Hollywood (我就是好莱坞) Part I

CHAPTER 4 - TEMPTED

"Well, Eric, would you let my publishing house take care of your book ?" Michael Klaus didn't try to hide his intentions, as he very bluntly said.

Eric looked at the already printed and bounded manuscript that the black girl gave him, and said to Michael Klaus: "I'm sorry, Michael, though I appreciate your recognition, but you know, I want to try my luck with some of the larger publishing houses. Parents hope for their children to make it to the Ivy League, don't they ?"

Michael did not have the slightest expression of contempt or displeasure as he smiled and said: "Eric, you don't seem to have a full understanding of those large publishing companies, maybe we could find a place to talk, I know a cafe not far from here, my treat, how about it ?"

Eric took back the manuscript, and put it into his bag as he straightforwardly replied: "I'm sorry, Michael, I'm late for work, if in the future my manuscript gets rejected by those publishers, I will contact you."

Eric carried his backpack and got out of the printing shop, he started his car and drove towards the restaurant.

Michael hesitated a little, before immediately rushing out of the shop, getting into his car and following him. He had a feeling that if he missed this opportunity, he might regret it forever. This feeling he got was 30% because the Jurassic Park novel and 70% because of that young man called Eric.

Although he had only read the top half of the novel, Michael was surprised by the lad's knowledge. It had to be known that teens his age may have never heard of genetic engineering, chaos theory, nanotechnology and other high-tech factors. But not only was this kid well documented, he also used that vocabulary in a way that didn't actually make you lose interest in the novel, and instead added to the fascinating twists of the plot.

He had seen many types of sci-fi novels, but most of them used those scientific terms in a very boring way, that type of fiction was obviously not for all types of readers.

Eric parked his car on the parking lot and turned around to find a black car stopping not far away. Michael Klaus got out, he had apparently followed him. This served to satisfy Eric's vanity. His favourable impression of Michael was seriously growing.

"Hey, Eric-" Michael waved his hand and was about to speak when Eric pointed at his watch and said: "That, Michael, you see, it's nine and I work in this Italian restaurant as a waiter, if you don't mind ordering breakfast, the bar and restaurant are basically deserted before 10 o'clock." Michael nodded knowingly and followed Eric as he walked into a restaurant.

Eric changed his clothes and came out, Michael had been sitting at a window seat, an empty breakfast plate in front of him.

"I explained the situation to Mr. Jeff, but you have to hurry." Eric sat across Michael, smiled and said: "I might be young, but I'm not that easily persuaded."

Michael laughed: "I believe after you hear my explanation you will certainly give it to me to publish. As I just said, you probably don't know those big publishers, but, I have worked at Simon & Schuster for eleven years, I did everything, from the most basic things to editing. Because I failed in the competition for the department manager position, I left and founded my own The Night Elves publishing house."

"What does that have to do with me ?" Because of his past life as a loser, Eric feared hearing about other people struggle stories, and couldn't help but interrupt.

"Relax, young man, I just want to make you understand that I'm not kidding around and that my words are the truth. You know, I was originally editing reviews at first, every day I reviewed tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of words from drafts, although there were a lot of, ehm, bad manuscripts, there were also a lot of works that got published. At least 2000 different kinds of books make it each year. Even if you got published, they already have thousands of ongoing publications, how much promotional marketing resources do you think they'll use on a newbie ?"