you will introduce us to the newest member of the Vida House family, we’ll adjourn this meeting,” he requested, and suddenly I was the center of attention again.
George Vida’s secretary, Hollis —picture Jane Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies , but a couple decades older —rose from her chair, behind her boss and slightly to the right, her close-cropped gray hair making her thin face more angular and imposing. I’d heard she had been with George Vida since 1967 when he took over the family newspaper business and began building it into the multimillion-dollar operation it was today.
Hollis’s long, thin fingers braced in backward arcs on the tabletop, her expression as stoic and seemingly detached as it had been that morning when she’d looked over the folder of contracts and paperwork I’d signed.
Her gaze swept the room. “Jen Gibbs comes to us from the nonfiction arm of Stanislaus International. She brings ten years of experience in memoir and historical nonfiction. Her graduate work was completed at NYU, where she was the recipient of the Aberdeen Fellowship of Arts and Letters and the Steinbeck Fellowship. We are pleased to welcome her to the team.” Her regard settled on me, though she looked neither pleased nor unhappy. “If you will share a few facts about yourself that are not on the dossier, Jen, we will begin the process of getting to know you.”
“Thank you.” I did a split-second mental debate on whether to sit or stand, then decided standing made more sense, as I could see the whole table that way, and making connections with coworkers is the first critical step to success in a new house.
I recapped my publishing history, all the while backhandedly thumbing for something else interesting to say —something that wouldn’t make it sound like my life was all about work. It was, and I liked it that way. If you love what you do, you don’t mind devoting yourself to it. But at times like this, I did wish I had something more colorful to share. Kids, house, a classy hobbylike antique rose gardening or something. A childhood anecdote about where my love of stories began. Something having to do with bedtime tales and that one treasured book received as a birthday present.
It was nice to imagine, but it didn’t solve the problem. When your past is a locked box, introductions are . . . complicated.
I finally settled for a quick recounting of a wild trip to a mountaintop in Colorado to persuade Tom Brandon to sign his celebrity memoir deal with Stanislaus, during an auction between several publishing houses. It was one of the greatest coups of my career, but also the closest I had ever come to plummeting to my death.
“You haven’t really lived until you’ve slid off a mountain on a snowmobile and spent twenty-four hours huddled against a blizzard,” I added, knowing that my new coworkers would assume I’d been desperately out of my element that night in the mountains, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. After that experience, Tom Brandon knew things about me no one else in my adult life had ever known, but to his credit, he never revealed any of it during the interviews and hoopla surrounding the book. By mutual agreement, we’d kept one another’s secrets. Action hero Tom Brandon was a babe in the woods. And I was a backwoods girl in hiding.
“The search and rescue made for great publicity for the project, though, even if that was one seriously bone-cold night in the woods,” I finished, and my coworkers laughed —all except Roger. I’d forgotten until now that he was working for a competitor during that bidding war. I’d beaten him out.
He sidled close again as the meeting broke up. “I’ve never quite forgiven you for that Tom Brandon deal. That was sheer brilliance.”
“Oh, come on, Roger. You know it’s not often that I actually win one of our little battles.” It was the usual love-hate interplay. In a competitive business, colleagues
George Vida’s secretary, Hollis —picture Jane Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies , but a couple decades older —rose from her chair, behind her boss and slightly to the right, her close-cropped gray hair making her thin face more angular and imposing. I’d heard she had been with George Vida since 1967 when he took over the family newspaper business and began building it into the multimillion-dollar operation it was today.
Hollis’s long, thin fingers braced in backward arcs on the tabletop, her expression as stoic and seemingly detached as it had been that morning when she’d looked over the folder of contracts and paperwork I’d signed.
Her gaze swept the room. “Jen Gibbs comes to us from the nonfiction arm of Stanislaus International. She brings ten years of experience in memoir and historical nonfiction. Her graduate work was completed at NYU, where she was the recipient of the Aberdeen Fellowship of Arts and Letters and the Steinbeck Fellowship. We are pleased to welcome her to the team.” Her regard settled on me, though she looked neither pleased nor unhappy. “If you will share a few facts about yourself that are not on the dossier, Jen, we will begin the process of getting to know you.”
“Thank you.” I did a split-second mental debate on whether to sit or stand, then decided standing made more sense, as I could see the whole table that way, and making connections with coworkers is the first critical step to success in a new house.
I recapped my publishing history, all the while backhandedly thumbing for something else interesting to say —something that wouldn’t make it sound like my life was all about work. It was, and I liked it that way. If you love what you do, you don’t mind devoting yourself to it. But at times like this, I did wish I had something more colorful to share. Kids, house, a classy hobbylike antique rose gardening or something. A childhood anecdote about where my love of stories began. Something having to do with bedtime tales and that one treasured book received as a birthday present.
It was nice to imagine, but it didn’t solve the problem. When your past is a locked box, introductions are . . . complicated.
I finally settled for a quick recounting of a wild trip to a mountaintop in Colorado to persuade Tom Brandon to sign his celebrity memoir deal with Stanislaus, during an auction between several publishing houses. It was one of the greatest coups of my career, but also the closest I had ever come to plummeting to my death.
“You haven’t really lived until you’ve slid off a mountain on a snowmobile and spent twenty-four hours huddled against a blizzard,” I added, knowing that my new coworkers would assume I’d been desperately out of my element that night in the mountains, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. After that experience, Tom Brandon knew things about me no one else in my adult life had ever known, but to his credit, he never revealed any of it during the interviews and hoopla surrounding the book. By mutual agreement, we’d kept one another’s secrets. Action hero Tom Brandon was a babe in the woods. And I was a backwoods girl in hiding.
“The search and rescue made for great publicity for the project, though, even if that was one seriously bone-cold night in the woods,” I finished, and my coworkers laughed —all except Roger. I’d forgotten until now that he was working for a competitor during that bidding war. I’d beaten him out.
He sidled close again as the meeting broke up. “I’ve never quite forgiven you for that Tom Brandon deal. That was sheer brilliance.”
“Oh, come on, Roger. You know it’s not often that I actually win one of our little battles.” It was the usual love-hate interplay. In a competitive business, colleagues
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