Catching myself before I fell down on my face, I came to a halt and heard the distinct sound of a door closing. I looked over my shoulder.
She was gone.
The traitor!
I turned around and found myself face to face with three suit-wearing men.
For a second I didn’t know what to do, but then I mentally shook myself off and walked toward them.
I was already in for it, might as well look like someone who knew what they were doing.
The bald one—I was assuming he was Bobby Thomas—came forward and met me halfway, quickly offering me his hand.
“Hello, Miss Taylor, I’m Bobby.” He greeted me with an easy smile on his face. If his eyes hadn’t been fixated on my breasts, I would have said he looked friendly.
Annoyed, I angled my face and caught his attention. “Nice to meet you Mr. Thomas,” I said pointedly.
“We’ll have none of that. Call me Bobby. By the end of all this we’ll get to know each other much better.”
I forced a smile on my face and gently pulled my hand out of his grasp.
The other two didn’t get up from their seat, but had their eyes on me again, assessing me.
Walking by my side, Bobby led me to the long table in front of the floor to ceiling windows.
Managing to look around, I noticed that we were in some kind of conference room, which did nothing to calm my nerves down. I was beyond out of my depth here.
“Olive, this is—can I call you Olive?”
“Sure,” I mumbled, distracted by his hand resting on the small of my back.
“Great. Olive, I’d like to introduce you to the youngest member of our company, Keith Cannon.”
With those pale blue eyes and sharp cheekbones, Keith Cannon made a very impressive first impression.
“Nice to meet you Keith. I’m Olive Taylor.”
I smiled up at him and shook his warm hand. He had long, strong fingers. His teeth looked a little too white, a little too blinding to be natural, but it was hard to find natural in LA.
Next to him, a shorter, younger guy who was busily typing away on his laptop got up and briskly shook my hand as Bobby continued with the introductions.
“This is probably very exciting for you, and if we agree on our terms, he will be the screenwriter for the movie. It’s important that we reflect everything in your story onto the big screen as well as you managed to do in a few hundred pages so I wanted you to meet Harry Schuman and hear out his ideas. He is actually here for our next meeting, but we’re running a little late today, so since he is already here, we wanted him to sit in on this with you.”
I nodded and after the pleasantries took my seat across from them.
“We understand that at this time you have no book agent, Olive. Is that right?” Keith asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “This wasn’t something I was expecting to happen. At all. I’m an indie author, and as you must already know, Soul Ache is my first novel, which makes all this even more surreal.”
“We understand that it could be a little overwhelming, but you definitely impressed us with your story and we wanted to get your attention before anyone else could steal you.”
“Keith is right.” Bobby took over again. “We want you to look at this as the first step of our partnership. You don’t have to decide on anything today, but you should know that we are extremely eager to take on this project. You should also be aware that—excuse me.” He paused when his phone pinged with a new text message. Lifting his eyes, he absently waved his hand in a gesture that said ‘keep going’.
“I need to check on something, but please go on without me for a few minutes and I’ll be right back. We might even have a surprise for you, Olive. I think you’ll like it.”
I forced a smile on my lips and then Boobie Bobby was gone.
“Let’s get to it, shall we?” Keith asked and got a nod from both Harry and me. “As Bobby just mentioned, we are interested in optioning your book. But—” He lifted his hand as if to stop me from cutting in.
I’m all ears, Keith. No one is stopping you.
“We wanted to set this meeting so we could get to know each other better and see if we can impress you. After today, if you like what you’re hearing, I’d be happy to set up a lunch meeting so we can go over the details and present you with an option agreement for the exclusive rights.”
“Okay,” I nodded, because that made sense, right? He wasn’t saying anything scary, not at all.
Keith nodded back at me with a big smile that showcased his blinding pearly whites again and kept going. “So, essentially, Olive, we want to stay true to your story as much as we can. You captured so many hearts from so many different age groups, so we want to keep the heart of your story. The only difference is that we want to elevate it even more. Polish the main characters, maybe do a few small changes here and there, add a few new secondary characters, big names from Hollywood of course. We haven’t decided if we want to change the ending yet, but that’s just the details I’m sure you’re not interested in.” Linking his hands together on top of the table, he looked straight at me. “We want the movie to get everyone’s attention.”
Somewhere in the middle of his explanation of the studio’s intentions with my book, had he just said that I wouldn’t be interested in the changes? What on earth was he talking about?
“It all sounds great, but maybe we should take a few steps back,” I said. “I really feel like I’m out of my depth here. When you say a few small changes…?”
“I’ve read your book, Miss Taylor, and while everything was great for a book format, for a movie it won’t translate the same way. Making changes will be necessary at certain parts,” Harry said, speaking for the first time.
“We’ll walk you through everything.” Keith assured me, cutting in. “Usually it takes time—around a year or possibly even more than a year—to gather funding for the movie, to find the right director for the story, the right actors, the production company, and many other steps…but we want to use the buzz of your book to our advantage and keep the momentum going. Since you don’t have a book agent, I would highly suggest you to find one or have a lawyer go over the contract we’ll be presenting you at our next meeting so there won’t be any issues in the future.”
“Sure, sure. But what about those changes?” I asked, feeling more overwhelmed by the second.
Keith must have seen something on my face because his smile softened.
“I don’t think we asked you, would you like to have something to drink? Something to celebrate, maybe?”
“No, I’m good. Thank you.”
“Next time then. So do you have any questions for me?”
I glanced at Harry, but he was having none of it.
“I think I do. First of all, it’s very exciting to hear that you’re interested in my book, but to be honest, the changes you mentioned you want to make are…I don’t know how to put it into words actually. The thing is, I’ve spent years on this novel. While I do want to see my characters come alive on the big screen, I’m not sure if it’s worth it to go through this whole thing only for it to end up completely unrecognizable.” Every word in that book held a special place in my heart.