Angry Fat Girls by Frances Kuffel

Author:Frances Kuffel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

SEVEN

October The Old and the Other and the Restless

If publishing was searching for a motto, one candidate would be “never let them see you sweat.” I am well-schooled, after fifteen years in the business, and know that for an agent this means never letting anyone question your success. For an author, I know from coaching former clients, it means the same, as well as always being excitedly in the middle of a project that is timely and oozing potential.

The number one rule for an author is to be always excitedly in the middle of a project that is timely and oozing potential. In October 2006, I was closer in spirit and lifestyle to dogs than to the author I had inhabited two years earlier—the thin one who was fully immersed in the publishing world. When I left the Bat Cave at ten thirty one gleaming, cool morning, I was in my work uniform: muddy sweatpants, worn-down Crocs, holey thirty-year-old ragg wool sweater speckled with blond, yellow, and brown dog hair, ponytail tucked into a sweaty baseball cap, grime under my nails, glasses clouded by dog kisses. My knickers were in a twist because after I took Daisy, Hero, Mellie, and Boomer to the dog run, a two-hour gig of throwing balls, being jumped on, and pulling Boomer out of fights by whatever appendage I could hang on to, I had to muster as much of my inner author as possible.

My former publisher was throwing itself an anniversary bash on the Upper West Side that evening. I was about to arm myself to meet my past. It felt as much like a medieval ritual as it sounds. Any number of ghosts could appear, lance and flail at the ready, to reopen old, barely scabbed wounds.

My darling erstwhile editor would be there with all the people I’d worked with on Passing for Thin and editors I’d known as an agent. It was quite possible either or both of my former bosses and their associates would show up among the platters of satay and trays of appletinis. The talk show host whose staff hauled me out to L.A. and dismissed me the next day might be mingling with the bestselling authoress of Chubby Chick Lit. And these were the ghosts from one imprint among twenty. Who knew what cousins might show up?

I was going because I know the cardinal rule of this game, in which I still need my former publisher’s support, is to make them want me.

The Frances who last made her way to the offices overlooking the Hudson had hair that was perfectly cut and colored, her eyebrows waxed and eyelashes dyed. Her fingernails were the envy of the editorial staff when they passed around the feature about her that ran in Time magazine. She had clothes for any occasion, and she was courted and admired by the press and readers. If I no longer had all of these assets in my obesity, at least I knew where to go for the primping.

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