"J.K. Rowling has signed a world English deal with Little, Brown, selling print, e-book, and audio rights to her first novel for adults. David Shelley, publisher of the Little, Brown Book Group in the U.K., will be editing the work, which is currently untitled; he brokered the deal with Neil Blair of the Blair Partnership. Rumors have surfaced that Little, Brown was given an exclusive on the work."
– Publisher's Weekly
Excerpt from page 701-702:
If it had not been for the massage therapy, Barry Bowler thought he would have been exceptionally down. He oftentimes felt that he was living for time spent in the backroom of Doobie's Hair Salon and Massage Parlor, hardly moral but definitely enjoying himself, bulging with happiness. Certainly, Barry oftentimes wondered what Heidi would think if she knew how he spent thirty minutes of his afternoons. It was for love, wasn't it?
After all, time spent in his apartment was not a pleasant experience for Barry. The news that his best friend in the whole wide world was congressing his other best friend in the whole wide world seemed to have traveled quickly down the hallway. He heard the moans of Won and Heidi all around him as he sat eating Ramen noodles in his room. Barry felt as though the last few days had lasted an entire year, but he couldn't leave. He needed a place to live. He graduated from NYU a year ago with a film documentary degree. He also did not have a job.
"You so handsome," said D.D. Bang Bang.
Barry suddenly sprung from the lounge.
"What I don't get," said Barry through his tightened fist, pulling up his pants (his feet were fumbling beneath the cuff), "is why everyone believed Heidi and Won would end up together. Even Dreghorn thought…"
"The thing is, Barry Baby, is that I love you," said D.D. Bang Bang. "Let's leave New York and go somewhere special, like Lancaster County. You could have me all weekend. I always wanted shoe-fly pie."
Barry grabbed his cane and slammed the cane against the table. D.D. Bang Bang looked very sad at her half-naked 3:30 appointment. Barry hobbled over to the sink. A tedious thumping pain was forming in his groin. He glanced in the rust-coated mirror at the dark scar that ran up his leg like the R6 from his foot at Pelham Bay Park around to his anus at Brooklyn Bridge. The scar still embarrassed him. He rinsed his genitals. Looking in the mirror, turned sideways, his magical shillelagh looked so much larger. Barry found himself daydreaming about Heidi more and more as every minute passed; it would be heaven to leave this dirty, cum-crusted room, where half of the intercourse was mostly perfunctory and Doobie the Stoned Midget Pimp-Stylist knocked on the door to say, "Doobie has come to inform you, sir, that your time is up." In the mirror he saw the final minutes of his parents cutting bags of Peruvian Flakes—final quality blow from the High Andes. Then he saw Heidi and Won performing the Congress of the Swooping Crane. Then he saw Heidi, his German Swan, hovering over his body in a silvery glow.
"I'm not your number one girl?" D.D. Bang Bang said.
"I have no one, you hear me! No one! I am all alone!"
"It is your leg. Or is it the groin pain?"
Barry was ready to hit her with his cane, but D.D. Bang Bang reached for her Magnum Bang Bang inside the desk drawer. She drew the muzzle at Barry's head. "You crazy boy. You need to leave! You need psychological evaluation! Early childhood trauma! Feelings of inadequacy! Messiah complex! Commitment anxiety! Post collegiate stress syndrome! Go now!"
Barry straightened up, hurried across the room, closed the door, and then returned slowly to his lonely street and sank into it, gazing vaguely at the black boot of Ewan Allister Dreghorn, his former college professor at NYU. He recently returned from his ancestral manor outside of Glasgow to press Westminster for Scottish independence. This, of course, was after being suspended from his post as Dean of the Philosophy Department for allegedly making soft-porn videos of lesbian students for YouTube.
"Ye can't go running away from The Man Who Shall Remain Nameless all of ye life, lad," Professor Dreghorn said.
"I'm not afraid to say his name: Atrum Malum Unus."
Dreghorn nodded. "That's his Blood name," he said, "but are you man enough to pronounce his real name?"
"Doroteo Pancho Victor-Jose Mort-Mortell-Mortellaro!"
Barry felt a cold wind blow down Canal Street. It was weird because it was near 90 degrees. His stomach hurt him too. The thought of the Dark Evil One always made him sick with the taste of bean burrito with sour cream and guacamole.
Professor placed his closed hands together and pressed them against his lips. "As far as I am aware, there is no place that is safe for you until you face Atrum Malum Unus. He has been charged with a sacred quest and he has his agents everywhere. All he and I can do now is to wait for your decision. Your mommy and daddy were the best drug smugglers this side of the East River. Have you forgotten that night he crashed the apartment looking for the booty, killing both of your parents while eating… what was it… Taco Bell? Have you forgotten the pain? Do you recall how one bullet deflected off your modular tactical vest and tore through your leg, severing a major artery and another bullet caught Atrum Malum Unus in the temple, making him forever blind in one eye—mysteriously connecting the two of you in a waltz of eternal dread! Oh, would you like an Altoid?"
"But the money!" Barry said. "I need to find the money he was looking for! My parents had the money! He never found the money, and I owe NYU so much money! I owe $170,000! I haven't paid my student loans! It was due three months ago!"
"And you haven't even considered the interest rates over thirty years, have you lad? I did warn you of private loans, now, didn't I. But it just had to be NYU, eh? You couldn't have watched Citizen Kane in your apartment for free. And I did suggest the Borough of Manhattan Community College, didn't I, lad?"
Just then Heidi Muggley texted him pleading, "Cum quik. Won fainted. He got job offer in Des Moines, Iowa. Des Moines, freaking Iowa! He's flippin' out! Please help."