She Shall Both Serve Time
Catskill, New York: According to the Hudson Valley News erstwhile author representative and publishing maven Martha Ivery has been sentenced to 65 months in jail for mail fraud. When she wasn’t being Martha Ivery, publisher of TIGE Books, she was Kelly O’Donnell, literary agent. Martha and Kelly collected fees from would be authors: reading fees, illustration fees, publication fees, editing fees, but, lo, neither Martha nor Martha as Kelly ever published any books. In Greene County New York, that’s fraud, punishable by jail time. Greene County is mute on whether it will charge Martha a fee for prisoner duds, a fee for food, a fee for laundry service.
Of the two personas my favorite is Kelly. She sounds friendlier than Martha, and Kelly was one step removed from the naughty publishing scheme. Kelly dangled the promise of representation and only wanted to be compensated for reading submissions. After offering representation, Kelly turned to Martha to publish the books. Mean Martha said sure, but you gotta pay me cash. This left Kelly in a real bind.
As you can see this is a screenplay that writes itself. Free Kelly: based on actual events. Logline: I fell behind in my reading and went to jail! Where’s the justice?