Chapter 3

Annie Mays Starnes was forty-five years old when I met her. She had short brunette hair and green eyes and was five foot three a hundred and twenty-five pounds. If you were looking for a descriptive word for Annie you could do worse than zaftig. She had been married once to Mark W. Hermann for six years and had no children. They have been divorced for two years. Mark Hermann is six foot four and two hundred pounds with light brown hair and eyes to match. He has regular features and good teeth with a grin that would melt a girl's heart and is seven years Annie's junior. He was twenty-five when he became a client of The Starnes' Agency. Annie was his assigned agent and nurtured his obvious talent. She helped him overcome his diffidence and would frequently act as his designated driver when he was drinking. One night when she got tired of his shirt she began drinking with him and they ended up in South Carolina married. Rather than seek an annulment for which there were no grounds because stupidity doesn't qualify Annie decided to make the most of the situation.

Mark would sometimes seek out during the day when Annie was at the office but for the most part She keep him under control and three months after the marriage Mark's manuscript for Jack Jackson Private Eye was accepted for publication by Wortham Publishing an old line publisher that Annie had worked hard with to get Mark's work in the door.

The book was a huge bestseller and Mark was on his way. This was followed by another bestseller in the series eighteen months later. All was going well with Annie and Mark until Mark began to think that it was his talent alone that was responsible for his success. His third book was well received but did not make the bestseller list and the forth in the series was given a terrible drubbing by the critics and did not make back its advance.

Mark dived into the bottle and into other women and didn't come out and Annie filed for divorce.

Three months later Mark came crawling back and while Annie would not take him back into her bed or her house she did get him straightened out and propped him up enough for him to finish the fifth in the Jack Jackson series and convinced John Wortham that it was going to make them money and it did.