Almost an Author Page 3

  The vet says Armstrong is a kind of Australian Blue Healer crossed with what might have been Dachshund. So he looks like a wiry-coated, short-legged sausage dog. At best a hairy, char-grilled chipolata.

  On his return from nowhere, Hunter accepts his gift with a kind of austere, masculine grace in that he never stoops to stroke Armstrong; he ignores him except to roar, “Outside, you stinking mongrel.”

  I don’t mention the vet’s bill at this stage. I will choose my moment. I’m just thrilled that Hunter came back.

  We share a dilapidated two-up/two-down. Bedrooms downstairs, living up. Downstairs is little more than a dark basement, which leads onto a tiny garden where I grow plants in pots. Parsley, marjoram, sage, miniature tomatoes, and accidentally marijuana. Silverbeet grows in a variety of colors planted straight into a punctured bag of potting mix. The rooms are plastered white and the whole place is sparsely furnished with items chosen from local secondhand shops. It’s the only way I can live.

  I call to Armstrong as I open the front door. He comes down slowly, since his short legs find the risers taxing, another annoying characteristic.

  Barbara appears to have dropped off the planet, so I go through the ‘What if she’s dead?’ scenario, again.

  I worry she might decide she hates my work.

  Then there is the bigger worry about sending her a $1000.00 deposit to cover the book printing deposit. Of course, it makes sense once she’s explained it. No one in their right mind would expect books to be printed for nothing. I can do that, I reassure myself. I can take it out of Gran’s money, although I’m trying hard to pretend there is no small inheritance to fall back on.

  I email Barbara.

  “Hunter’s dog is beautifully proportioned, a well-bred Australian Blue Healer/Dachshund cross. Hunter named him Armstrong. They’re pretty much inseparable. Am I jealous? Just a smidgeon. And I’ve applied the changes you suggested. Ruby.”

  ‘Hi Ruby, what a fantastic person you are to work with. Your efforts are appreciated. I am going to send the first 100 pages to South Pacific Films and to the National Broadcasting Corp. I need 3 copies of the Synopsis and About the Author. Send me 2 x 100 pages of the manuscript, please. I will draft a letter to them over the next few days and check everything before it is mailed. By the end of this week we should have it all away other than the full copies of the manuscript, which I will hold onto until there is a request for the entire copy. I will let you know immediately the box arrives.’

  Daily, my anxiety levels rise as I sit with my laptop, staring at the inbox. But this delay is a good thing, I argue. If Barbara is run off her feet doing all this work on my behalf and her other clients, the least I can do is be patient.

  ‘Hi Ruby, sorry. I should have emailed you. Forgot. They arrived safe. Maybe last week or earlier. What a wonderful woman you are. Your system of packaging was superb. It made my job easy. Preparing all that material takes hours. I think I’ll give all the publishers a call on Thursday or Friday next week. I’m about to go into town to get envelopes, stamps, and more paperclips so will get seven or eight submissions posted this weekend.’

  Hunter promised to help me write the cover blurb if I did a rough draft first, so I concentrate on writing myself up big. Then I pretend I’m him and do what he will do—delete-delete-delete—and condense what’s left. Some of it might even be true.

  Enthused, I start typing. My fingers fly over the keyboard. At least the two fingers I use do. I glance down to see which two. The middle two. The others do no more than steady them.

  It’s July when Barbara emails.

  ‘I think I might make an appointment with the local printer to see what deals he will do.’

  I find Barbara’s continual use of the word ‘think’ disarming. What a lovely agent, or publisher, or whatever she is, to be including me in her every thought process. So humble.

  ‘There’s no harm in looking at joint operations. The main thing is to get you into print and sold, even if it’s a few books to start with. I can lay it out free of charge and the only cost to you would be the printing. I think the printer might be prepared to carry it for a few months. Book sales will take care of his bill. Don’t stop believing in your writing because it is good.’

  I jolt out of my seat at the word ‘good’. What happened to brilliant?

  How I cope with this is dependent on whether I’m due my period, whether it’s raining or sunny, but mainly on whether that slob Hunter does the dishes. When I talk to him about the email, he says he’s taking stock of what he has, who he is, and where he’s going in life. He doesn’t mention me, Armstrong or Barbara but, logically, because I need him for various reasons, and we seem to be getting on okay, his dog and I will be part of whatever he has in mind.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, Ruby. The local printer I want to strike a deal with has been out of his office all week. I’m taking him the first and last 50 pages of Amanda. I’m going to ask for four months’ leeway before any money has to be paid on your printing account. Even if he will do 100 on these conditions, we can get orders in and he can print new orders on demand. I won’t suggest this unless I have to. I’ll be giving him a ready-to-print book so that will be a lot less work for him.

  Yesterday, I remembered a local illustrator. I’ve seen some of her work. I’ll see what she thinks for your front cover.

  I’ve looked for her email but can’t find it.

  I am going to see what a Chinese printer will charge. We pay them in $US. Our dollar’s increasing so it’s getting to where it might again be sensible to print offshore.

  Did you receive my email with the Chinese printing quote?’

  “Yes, Barbara, I got the email but I couldn’t decipher it—it was all numbers. And no sample attachment. What you sent was your original changes to my synopsis, which I sent you a while back.

  Hunter will do the brochure stuff.

  Hannah says $29.95 is the better price for the paperback. $27.95 is too close to $25.00, which could suggest it’s not a valuable book. For $29.95 you expect that you’re buying a quality book and treasure it more. And it’s a big book. Since city bookstores are now glossy and gleaming places, she says the presentation has to be high quality…”

  ‘Ruby, we need the full synopsis if we are looking for a publisher to take it on. It’s usually a page or more and reveals the whole story, including ending.

  And a brochure, which contains a brief synopsis. This goes to bookshops and where ever we want to market the books. Around 200 words.

  It needs to be easy to read and tell a prospective book buyer, in interesting language, what the story is about. It does not give the plot away.

  A brief Author Info is needed for the brochure and will go to bookshops and book wholesalers. About 200 words or whatever fits on brochure.’

  I feel so good I walk up and down the main street, getting the feel of what it might be like to walk it when my name is out there. Ruby. You know her? Ruby Wright, the world famous local author. I duck into a $2 shop and splurge $3.50 on a pair of sunglasses. I’ve seen how fans can mob you.

  Chapter Five

  Barbara sent some samples for a cover design, but it was childish work. A wholesome brood of children advertising a holiday health camp in the 1950s, or a Lucie Attwell book of the same vintage?

  I sidle up to Hunter. “Matey,” I say. He shoots me a wary look. “What do you think of these cover designs? Might that style work for Amanda?”

  “Crap,” he says, after a quick glance.

  “Okay, so which should I use? They’re $250 each.”

  “You have to pay? Where are you going to get that kind money?”

  “Ma-ate,” I start again, managing to sit part of my bottom on his knee. Risky move, I know, but there’s no other chair and his knee is empty. “It’s Armstrong.”

  “What’s he got to do with it?”

  “He’s expensive to maintain. I had to get him another kennel.”

  “He already has a kennel.” Hunter catapults me off his knee by abruptly standing. “I paid for it.”

  His eyebrows furrow. I once did a study of his eyebrows. I’d spent an entire week watching the two little bits of fur above his eyes rise up, then down, in keeping with the tone of his voice. Up for up-beat comments or healthy questions. Down for more serious stuff. They are currently down. Like the time I’d accosted him for abusing the washing machine, which I’d bought; he’d turn the machine on, on a full load, and then go look for clothes to stuff into it. If he couldn’t find a decent load, he’d improvise by emptying his sock drawer or just re-wash some stuff. Heaven forbid, he ever asked if I had any washing that needed doing. Throughout that whole discussion, his eyebrows were way down.

  So I lower my voice in keeping with his lowered eyebrows, and box on. “He’s growing, to do with his food, and he can’t fit all of him in it anymore.”

  “What part doesn’t fit?”

  “The Dachshund.”

  He smirks. “I don’t like Dachshunds.”

  “But he’s all your do-oog,” I hear myself whine. Damn. “I got him for you. As a special pressie,” I end on a higher note, with my eyebrows in the raised position.

  “Ruby, I just don’t like the mutt. Get it?”

  Quite brilliantly, I think, I choose to ignore his miserable comment. “Cool,” I exclaim with a girlie clap of my hands. “Then you’ll do the cover for my book? Thank you so much.”

  “Okay. But how much did the new kennel cost?”

  “A hundy. Plus I swapped the one you bought him as part of the deal.”

  Hunter looks wounded. I wonder where he gets off looking wounded. Armstrong is his dog ergo his responsibility.

  “Would you like a special coffee?” I ask, with my eyebrows raised. “And I’ve made Panforte. Especially for you, my favorite flattie.”

  “Yeah, sure, ta. Coffee. No Panforte or home baking. I chipped a damned tooth on your last efforts.” He sighs as if remembering that cost. “You’re a crap cook.”

  My eyebrows struggle to stay in the up position. Okay, I reason. Valid point. “I’ll make you coffee while you have a think about the cover we’re going to do.”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Feeling as if I’ve achieved something, I busy myself waiting for the water to boil. I sharpen a pencil and retrieve a roll of baking paper from down the back of the kitchen drawer. I sketch my idea for the cover. A beach with golden sands and a gorgeous barefoot woman. Her sunglasses dangle from one hand, shoes from the other. A bottle of wine is tucked beneath her arm—or in the sand. She’s looking through tumbles of sea grasses up toward a property she’s purchased on a whimsy.

  “Perfect,” I say to no one. So, mug in one hand and the sketch in my other, I approach Hunter.

  For the cover, we try Ruby Wright at the top, raising the picture a few centimeters, with the title about 2/3rds of the way down, then add a few words along the bottom of the cover about Amanda. We sketch in black and white with Amanda in bright colors. Bigger letters for my name, smaller for the title. Barbara wants my name promoted strongly, not so much the title.

  I dash off to check out some new releases in the library, published by book giants, to see what they’re doing.

  When I later ask Hunter to pose or stand in a certain way, to give me an idea of what might be physically possible, he goes into a caricature of what I suggest. His eyes are wide, his mouth agape, and his arm positions are exaggerated. I love this impromptu part of him. The rest of him is too deep or complex for me to work out. He might just be my best friend though he doesn’t know it yet. Yeah, he’s the best friend a girl with no girlfriend nearby can have. It’s to do with me needing privacy to write, and then an audience to read to once I’ve written it.

  With minimal cajoling, he’s soon ripping through Internet pictures of anything halfway resembling bits of my cover sketch. Then, for an offering of some freezer-burned ravioli and cask wine, he cuts and pastes, blends and reverses, changes and adds to for the whole night and right on into the next day. His passion for IT work is ignited. What he produces on the third day is a miracle; his application of my idea is perfect and, looking like a real book cover, it exceeds my original idea.

  I flick it off to my friend, Hannah, so she can rave over Hunter’s work.

  Hannah emails back: ‘It’s cute, but the image of the woman is pixilated. It’s too messy and jagged. She needs to be clean, with smooth lines. You should be able to do this via Photo Shop otherwise someone else should. As it is, it looks cheap. If it’s not smart and clean, it’ll look like you just cut the image from a magazine and pasted it on.’

  I suck air, my mouth forming a big Oh.

  ‘I’ll bring some gear. You can photograph me. See you later tonight. Luvs X.’

  I’m fair stewing over Hannah’s harsh criticism of our work when Barbara emails me.

  ‘Sorry. I sent those artist covers off to other clients and had it in my head I sent more appropriate ones to you. Barbara.’

  I expect her to follow up with more appropriate ones, but she doesn’t.

  I stomp off to bed. And get up again feeling grumpy and disorientated once Hannah arrives. Her sulking over her recent love disaster doesn’t enhance my mood.

  Next morning, when we’ve eaten a silent and tension-filled breakfast, we set off to the local hall. Hunter has a mate who has a key to a side door.

  Hannah looks glorious in a $1,500.00 Alannah Hill business suit with $800.00 Alannah Hill fuchsia pink, sling back stilettos with Swarovski crystals across the bow.

  Hunter’s taking random shots of her, some serious and some not. Her jaw is set. My muscles tense.

  For my cover design, she’s got to be fake-prancing in her swanky city gear, standing on a beer box. A small ask, I think. Only Hannah isn’t prancing anywhere; she’s aloof and sullen. I doubt this’ll work. Hunter cajoles her into climbing on top of the beer box, where she swings her arms and body around as if she were viewing something horrid.

  Exasperated, I bellow, “Turn around, Hannah. I don’t want to see your face. You’re ruining this and it’s important to me.”

  So Hannah spins her sulky-self around, throws her hands in the air, shrilling that she’s had enough.

  Moments before she stomps off to nowhere, Hunter manages a series of shots of her back view. Arms outstretched in a WTF moment.

  “Don’t sweat, Rubes. Changes can be made. Just let me know the finished size you want. Coffee, please. Ta.”

  I flick the kettle on—I didn’t know we were working to a specific size—and send an email to Barbara, explaining that I have just measured an A5 and it seems to match the measurements she’s given me. I’m confused.

  Barbara emails back that she got the measurements wrong.

  Hunter’s last photo shot turns out to be a stunner. Hannah has her back to the camera. He’s captured her gorgeous body shape and body expression, her swoon-worthy hair is tossed about, and her hands are punched in the air in general pissed-off-ed-ness. Perfect. Not only has Hunter positioned the beer box so her head stays within the frame, he’s set out the ground as well. Buckets of sand everywhere since his mate knows a mate who works with concrete, and a pile of seaweed and shells on the sand beside where her bare feet will be.

  Email from Barbara. She can wait until the morning or at least until after we’ve ooh-ed some more over the pictures.

  When I do open the email, Barbara writes how she hopes to get Whitcoulls and Borders to include the jacket of Amanda in their next release brochures. And then stabs me through with an ice pick—it is now being declined internationally.

  As Hannah packs to leave, I dawdle behind her. Our moods have changed once again; she’s a walking enigma, I’m living on a wire.

  She grinds the ignition of her ’96 Honda Civic. For some weird personal reason, she’s had this same old car as long as I’ve known her. The wing mirror is held together with duct tape. The bodywork is scarred and battered, and the bumper is held on by sheer willpower, yet this pile of junk sails through its Warrant of Fitness each year whilst mine doesn’t.

  As she pulls away from the gate, she calls back through the window, “What kind of dog’s that?”

  “Hunter’s dog?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “Armstrong.”

  “An Armstrong? Wow! A pedigree Armstrong?” Oh, what harm can it do? I nod while Hannah gushes, “I think I read about them somewhere.”

  “Probably in a write-up in a breeders’ column.”

  Later that night, as Hunter studies his legal stuff, I alternately scan my screen for incoming mail and watch Armstrong weave his worm-like torso through the chair and table legs in his version of a straight bid for somewhere. In keeping with his worm-like appearance, I wonder if Armstrong is a hermaphrodite. I commend myself for at least wondering about him. The most affection Hunter musters up is to use him as a footrest, or a boot scrape, although he vehemently rebuts both claims as preposterous. But on two occasions, I’ve seen him use his pedigree Armstrong as a boot scrape. Armstrong was snoozing on the outside doormat. Hunter, about to come inside from somewhere muddy, looks down at his boots, sees the slag stuck on one so he brushes his boot sole back and forth over Armstrong’s hairy back. Brilliant idea. But what Hunter is vehemently rebutting is my comment that I’d seen him do it. With my own eyes.