstice really is magic.

My real career as an author began the night I joined a book club, and met Rose and Sherry.

I’d always been a writer, but I wanted to be an Author. That meant you were Serious. That this was your Career.

I’d finished a small, thoughtful novel, about a young woman’s coming of age. The Doldrums was a novel about loneliness, and technology, and what happens when someone who’s lived a completely digital life gets cut off from it, and how she reconnects with humanity. Yeah. Real best seller material.

And when it was done, I sent it out to every publisher in the world. And the answers were no, no, and no.

Finally I thought, well screw it. To hell with tradpub. If they didn’t want me, there was always selfpub. I could edit my own work, I could learn how upload books to Amazon and Barnes & Noble and the iTunes store. So I did.

And then? Crickets. Yeah, this stuff doesn’t sell itself.

I didn’t want to be a salesman. I wanted to write! And I was just coming to grips with my failure, with the grim looming fact that my job at the liposuction clinic, or another just like it, was going to be my forever and ever destiny, when I got an email from Elizabeth Morris.

Dear Dane, I just read The Doldrums, and I loved it! Your characters are so real, your dialog is so crisp, and the ending is so satisfying. I’d love to talk to you about it.

Omigod. An editor from a Giant Publishing House wanted to talk to me! This was it, my big break! I couldn’t believe one of the seven people who’d bought the book online (I checked my sales numbers daily) was a New York Editor.

I called in sick the day of the phone call. I had so much to do to get ready. Well, honestly, I spent most of my time polishing my imaginary awards speeches.

Hello?

Hi, Dane, it’s Elizabeth Morris from GPH. Her voice was cool, brisk, one of those people who uses her name in conversation as if handing you her card.

Hi, how are you?

Great. I loved ‘The Doldrums.’

Thank you, so much. I…

I’m really excited about getting some more information from you today.

Okay…

So tell me about your strategy.

Great! All my well rehearsed imaginary interview answers would come in handy. Well, I’d been kicking the idea around for a few years. I really wanted to explore what happens to a driven young woman when she has no choice but to slow down and…

No, your marketing strategy. I’ve been Googling you and I’m having a hard time finding you, actually. Are you on Twitter under a different handle?

Um, no. I’m not on Twitter, actually.

Hmm. I see you have a Facebook page, but it’s closed, friends only. What’s the name of your Facebook author page?

Author page?

Okay, your website, then.

Um…

Silence. Two seconds of silence, all that a busy New York Editor could afford to spare. Okay. Well, your social media presence is a pretty important factor in whether or not I can get you a contract.

It is?

Yes, she said, with a half-exasperated half-contemptuous tone. But I really appreciate your time. Drop me a line when you’ve...

Wait! I don’t get it. I’m a writer. I write. I don’t want to selfpub. I want to be with a big house where you guys do all…that stuff for me. That’s what you do, right?

She sighed. Not in years, hon. Publishing’s a very different business now. Successful authors, authors I can sign, come with their own audiences. Listen. Get on Goodreads, be an active participant, read the book of the month in your genre, contribute to the conversation. Join some local book clubs, introduce yourself as a writer. Get on Twitter, follow other writers you like. Put out a Createspace version of the book so you have a paper copy you can sign at readings.

Look, I have a full time job. I get up at four o’clock in the morning to write. Which means I go to bed at nine at night. I don’t have time or energy to do all that!

"Well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is the reality of it. There are a lot of books out there. Some aren’t as good as yours. Most aren’t, to be honest. But their authors are selling themselves. And this is a business, and that’s the nature of the business now. Let’s keep in touch."

I had a great time. I’ll call you.

Crap.

So, okay, I’ll give this a shot, I thought weakly. I’ll find a book club. I’d ask Jenna, my BWFFALAWWT. You’ve got one, right? Your Best Work Friend Forever As Long As We Work Together? She was the PA, Physician Assistant, and we’d hit it off my first day.

The last place I’d ever thought I’d work was at Ravishing Rose Medical Clinical Spa, doing the billing.

The office was beautiful, of course. The waiting room featured dim track lighting to hide the flaws you were about to have removed, a granite slab of a wall over which a gentle trickle of water poured endlessly, current issues of magazines that were quickly replaced when the clients walked out with them, big red deep and comfy chairs (but not so deep and comfy you couldn’t lever your fat ass out of them), and an enormous spray of tropical flowers in a spotlit alcove, replaced daily. Like many offices with spectacularly expensive and beautiful lobbies, the bathrooms were supplied with a painfully cheap one-ply toilet paper.

Welcome to Ravenous Hose, Jenna said on my first day. She was short, slim, and astonishingly strong – strong enough to push and roll 300 pound ladies onto, around, and off of operating tables, a definite job requirement.

I’m sorry?

She took her pen and made a stabbing motion, mimicking the lipo wand’s fat-pulverizing action. Squitchy, squitchy. Sucky, sucky.

I laughed. You make it sound musical.

The opera’s not over till the fat lady sings.

Well, from what I’ve seen today, she’ll definitely sing when she gets the bill.

So when I told Jenna that I wanted, needed, to join a book club, she snorted a little.

Really? Your Seriousness is going to lower Himselfness to joining a book club?

Thanks for that. That’s what the New York publisher told me to do, so I am going to grit my teeth, buckle down, and do it.

Hmm. Well, I know someone who’s starting a book club. She does the marketing for the clinic, I can give you her number.

She looked at me warily, as if she was about to confess something and wanted to see if she could trust me. It’s a romance book club, is that okay?

Sure, I said, smothering my disappointment.

She looked at me dubiously. I’m not gonna send you if you’re going to be a snob about it.

No, no, I’m not. Do you…you know. Read them? Romances?

Of course, she said. Look, it’s not Tolstoy, fine. Do you go home after a long day at the clinic and read Tolstoy and fantasize about Boris or Count Vronsky?

No. I watch ‘Game of Thrones’ and fantasize about Jon Snow.

There you go. See, you’re a romance addict, too.

CHAPTER TWO – ENTER THE MATRIX

I exchanged emails with Rose, the clinic’s marketing consultant, and got the details. The book on the agenda was called Blanched, and we’d be meeting Friday at the house of the other member so far, Sherry.

I downloaded the ebook and idly started browsing some of what we in the biz call alsobots, the titles that come up under the Customers who bought this item also bought section of the book’s Amazon page.

One word titles were the rage, I noticed. And titles had a lot of dysfunction words– broken, damaged, ruined, burned. Not exactly the sort of light reading I’d expected. The author was named, allegedly, Lucy Freud. Her picture was very sultry, in an 80s big-blond-hair way. She looked like Morgan Fairchild. Blanched was self-published, and I suppressed my jealousy at its single-digit sales ranking – not #1 but damn close.

I flopped out on the couch with my tablet and sighed. Okay. Research. And with that attitude I plugged my earbuds into the tablet, fired up some music to go with my book, and settled in.

Blanched was the story of a young woman chef, fresh out of cooking school, who’s just started work in the kitchen of a meteoric, demanding genius. Not the Gordon Ramsey type, all cursing and yelling, more like Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, the cool, quiet, distant, total perfectionist – right down to demanding that you perfectly chop even the vegetables nobody would ever see, because they went into the soup stock.

If, that is, Thomas Keller looked like Clive Owen and had a Dark Past and a total Mr. Rochester vibe. The work is hard, he’s cruel, but it’s all for the best because really he’s trying to make her a better chef. It was like Richard Gere and Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman if Richard Gere had kissed him instead of Debra Winger.

The kitchen bits were clearly written from experience, and the love affair may well have been too. The thing that kept throwing me out of the story were, well, the little things. The spelling errors. The repetition of a thought or a joke someone had told three chapters earlier. The mental roadblocks I’d hit in the form of weird, long, twisted and grammatically tortured sentences. The upfront cramming of exposition in place of character development. All the things, in other words, I didn’t do, knew better than to do.

And okay. I was feeling the RAGE! How could this Lucy Freud be so famous? So rich! It wasn’t…fair.

But after I finished it, I had to admit. It was…not terrible. The characters were real. The situation was believable. When they finally do it, the sex was…well, it was pretty damn hot. The villain was a bit cardboard, but as a plot device, I’d allow it, so, objection overruled.

I had my notes folded in my coat pocket when I got to Sherry’s house the next Friday. Just in case I needed to go to the bathroom and refresh myself on my speech before it was my turn to weigh in.

How was I going to do that? Was I supposed to wait my turn and then say, I don’t know, Well, as an author myself… to get them asking me about my own work? If I were writing that scene, I’d say, damn, boy, you sound like you’re made of wood, you’re so stiff. No, that wasn’t going to work out for me.

Sherry’s house was one of those stately old Victorians whose state was fallen on hard times. The three-story house was regrettably painted gray, which, with the mismatched patchwork roof tiles on the turret and the fractures around the window sashes, gave it a tired air. The lawn was dead, and there was a lonely bulb over the front porch.

Sherry opened the door and I thought, oh boy. She was in some kind of Stevie Nicks outfit, a white lacy thing that would have been right at home at a Renaissance Faire. Her hair was a bit frizzy and she wore granny glasses that practically screamed Hippie.

Hi, you must be Dane, she said in a startlingly clear and cultured voice that, okay, I wasn’t expecting from the sight of her. Come on in. It’s just the three of us tonight.

Inside, there was a guitar on a stand, lots of candle holders, and the art on the walls was mostly framed rock concert posters.

Are you a musician? I asked her.

My husband’s in the music business, was all she said with a deliberate vagueness that didn’t invite further prying.

For such a big house, the living room was cozy, and felt especially small with the large blue velveteen sectional crammed into it. Rose got up from the couch to greet me. She wore a serious navy blue business suit and killer heels, clearly here straight from a late evening at the office. She was slim and trim, with long, wavy, expensively styled raven tresses, and sharp brown eyes.

Can I get you a glass of wine? Sherry asked.

Please. She handed me a decanter-sized glass and poured a smoky red into it, something that had sat in a cask for a long time, with an almost moldy scent to it. So it probably cost a lot, as it came from France in one of those bottles with a tan label and red-and-black gothic script that said Vieux Telegraphe. It was intensely flavored, not wine made for guzzling. That was a good thing, since that would make it harder for me to nervously suck it all down, get pasted, and make a fool of myself.

It definitely warmed me up. It was December, and cool, even in Santa Vera, just northeast of San Diego – far enough away from the ocean to make winter chilly, especially at night. I know, a low of 45 in December and we’re shivering – you poor things, right?

After a judicious amount of time for the wine to loosen our tongues as well as our muscles, Sherry asked, Well, what did you all think?

Rose started. I’m really impressed with how she structured it. She really stuck to the matrix, which is why it works so well.

The matrix? I asked.

Yeah, Rose said. The seven point story matrix? You’re a writer, you’ve heard of it, right?

I tried not to wrinkle my nose. What was that, some kind of write by numbers thing? No, I haven’t.

Hook, Plot Turn 1, Pinch 1, Midpoint, Pinch 2, Plot Turn 2, Resolution. You can take any successful novel or film and break it out and you’ll see the matrix.

So it’s a formula, I said, unable to hide my literary disdain.

Rose nodded. Yep. A formula that works. Harry Potter? Star Wars? The Matrix? You name it. They all adhere to the rules.

Huh, I said.

I loved the relationship, Sherry said, speaking at last. The way they start out from this adversarial student-teacher relationship, it’s like a rookie-veteran cop bromance thing.

Yeah, Rose nodded. It’s different. But not too different that it doesn’t appeal. And, she had one hell of a marketing campaign. She carpet-bombed every major chef in the country, showing up at their kitchens with signed copies for the whole staff, she got quotes out of Danny Mayer and Eric Ripert and Bourdain…

Sounds like you’re more a fan of the creativity behind the marketing campaign than whatever went into the book, I said, the wine going to my head, and my anger at my own dismal economic failure clawing its way out.

Rose looked at me disdainfully. Isn’t it a measure of the quality of a book that it gives people what they want?

What the people want, I said, is more of the same. They want a writer to write the same book, every year, over and over, change the names and nothing else. Who wouldn’t go mad doing that?

Lots of people, Rose said. "People who make a living writing."

Ouch, I thought.

More wine? Sherry asked hastily.

Rose and I could agree on that anyway.

Well, I don’t make a living at it. But, I lied, I’d rather sell seven copies of something good and original and truthful than just…write whatever sells. And besides, the quality of the writing left something to be desired. A lot to be desired, actually.

So, Rose said, after we started our second glass. Tell me what’s wrong with ‘Blanched.’

Okay, I said. I pulled out my phone to access my bookmarked version of the novel. Let’s see. Here’s a description on page 7 of Alex that has her eye to eye with the produce guy, fighting about an order, and it says ‘he towered above most women, but not Alex, so he couldn’t intimidate her easily.’ So he’s a tall guy. But then there’s this line on page 150, ‘Alex looked up into Devin’s face, hovering above her like the sun.’ So, how tall is this guy, is he a giant or something? If he’s taller than the guy who towers above women, he has to be, right?

I went on from there. A hostess with green eyes that flashed, then sparkled, then glittered, at various points in the book. We get it, right? Why the repetition? It’s lazy. This character’s nasty, okay, but give us something besides her eyes to show it.

Then there was the major crime. Look at the frontloading. ‘Alex had gone to the Culinary Institute of America despite her parents’ wishes and found that she loved the competitive environment. All her life she’d had to work harder, be better, than the men around her, just to get to a lower rung of the ladder. Soon she was at the top of her class and being recruited by top chefs around the country. Now she’d landed a job in Devin’s kitchen.’

So? Rose asked.

So, you need to show, not tell. It’s like…journalism when you write like that, just shoveling someone’s life resume in without building it out. Teasing it out. Letting us get to know a person the way you would in real life. Bit by bit. Why not do a flashback to school, where she’s getting elbowed by some guy in a class demonstration, or have someone in Devin’s kitchen do the ‘man thing’ and then introduce that as something she’s always had to deal with?

Hmm, Rose said.

But she does a good job with show, not tell, with the romance, Sherry added. "There’s no spark at all between them at first, it’s just a job. She thinks of him like any other boss, and he thinks of her like any other new chef, they don’t even see each other as attractive or as even potential sexual beings. It’s