THE SEVENTH CIRCLE
Short story/6500 words
Fallon Mitchell learns that uber-novelist Langston Carmichael has requested someone to come to Villa del Sol, his fabulous island home near Venice to act as his secretary. A popular novelist in her own right, Fallon is determined to help Lang anyway she can. He doesn’t know it, but he is the father of her sixteen-year-old son Dax. Fallon pays her debts; it’s time to pay Lang for her son. What will happen if he recognizes her? She can’t worry about that. Odds are, he won’t remember her. After all, they were together only two days and two nights when Fallon tracked him down, seduced him and deliberately conceived their son.
World famous Pulitzer Prize winning author Langston Carmichael has never needed or wanted a secretary. Now he has been blinded in a car crash. He asks his publisher to send him someone who has worked in publishing and is willing to come to his private island in Italy, across the bay, the Golfo di Venzia, from Venice. This secretary will help Lang move the rest of his latest novel from his head to a manuscript that can be tweaked, edited and eventually published.