Maybe On Page 81 the Ropes Would Have Broken -- Into Song

One of my clients is a TV network that caters to kids. You can probably narrow it down.

On Friday, they gave me the manuscript of a book to read, to look at as a possible series aimed at young boys.

So I curl up with the book, and on the first page the dead body of a boy is found on the bottom of a pool.

Okay, yikes, but this might be workable. Maybe the main character is the ghost of the dead boy.

The body passes through the hands of two characters, both in their late 20s or so. The girl works in the morgue; the guy works in his family's funeral home.

They go out together to a club. They smoke some pot. They have sex.

She has a troubled past. Scars on her wrist. They are obsessed with each other. Soon they get into some hardcore bondage and other sexual activity.

No ghost of the dead boy. No kids at all. In context, probably a good thing.

It's become pretty clear that some awful mistake has been made, but I read the first 80 pages (about a third of the book) anyway, because one never knows. But when the girl starts to dig getting tied up with ropes, I finally pull the plug and send off an e-mail, just to let them know that this probably wasn't the "tale of a boy overcoming obstacles" that they were looking for.

It's sort of the reader equivalent of sitting down to watch The Little Mermaid, and finding some Cinemax-tame porn taped over it.

I'm still waiting to hear back about what someone, somewhere, was thinking...