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It was a tense morning at the offices of BradParksBooks.com. The gurgling of the coffee machine sounded like someone being strangled. Zach, the silly intern, was pacing so much his step counter couldn't keep up. Sarah, the smart intern, was creating a pie chart of Brad's most frequent grammatical errors in an effort to self-soothe. Even Peter, the slothful intern, couldn't quite get comfortable for his morning nap, despite having found some vintage Carter Ross-style khakis to use as a pillow. "What's going on?" asked Maggie, the clueless intern. "Why's everyone so edgy? It's not launch day is it?" "No," Zach said dismissively. "Are we expecting a big review?" "If only," Sarah said. "Is a new mugshot of Brad circulating on social media?" "Not this time," Sarah said, then delivered the news: "It's cover reveal day." Yes, the interns were waiting for the designer to send over the final cover for The Flack, Brad's newest thriller, due out from Oceanview Publishing in February. Set in the fast-paced world of logistics, it features Curt Hinton, a corporate communications executive—a.k.a. a flack—who must confront the murder of his best friend, Angel Reddish, who had worked alongside Curt at BALCO, the Bay Area Logistics Company, at the Port of Oakland in California. Finally, the image arrived. Zach tapped a few buttons to make it fill the big screen in the conference room: "I like it," Sarah said. "The use of the Port of Oakland at night gives it a mysterious vibe—the contrast of the glimmering lights with the long shadows." "It's gritty-pretty," Zach said. "You can practically hear the foghorn." Since he was awake anyway, Peter offered, "Yeah, it's full of drama—just like Brad." "Speaking of," Zach said. "Has he seen it yet?" Everyone froze. They knew Brad's history with cover reveals. Ever since Faces of the Gone, his debut novel, Brad only ever said one thing about his covers: "Can they make my name bigger?" As his career moved on—The Flack is Brad's lucky thirteenth novel—he became increasingly insistent. He wheedled. He whined. He once started a Change.org petition demanding his name be a minimum of 144 points. Another time, he dictated a twenty-two-minute voice memo outlining all the reasons his name should ideally be the entire cover. "Maybe he'll be happy with this one," Sarah said hopefully. "It's the only white element on an otherwise dark background. It pops, right?" Just then, Brad entered the conference room and stopped. "Is that the new cover?" he asked. Everyone inhaled and waited. "My name is at least ten percent smaller than it should be," he declared. "It looks to me like the designer imposed a font tariff." "Font tariff?" Sarah said. "Is that even a thing?" "I'm not taking this lying down," Brad exclaimed. "I'm calling my congressperson! I'm hiring a lawyer! I'm having the book translated into Russian so it's exempt! This font trade imbalance will not stand!" Sarah started to say, "I don't think that's how tariffs wo—" "My name must be visible from space!" Brad shouted. Then he stormed off. All vanity and imaginary trade policy aside, the interns agreed The Flack had a great cover for what promises to be a fast-paced page turner, perfect for readers who love a relatable hero, a shocking murder, and more references to forklifts than any thriller in history. In other news, Brad's latest novel, The Boundaries We Cross, remains available wherever books are sold—and well worth checking out. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review. The editors at Amazon named it a book of the month. Book Reporter called it, "A winner." Once Brad had vacated the conference room, Sarah was the one to pick up the pieces. "We'll just tell the publisher he loved it," she said. "Like we always do." "You know, there is one thing we could do to the name that would really help with sales," Zach said. "What's that?" Sarah asked. "Change it to John Grisham. Zzzing!" Yours in appropriately sized font, The BradParksBooks.com Interns
  
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