What Hank's Writing? Here's a Sneak Peek!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Waiting is the hardest part. You know that from Tom Petty, of course, and you know that from the world of publishing. (Here's me at  Malice Domestic--thank you, reader Ruth Setton, for this very happy-looking photo.)

And in this "What We're Writing"  week, what I’m writing, right now at least, is proposals. And I just sent in two of them. More I cannot say, except to plead with you to send all the good karma and good vibes you can spare.

But I am so thrilled that we have a cover for my new book coming out in February of 2024. Reds and readers, it was a bit of a process, but the fabulous art department at Forge Books has come up with the Hankest of the Hank covers I have ever seen, and I am giving it a standing ovation. I hope you will too, when I finally get to show you. Soon.

But what I can show you, now, is a snippet, just a tiny snippet, of something I HAVE written.  The new book! 

One Wrong Word stars crisis management consultant Arden Ward, who makes her living by shaping and spinning public opinion. Then the power of words gets used as a weapon against her. She's accused of having an affair with a client. It's not true! She would never do such a thing. But she gets fired. Unfairly. And then... stuff happens.

Since the book’s back cover will mention Arden being fired, it’s not a spoiler. Here are a few paragraphs leading up to that.

You will meet Warren Carmichael, Arden’s boss at The Vision Group, a crisis management firm. Warren and Arden have just clinched (they think) a deal to secure a powerful board position for Arthur Swanson, a Boston mover and shaker. Arthur is married to Patience Swanson, a member of Boston’s old-money elite.

One Friday afternoon, Warren arrives in Arden’s office. Bourbon in hand. They chat, and then….

From ONE WRONG WORD

Warren took another sip.

“You okay?” she asked. Might be a little personal, but she thought the Arthur Swanson deal had brought them closer. Warren had been the face of it, and she the supposed ‘associate.’ What Warren didn’t know: throughout the negotiations Arden had endured, and ignored, or pretended to, Arthur Swanson’s advances; the unnecessary touch on her shoulder, the gratuitous hand on her back ostensibly guiding her through a door, the too-personal jokes about her “single-girl” apartment or her weekend plans. The sideways looks, as if they shared some secret, which, indeed, they did not. The dinner à deux invitations she always refused.

In this day and age, she thought. But for men like him, there was only his day and age, meaning now and today. For Warren, too, she had to admit. Who always did whatever was in his own best interest.

“So Arden,” Warren began. “About Patience.”

“Sit,” Arden said. She had a flash of dismay. “Is everything still on? With the deal? Do not tell me she’s—"

Warren settled into the butterscotch tweed club chair. “We should talk.”

“Sure.” Arden calculated the possibilities, speed of light. Why wouldn’t he look at her? She hated surprises, hated them. We don’t like surprises, she taught her assistants. Our job is to stay ahead of the surprises. Now, surprise, Warren wanted to talk.

“So Patience herself barges in last week, like, loaded for bear.”

“And?” Arden heard the bourbon in Warren’s voice. Saw his posture wilt. Alcohol always hit him hard, and he’d powered this drink down.

“And she was—pissed.”

“What? About what?”

Warren looked at the ice in his glass, the bourbon gone. “So you remember Capital Grille?”

“Sure…” Arden couldn’t help but frown.

The week before, the Swansons had invited the two of them, along with Warren’s hoity-toity constantly jet-setting wife and a group of friends, to a closed-door celebration of Swanson’s not-yet-public new position. Dinner at Capital Grille, in a mahogany-paneled private room with flowing wine and hovering waitstaff. Asparagus, hollandaise, filet, caviar. Food and setting as rich and overstuffed as some of the guests themselves.

Arden had noticed Patience seated her as far away from her husband as possible, but she’d been grateful for that. She'd had endured enough uncomfortable and insulting moments of removing his hand from her leg. She would never tell Warren; the deal needed to go through, and some things women had to handle on their own.

“Well, she says the weirdest thing,” Warren went on.

Warren rarely gossiped with her. She was curious about the new tone, but embraced it. It was progress. “What? What’d she say?”

“‘She smells of joy.’” Warren had actually imitated Patience Swanson, that imperious but impossible-to-identify accent that some of her ilk adopted. “I had no idea what she was talking about, you know?”

Arden remembered, in the weird snippets of moments we remember, sensing a kinship with Warren that night at the Swanson dinner, feeling she had finally made it as his equal. She'd perceived, with a glimmer of hope and even confidence, that they were a team.

“Joy the perfume?” Arden guessed. “What ‘she’? And why did that matter?”

Warren's face changed. Hardened. He carefully placed his crystal glass, contents diminished to ice, on her side table. Centered it on a copy of Boston Magazine.

“Yes. Perfume.” Warren nodded, once. “And the ‘she’ is you.”




*****

Oh, Reds and readers, I hope you love this! It’s actually still fun for me to read, and that, I take, is a good thing.

Do you recognize the juggle Arden had to make get this deal done?