Exclusive: How to Plot a Payback by Melissa Ferguson Excerpt

About How to Plot a Payback:

He crossed an ocean, and it still wasn’t enough to escape his lifelong nemesis. Now he has to work with her.

Successful screenwriter Finn Masters just landed his dream job writing for Neighbors, one of Hollywood’s highest-rated, longest-running sitcoms. The only downside? It will put him back in proximity of the show’s universally adored, optimistic, altruistic star, Lavender Rhodes, who has been inadvertently ruining his life since they were school chums in England. But she doesn’t even know she destroyed his acting career and wrecked his relationship with the love of his life.

He’s not about to let this woman yank yet another dream out from under his feet. In fact, he realizes he’s been given the ideal opportunity to plot his payback: spinning her character in shocking new directions.

What could go wrong? Only everything. As Finn’s not-so-brilliant plot backfires one scene after the next, catching him in the blasts, he’s forced to think about this impossible, infuriating… and maybe even lovable woman in an entirely new light.

Frolic-Exclusive Excerpt

Murder is just so tedious.

The blood, the weapons, the extravagant mess to clean up over and over and over. Does anyone even know how much bleach I’ve had to endure smelling over the years? Gallons. Truckloads.
I’ve lost two pairs of shoes in the past three months to unfortunate missteps.

The desktop screen of my laptop is covered in folders meticulously organized into files labeled Poisons, Burn Phones, Cybersecurity, Brilliant Body-Hiding Spots, Run-of-the-Mill Body-Hiding Spots, and—a fan favorite—Absolutely Bloody Pathetic Body-Hiding Spots.

I could make a killing—pun absolutely intended—selling this computer and all its contents on the serial killer black market.

I’ve been in the business of murder for eight years. Nothing to brag about in the grand scheme of things, but long enough that I’ve made a name for myself. A reputation.

And by the age of thirty here I stand, Finn Alexander Masters III, son of proud parents Mary and Finn Masters II of 202 Sommerhill Road, Welling, England, settled for life in the great land of Los Angeles, pigeonholed into the career of my dreams. Murder.

And all I want, the whole reason I’m here at this absurd party tonight, is to get out.

“And then it turned out they all were in on it,” sputters the man opposite me. Spittle blinds me in one eye. “Brilliant.” While holding his appetizer plate, he motions with both hands that his head is exploding. Several sausages quiver and roll onto the rug.

My eyes flicker down to the white shag.

Mr. Henry doesn’t seem to notice. “Were you the mastermind behind that—just—absolutely awesome twist?”

I crouch (which, mind you, is no simple task in the small, overstarched suit my cowriter Paula pushed into my hands this morning with a shh as she shut the wardrobe door behind her). As I collect the tiny sausages, I say what I always say in these moments: “It was a joint effort. Everyone in the writers room is essential.”

But yes. I had thought of that plot twist.

And yes, I am secretly quite proud of that one.

“Oh yes. A team effort,” he says seriously, as though he knows every detail of life inside the writers room. “Your minds have to be in sync, so much so that you’re always finishing each other’s sentences.”

We never do that.

“That’s a pat on the back for the Higher Stakes director who hired you all.”

Executive producer.

“He had to know you could work together. I can just imagine him—”

Her.

“—throwing you all in a room together as he stood behind some great big mirror, seeing how his creation worked it all out.”

We are not monkeys in a lab. She is not God. There is no mirror.

“And now look at you.” He throws out a hand—and another sausage. “Writing as a synchronized team for the biggest murder mystery sitcom—”

Sitcoms are comedies.

“—on television today. The Backstreet Boys, so to speak, of Hollywood.”