Bob’s agent steepled his fingers in a very sinister manner and glared at him over the tips of his white-rimmed fingertips. He knew what the man was going to say, but he had yet to discover the amount of money required to shut him up. “Bob,” he said, “divorcing Helen was the worst thing you could do right now.”

Bob decided not to respond. But then he nodded. To be fair, wordlessly.

“I can’t believe you. The company is already expecting you to throw something together. Now they can expect a half-assed penny dreadful on top of the fact that it’ll be about sad, miserable heartbreak.”

That would turn out to be true in the coming months. Later, when the company chose to tear up his contract, and he had been forced to abnegate his beach house in lieu of his dingy, city apartment, his wife kept texting him torturous, minuscule details of her erotic life (and refusing to acknowledge even one emoticon in response), his agent finally dispatched mercenaries to drag him back to his writing table. All he wrote about was sad, miserable heartbreak, and it didn’t help, and it got worse.

But then he added vampires. And things took a turn.