It seemed that Landon Harris had every reason to expect that after writing seven successful novels, he would be entitled to an eighth. He dutifully spoke at the luncheons created by his publisher and the NPR interviews and was preparing himself for the coming book tour. Landon loved his readers, enjoyed meeting them, but hated their questions after the talks and readings, or at the interminable dinners, be they in Memphis or Los Angeles.

Landon Harris had a ritual created by him and his now departed young wife when he began writing, and she was still beside him. After the hoop-de-do, they would settle in bed and all night long, read the book with the express purpose of learning for themselves, at a bit of distance from its inception, if it was as good a book as they hoped. This was an instructive process that seemed to make each book better. When Landon applied this ritual to his eighth book, he learned that he had, very simply, written a bad book. Two bad things would ensue: he would have to endure the agony of promoting this bad book, and his internal process of creating the next book would be shunted because the natural bridge to that idea was blown away.

Here is where Landon learns that writer's block is only one region of writer's hell. This new region he was exploring internally was trip-wired with ego, insecurity, an inability to "face-up-to-it", plus a willingness to exploit the wrong opportunity. Given the opportunity to comment on the manuscript of short stories by a young writer, Landon turns himself into the devil and makes a deal with the young writer to let Landon edit, throw out, add in and generally fix this writer's work into a book of his own, to be published under the name of Landon Harris. This, he thinks, will give him time and leeway to build the bridge to his ninth novel.