Chapter One

            Edlyn Delaney skimmed over the summary in her hand and groaned. Glancing at the application form, she closed her eyes and slowly counted to ten.

            “Ready to give up yet?” her best friend, Martin Haydn inquired, raising an eyebrow.

            “No!” she snapped back. “Blind Bard Publishing Co. will work out and you will get your share of profits.”

            “Oh, I don’t really care about the profits. You know I have enough dough to keep this place running and still maintain my wealthy profile.” He adjusted his blazer with mock grandeur.

            “Oh, don’t be a git,” she told him, tossing a tissue box at him, for lack of any other harmless ammunition.

            “Git? Since when do you use the word ‘git?’” Martin asked, catching the tissue box easily and returning it to the desk.

            “Some British guy sent in a manuscript earlier this week,” she explained. “He used the word on almost every other page.”

            “Must have been a cynical story,” he commented.

            “Not really. Just annoying.”

            Sighing, she rested her head in her hands and messaged her temples. Blind Bard Publishing Co. had been accepting manuscripts for two weeks and had only accepted one submission as yet. Martin had no problem with sponsoring, or, in Edlyn’s eyes, loaning the money to start the company. And why would he? He had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had inherited a multimillion dollar company, in trust, at the age of twelve. Edlyn knew he didn’t believe the Blind Bard would be much of a success. He had told her time and again that there was a reason publishing companies required perspective authors to work through an agent. Of course, she hadn’t listened, being the stubborn, wilful, out-of-my-way redhead that she was.

            I am not the way I am because of my hair, she reminded herself. I am not the way I am because of my hair.

            There was a rustling of paper and Edlyn peep between her hands to see Martin picking up the manuscript she had been reading.

            He’s going to laugh, she thought. I really shouldn’t let him read that. He’s already got enough doubt in this company.

            Reaching across the desk, she tried to snatch the manuscript away from him, but he turned, putting his broad back between her and the stack of papers.

            “Is ‘most handsomest’ a grammatically correct term?” he inquired glancing at her over his shoulder.

            “No, it’s not. That’s why I was going to toss that into the shredder before you so rudely interrupted,” she replied testily.

            Ignoring her, he picked up the application form that had been sent with the manuscript and ran over it. “Sonia Kenton. Age thirteen. Lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Has a cat named Fluffy...” He paused, glancing up at Edlyn. “What does her cat have to do with her ambitions to be a writer?”

            “I have no clue and don’t you even start on me. I am not setting an age limit nor am I going to convert to the requirements of conventional publishing companies. I am going to sort this out and somehow get rid of all these amateurs. Then you’ll see that the Blind Bard is not a lost cause and have to take back all your little jokes,” she fumed.

            Used to her little tantrums, Martin answered with a non-committal ‘uh-huh’ and picked up another manuscript set in her inbox. Edlyn watched him flip to the first page and begin reading, then turned to her desk, wrote a quick note on a post-it and stuck it on top of the manuscript. She slipped the application form between the first two pages and dumped the package in her outbox. With a look of determination in her eye, she took another manuscript from the inbox and opened to the summary.

            ‘Everyone everywhere knew that every time Earl Edgar Eldon of Erhard…’

            “That’s an insulting abuse of alliteration,” she muttered, pulling open her drawer and taking out two pads of post-its, one red and one green. Grabbing a pen, she scribbled on a red post-it and talking out loud so that she would have to explain her new system to Martin later.

            “Glenys, from now onwards, any manuscript in my outbox with a red post it signifies that the document is to be shredded and recycled and the writer sent a letter of refusal. If the manuscript bears a green post-it, however, then a letter is to be sent to the author asking confirmation of permission to print the story and the document is to be filed away.”

            With a flourish, she stuck the note onto the manuscript with the abusive alliteration and deposited it in the outbox.

            “Next, please,” she called and Martin laughed, setting down the story he had been reading.       

            “I think you need a break,” he stated.

            “I concur.” Standing, she grabbed her jacket from its hook beside her door and shrugged it on. “I presume, of course, that you will be paying, Mr. Haydn,” she added slyly.

            “Of course,” he drawled. “Shall we invite your lovely secretary to join us?”

            Edlyn rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve tried sitting through one of your first dates before and it was a pain in the ass, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t want to sit and listen to you wooing Glenys with corny lines all through lunch.”

            “Jealous?”

            Sauntering up to him, she took hold of his lapels and tugged on them playfully. “Darling, I already have your money at my command. Why would I need to date you?”

            Playing along, he settled his hands on her hips, pulling her closer. “Because, sweetheart, though you may have me at your beck and call, you’ve never had me as a lover.”

            “That’s disgusting!” she cried, raising a hand to her eyes. “Urgh! Why do you always have to put these disgusting images in my head?”

            Putting on a hurt face, he looked down at her with pretended pain. “What would be so bad about having me as a lover?”

            “It’d practically be incest, that’s what!” Turning around, she walked out of the office, muttering about the libidinous minds of men.

            “Are you going out for lunch, Ms. Delaney?” her secretary, Glenys, inquired.

            “Yes and there are some manuscripts to take care of in my outbox, if you will, Glenys.”

            “Of course, Ms. Delaney.”

            “And it’s Edlyn, please,” she called over her shoulder as she reached the elevator doors.

            “Yes, Ms. – I mean, Edlyn,” Glenys replied.

            “She is so hot,” Martin said as they got into the elevator. “Is she dating anyone?”

            “Not that I know of.”

            “Do you know why?”

            “No.”

            “Can you find out?”

            “Martin!”

            “What?” he asked with a look of obliviousness.

            “I am not going to snoop around my secretary’s love life just to do you a favour.”

            Martin grumbled something rude under their breath as they reached the ground floor of the office building and stepped out of the elevator. There was a small café across the street where they often had lunch, but it was closed on Saturdays due to the owners being Jewish. Instead, they opted for the nearest Subway.

            “So besides that mystery novel you’re going to start printing on Monday– what was it called again?”

            “Hidden in Broad Daylight,” Edlyn muttered sourly, knowing what was coming next.

            “Right. Besides that, have you found any other stories worth publishing?” Martin asked, taking a bite of his sandwich.

            “Yes. It was a very interesting horror, but she got an offer from a ‘better known and more prestigious publisher’ according to the email I got the other day,” she replied, making air quotes with her hands.

            Martin snorted. “Anything else?”

            She shook her head and refused to meet his eye, concentrating on eating instead.

            “You’ll find someone,” he assured her. “These things just take time. You just wait. There’s bound to be some homeless bum out there who’s a great writer and just doesn’t have the money to hire an agent.”

            Edlyn let out a laugh at that. “Yeah, he’ll probably send his manuscript in handwritten on crinkled foolscap.”

            Martin shrugged. “You know what they say, don’t you? Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

A.N. I haven’t really come up with a storyline for this yet. I just came up with the idea when my friend was having a tantrum about having to hire an agent in order to get published and no, she is not a redhead. I’ll try to come up with some sort of plot, but it may take a while.