If you’ve been bullied at work, this is your story! My new novel, The War on Sarah Morris, is fiction. And it’s also non-fiction. It deals with the real world, the world that you and I live in, a world that’s often harsh and unstable and unfriendly to a lot of working people.
On the surface, the central character, Sarah Morris, seems to have plenty of advantages: she’s middle-class, educated, employed in a professional job—she’s an editor at a book publishing company in Toronto—married, living in a swanky downtown condo. But when Sarah’s company, Quill Pen Press reorganizes in the wake of the 2008 recession, her world starts to crumble. Quill Pen demotes Sarah and most of the other editors at the company, forcing them to spend their days doing menial data entry work instead of editing books. A few months later, Sarah’s co-workers—who are younger than her—leave the company to pursue better opportunities. Alone and without allies, Sarah struggles to stay employed; among other things, she must deal with bullying bosses, backstabbing co-workers, a penny-pinching company. And a number of troubling real-world trends:
• Companies are replacing permanent, stable, middle-class jobs with poorly-paid, unstable contract employment and gig work. Many of these companies—at least before the pandemic—have enjoyed record profits. However, they have replaced countless permanent jobs with benefits with unstable jobs that lack benefits in order to pad their bottom lines. Sarah’s company, overly focused on the bottom line, tries to bully her out of a job without paying her any severance. Likewise, Sarah’s husband Steven, a computer programmer at a major bank, is fired from his job then rehired as a contract worker without the benefits he enjoyed as a bank employee.
• Age bias is prevalent. Middle-aged people, even well-educated people like Sarah, have trouble finding work. Despite her education, experience, and skills, Sarah has a hard time landing a new job because she’s over 50.
• Gender bias is far too common. Sarah loses job opportunities to less qualified and competent male employees. Her female boss, despite her gender, doesn’t like or respect women. Sarah’s male boss also disrespects women. Even worse, he talks down to Sarah and makes phony promises that he doesn’t intend to keep.
• Companies emotionally and psychologically abuse their employees. They demote good employees without cause to save money, make phony promises about job opportunities, dump heavy and unrealistic workloads on people and force them to work overtime without pay. All these nasty things happen to Sarah.
Precarious jobs, age bias, misogyny, bullying, emotional and psychological abuse. Why on earth did I write such an upbeat novel?
I wrote this novel because it’s my own story. And I wanted to tell the truth about the struggles of far too many working warriors in an increasingly cruel and ruthless working world. A lot of non-fiction books deal with this subject, but they’re dominated by cold facts and figures. Hardly any of them deal with the emotional fallout from this hard new world on the real people who work in it.
I hope my novel fills those empty spaces on the bookshelf, And I also hope that the story of a strong woman’s survival in the new tough world of work will inspire other people who are facing the same hardships.
“The War on Sarah Morris” was published by Legacy Book Press in April 2024. The paperback and ebook are available NOW from Amazon and Goodreads.
Kathleen Jones is a Toronto-based novelist who writes in multiple genres. Her first novel, Love Is the Punch Line, an offbeat, midlife romance set in the world of stand-up comedy, was published by Moonshine Cove in 2018. The book has received a number of favorable 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Kathleen was actively involved in marketing and promoting her novel; among other things, she wrote guest posts for several book-related websites, hosted a book-launch party, was interviewed by a local newspaper (The North York Mirror), convinced several publications and book bloggers (The Midwest Book Review, The San Francisco Review of Books, etc.) to review her novel, conducted ebook giveaways (in return for reviews) on LibraryThing and Goodreads, landed consignment contracts with several local stores, and sold dozens of copies of her novel during book signings at local Indigo and Coles bookstores.
THE EDITOR: Glenda MacFarlane (substantive and line editor), Marina Endicott (writing mentor), Allister Thompson (copy editor), Britanie Wilson (proofreader), Laura Boyle (cover designer).
THE PUBLISHER: Jodie Toohey (Legacy Book Press).
SUMMARY: In The War on Sarah Morris, a middle-aged woman struggles to survive in the cruel and ruthless corporate jungle.
What happens when one day, without any warning, your secure corporate job suddenly becomes precarious? And all your professional duties get taken away, leaving you with nothing but repetitive, mind-numbing tasks?
Sarah Morris, a 49-year-old editor at a Toronto book publisher, finds herself in this predicament in October 2010, when Quill Pen Press, the company she has faithfully served for twenty-one years, undergoes a reorganization in the aftermath of the 2008 Recession. Concerned only with preserving her own cushy job, Gillian Martin, Sarah’s selfish boss, gives all of the company’s book editing projects to freelancers and to Derek Witowsky, her pet employee, unofficially demoting Sarah and two of her colleagues, who are now expected to spend their days tagging and formatting documents. When the two younger colleagues leave to pursue better opportunities, Gillian dumps all of their data entry tasks on Sarah and pressures her to complete an ever-growing mountain of work in less and less time, while taking away her right to paid overtime.
At first, Sarah is afraid to face the truth; she tells herself that she will get her old job back once the economy improves. But when Gillian starts bullying her, she realizes that her company doesn’t have her best interests at heart and that she’s been pigeonholed into a dead-end job.
THE BACK STORY: This novel, which took five years to write, was based on my own experiences, so I had the necessary insights to write it. I knew what it was like to work extra hours for no extra pay just to hold onto my job. I knew what disrespect and bullying from bosses felt like, the frustration of working in a tedious job far beneath my abilities without any possibility of promotion, the hopelessness of applying to companies that refuse to hire people over 40, no matter how smart, experienced, or educated they are. And I definitely knew what it was like to shoulder more and more work—more tedious work—without more time and resources to complete it, and to lose control over my time and my life.
WHY THIS TITLE? This title describes the central theme of the book: A corporation (like many modern corporations) is waging war on a long-term employee (Sarah Morris) by bullying her out of a job to save money (by replacing her with a cheaper contract employee). WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Because it deals with the world that many working people now live in. Because, all too often, the struggles of working people are invisible; most of them, like Sarah, are just trying to survive, and they don’t have the power to fight back against abusive employers. Because the public deserves to know the truth about abusive corporations that misrepresent themselves as caring, enlightened places to work.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
In this tense, funny novel, Sarah Morris, a 49 year-old editor, faces upheaval at the publishing company, Quill Pen Press, where she’s worked for the past 21 years. Though there is no change in her job title or pay, all of her job responsibilities are now different and she is forced to do overtime without pay for new daily tasks that she hates. With a recession ravaging hopes of economic stability, and finding herself her family’s sole income-earner following her husband’s dismissal from his banking job, Sarah must decide what steps she needs to take in her career to find her way back to being happy in the workplace. Does she dare a job search, as she puts it, “In middle age. In a crappy job market … that’s hostile to older people like me”?
Sarah exemplifies the emotional turmoil many feel when facing discontent in the workplace as Jones delves into self-doubt, the fear of starting over, and being complacent in a dead-end job. With wit, snark, and a striking sense of all-too-real realism, Jones writes a relatable and personable narrative about being pigeon-holed and feeling stuck with work that is no longer fulfilling or providing the space or opportunity for advancement. Exploring toxic work cultures, micromanagers, and workplace favoritism, The War on Sarah Morris is punchy and pained, outraged and comic, offering much that readers—especially women working in troubled industries—will find resonant. While set in 2011, the novel feels pointedly of the moment.
Jones convincingly captures the inner workings of a publisher and the ever-increasing responsibilities that fall onto lower level staffers, plus the indignities of a job search, from “biographical resumes” to pop-quiz writing assignments in job interviews. In this, Jones blends the engagingly dishy with sharp-elbowed analysis of power dynamics. Readers who have ever worked under tyrannical managers or for companies who only care about how much money is coming in will be impacted and feel a personal connection to Sarah’s struggle.
Takeaway: Sharp-elbowed novel of a woman facing a job hunt after 20 years in publishing.
Comparable Titles: Lisa Owens’s Not Working, Liz Talley’s Adulting.
Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
Booklife, Publisher’s Weekly, February 2024
THE WAR ON SARAH MORRIS by Kathleen Jones is a realistic and salient portrait of a 21st century working woman’s struggles in the corporate concrete jungle of Toronto. The protagonist takes the reader on a psychological journey of twenty years of toiling at a publishing company that boils down to “long hours, unpaid overtime, bullying bosses, and backstabbing coworkers.” (p. 306) The story opens when Sarah receives an email about the company’s reorganization and list of employee layoffs. References to book proposals, marketing campaigns, book editing and tagging bring the book business to life.
There’s great use of the classic Cassandra Situation, when Sarah tells everyone how bad the daily grind is at her office, but no one believes her. I love the protagonist. She is believable, brave, resilient, and persistent. Despite being surrounded by so much negativity and disrespect, her actions, creativity, and fantasies move her forward to try and try again to cope with misery at work. In the end, I found myself cheering for her as she comes to understand and save herself. Jones creates a story that not only sheds light on the power of the human spirit, but also depicts serious social problems around agism, sexism, and economics in the workplace and job hunt, and how all of it spills over into the quality of life outside of work. An inspiring read full of hard truths! –D.S. Marquis, author, Of School and Women
A workplace drama filled with sass and comedic relief! I loved being in the mind of Sarah and rooting for her to end her misery at a dead-end job. You’ll love this glimpse inside a woman’s fight to save her career and herself. — C. D’Angelo, award-winning author, The Difference and The Visitor.
AUTHOR PROFILE Kathleen Jones is a Toronto-based novelist and former book editor who writes in multiple genres. Her first novel, Love Is the Punch Line, an offbeat, midlife romance set in the world of stand-up comedy, was published by Moonshine Cove in 2018. The book has received several favorable 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. She also writes frequent book reviews for Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing. Kathleen lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: The novel talks about a problem faced by many women, a touchy, sensitive problem that few novels are willing to tackle: the struggle of women in the modern corporate world. The main character, Sarah Morris, is demoted (along with a couple of her co-workers) when the book publisher she works for is reorganized. One day, she’s a skilled, experienced editor who works on manuscripts with authors; the following day, she’s a glorified data entry clerk toiling in a dead-end job, doing repetitive, mind-numbing work, spending hours and hours cutting and pasting data, over and over again. Even worse, her new job comes with unwanted baggage that millions of working women have to cope with: long hours, heavy workloads, unpaid overtime, age discrimination, sexism, bullying from bosses, dirty games and lies, disrespect from co-workers, and stress, stress, stress. But Sarah, overwhelmed and seemingly powerless, hangs onto her dignity and humane values, and finds a way to fight back.
SAMPLE:
CHAPTER ONE
Effective October 4, 2010, the roles of Sarah Morris, Caleb Elliott, and Ramona Duvall will be changing…
Bullshit! This company isn’t “changing the roles” of Caleb, Ramona, and me; it’s taking our roles away, destroying our live- lihoods, our very careers. It’s taking away the work we were hired to do—editing authors’ manuscripts, turning them into polished books—and farming it out to freelancers, a nameless and faceless army with no connection or loyalty to this company. Thanks a lot.
I stare at the email on my computer screen, my mind suddenly flooded with questions.
Why on earth did the company do this to me? Maybe it’s my age. I’m forty-nine, practically a wizened old geezer as far as the business world is concerned. Or maybe I’ve just been at this com- pany too long—twenty-one years, to be exact—and they’re sick to death of me. Or maybe the reason is a lot more personal; my boss, Gillian, has never really liked me. And nine years of slaving under her dictatorship, swallowing her mean-spirited comments while trying, over and over and over again, to please her, haven’t changed her mind, not one iota.
Hmm, do I still even have a job at all? I scan the email, trying hard not to panic. Oh, yes, it looks like I do: Caleb, Ramona, and I will be “processing” documents. Meanwhile, the two women who have been doing all the “processing” for our department will be leaving the company next Friday “to pursue exciting new opportunities.” Exciting new opportunities? On this planet? The last time I watched the news, millions of people were pounding the pavement, looking for work. And Quill Pen Press will save a ton of money once these employees have been kicked out of their jobs and their work has been dumped on Caleb, Ramona, and me.
I want to bash my fist through the screen, strangle the smug words in front of me.
…job titles will not be changing…
Translation: We get to keep our now-empty job titles. From now on, the three of us will be called “editors,” but we will no longer be real editors, just glorified data entry clerks with a fancy name. From now on, the three of us will be spending our days doing hours and hours of mindless, soul-sucking drudgery, pulling data off the Internet, formatting it into documents, tagging the documents. The ugly truth is, we’re being demoted, demoted by a cowardly and sneaky company that doesn’t have the guts to tell us what’s really going on. A company that no longer allows us to edit books, a company that no longer values our minds, our skills, our ideas, our knowledge. A company that no longer allows us to think at work. A company that no longer gives a shit about us.
Right now, I feel so hurt and angry and betrayed, I want to scream.
Farther down, toward the bottom of the screen, the news gets even worse:
Derek Witowsky will continue in his role as Manuscript Editor, working with authors…
Translation: Derek and the nameless and faceless freelance editors will be the only people who will be allowed to edit books at Quill Pen Press.
Of course Derek will continue in his role. He was always “smarter” than the rest of us editors, never failing to point out our mistakes to Gillian (even though we were too polite to point out his), forcing his way of doing things on us (even though the way we had been doing things worked perfectly well), shooting down our ideas at department meetings. Derek has always been the boss’s “pet.” She wouldn’t dream of demoting someone as wonderful as him.
Gillian Martin will continue in her role as Head of Editorial.
Of course she will. Gillian has always been brilliant at pro-moting her own selfish interests. A political animal through and through, she’s a whiz at bullying subordinates, quick to point out their tiniest, most insignificant errors while withholding praise for outstanding work. Unless, of course, the subordinate’s name happens to be Derek Witowsky, in which case the rules are entirely different. Obviously, Gillian—who had considerable input into the decisions behind this email, collaborating with the other managers in an endless string of meetings behind closed doors—cast the three unlucky editors working for her aside to protect her own job and the career of her precious mentee. And it’s obvious that Gillian didn’t think my own career was worth protecting.
All employees are invited to an Information Session in the boardroom at 10:00 a.m. today. We will explain our new corporate strategy and answer your questions. Coffee and donuts will be served.
Coffee and donuts? Big deal. I glance at my watch. It’s almost 10:00 now. Around me, dozens of employees, their faces full of worry and fear, their loud voices blending into dozens of conver- sations, are spilling into the hallway, anxiously awaiting their fate in the boardroom. Screw it. I’m not going.
Sighing, I turn back to the computer screen, glowing coldly and harshly at me, and start to close the CEO’s email. Then a string of words—somehow I missed them—leaps out at me from the first paragraph:
Quill Pen Press will be transitioning to meet the more challenging marketplace of the 21st century.
Translation: The company is making these drastic changes because it’s losing a lot of money in this economy, a horrible economy full of unemployed people struggling to stay afloat. And unemployed people who are struggling can’t afford the luxury of snapping up the latest novels, biographies, how-to books, or anything else this company publishes.
I pause, my hand still clutching the mouse, take a deep breath, and try to calm down. I still have a job. And I’m taking this way too personally. What’s happening to me is also happening to some of my coworkers. It’s all about money: the worldwide economy is in the toilet, and the company is trying to stay afloat. It has to lay off staff and reassign the work to the remaining employees just to survive.
I loosen my grip on the mouse and look away from the comput- er screen, trying to blink the blurriness out of my eyes. By now, the office has emptied out, save for a few stragglers. I should join them, rush down to the info session.
But I don’t. I can’t. I have to find out what’s really going on. I have to speak to Gillian. Now.
I head down the hall toward Gillian’s office, knowing that she rarely bothers to show up at these boring info things, so there’s a very good chance I’ll find her there.
Her office door is closed, thank God. But my heart starts to pound.
I just have to calm down. And there’s no reason to be scared. The volume of short stories I edited a few months ago is selling well; it’s even earned several five-star reviews on Amazon. Gillian seems to be happy with my work; not long ago, she gave me a glowing performance review. Okay, she did keep Derek in a cushy job, but maybe that’s just common, subconscious, garden-variety sexism on her part.
My heart stops pounding. I knock softly on the door.
In this tense, funny novel, Sarah Morris, a 49-year-old editor, faces upheaval at the publishing company, Quill Pen Press, where she’s worked for the past 21 years. Though there is no change in her job title or pay, all of her job responsibilities are now different and she is forced to do overtime without pay for new daily tasks that she hates. With a recession ravaging hopes of economic stability, and finding herself her family’s sole income-earner following her husband’s dismissal from his banking job, Sarah must decide what steps she needs to take in her career to find her way back to being happy in the workplace. Does she dare a job search, as she puts it, “In middle age. In a crappy job market … that’s hostile to older people like me”?
Sarah exemplifies the emotional turmoil many feel when facing discontent in the workplace as Jones delves into self-doubt, the fear of starting over, and being complacent in a dead-end job. With wit, snark, and a striking sense of all-too-real realism, Jones writes a relatable and personable narrative about being pigeon-holed and feeling stuck with work that is no longer fulfilling or providing the space or opportunity for advancement. Exploring toxic work cultures, micromanagers, and workplace favoritism, The War on Sarah Morris is punchy and pained, outraged and comic, offering much that readers—especially women working in troubled industries—will find resonant. While set in 2011, the novel feels pointedly of the moment.
Jones convincingly captures the inner workings of a publisher and the ever-increasing responsibilities that fall onto lower level staffers, plus the indignities of a job search, from “biographical resumes” to pop-quiz writing assignments in job interviews. In this, Jones blends the engagingly dishy with sharp-elbowed analysis of power dynamics. Readers who have ever worked under tyrannical managers or for companies who only care about how much money is coming in will be impacted and feel a personal connection to Sarah’s struggle.
Takeaway: Sharp-elbowed novel of a woman facing a job hunt after 20 years in publishing.
Comparable Titles: Lisa Owens’s Not Working, Liz Talley’s Adulting.
Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
The War on Sarah Morris will be released on April 11, 2024 by Legacy Book Press. Available in trade paperback and ebook from Amazon, Ingram Book Company, Indigo Books and Music, and Barnes & Noble. For more information, please visit the Media Room at site: https://kathleenjones.org/
Reviewed by Susan Sommers on Goodreads, October 21, 2023
What a wonderful ride through the world of stand-up comedy and the romance of Holly and Josh. Kathleen Jones tells the story with strength, romance, and compassion. The characters become lovable and human in her expert hands. Bravo!
You’ve finally finished writing the third or fourth or seventh draft of your novel. You’re ready to show it to another pair of eyes—beta readers or a freelance editor—but you’re exhausted. You need to take a break first. But should you?
Of course you should! Novel writing is a demanding task that requires hours of intense focus and discipline. So set your manuscript aside for at least one month and don’t pass it on to anyone else right away.
But don’t let that one- or two- or four-month break go to waste! Use that time to plan the future of your novel. How? By creating the following files in Word:
a schedule for your novel that lists all necessary tasks, along with their proposed timelines;
a marketing plan for your book;
a list of potential agents; include links to their webpages, contact information, and submission requirements;
a list of publishers in your genre who accept unagented manuscripts; include links to their webpages, contact information, and submission requirements;
a list of reviewers (both publications that review books and online book bloggers) who might be interested in your book; include links to their webpages and contact information; and
promotional materials for your book, such as a tagline, a brief synopsis, and a long synopsis.
Why should you bother doing these tasks now? After all, you’re trying to relax!
Two reasons:
It will be easier to keep your book’s momentum going after you’ve worked through all of the comments from your beta readers and/or freelance editor and made changes to your manuscript because you’ll know what you have to do next. And you won’t have to spend weeks and weeks compiling all of these lists from scratch; you’ll only need to spend a few days checking the information online for updates.
It will also be easier to keep track of all of the tasks you’ll need to do and when you’ll need to do them.
In other words, organizing yourself during a slow period when you’re taking a break from writing will make the process of getting your novel out into the world a lot smoother, less stressful, and less overwhelming. And it will free up your time for a task you truly love: Writing your next novel!
I’m giving away 1 copy of my ebook #LoveIsthePunchLine and a $25 Amazon gift card. All you have to do is like and retweet for your chance to win. I’ll be contacting the winner on 12/15/21. CANADIAN AND U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.
I spent over three years of my life with two special people, Josh and Holly. I knew how they met, how their relationship grew, how they felt about each other. I knew their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, their checkered pasts, their worries about the future.
I knew everything there was to know about these two people. Then one day . . . they were gone.
Josh and Holly were the main characters in my first novel Love Is the Punch Line. Even when I wasn’t writing, they lived in my head. I could see them and hear them so well that they became part of my daily life. So when I finished writing the book, I found myself missing them.
How did I deal with it? I started writing a new novel with a new set of characters I could befriend. But I still miss Josh and Holly. Maybe I should write a sequel . . . .
I’ve always loved leopard prints; among other things, I’ve owned a leopard print dress, pants, shirt, blouse, sweater . . . even a belt. So when I spied a large brown leather shoulder bag with a haircalf, leopard print front on Banana Republic’s website in the fall of 2011—the bag was part of the store’s 1960’s-themed Mad Men Collection—I just had to purchase one.
I took very good care of that bag, keeping it clean and treating the leather with a special conditioner several times per year to keep it soft and supple. Unfortunately, I discovered that haircalf is very difficult to take care of. The haircalf front of my bag became more and more bald with each passing year, and by the fall of 2019, it looked awful. I was ready to buy a replacement . . . but I didn’t.
Why? For one thing, haircalf bags cost a fortune. Also, the rest of my bag—the leather—was still in decent shape. It seemed wasteful to toss it out, and I didn’t want to hurt the environment. I knew that nobody would purchase my damaged bag if I donated it to a resale store and that it would end up in a landfill.
So I started hunting for a shop that would either dye the bald spots on the haircalf to conceal them or replace the front of the bag with a new piece of haircalf.
None of the shops I approached were willing to take on the dye job. One shop was willing to replace the haircalf panel . . . at a cost that was far higher than the price of a brand new haircalf bag! I was about to give up and buy a new bag . . . then I had an idea: Maybe I could replace the damaged haircalf front with a piece of plain leather.
The owner of the shoe repair shop in my local mall offered to take on the job for the reasonable price of $120 (versus $500 and up for a new haircalf bag). He replaced the damaged haircalf front with a piece of reddish-brown leather that contrasted beautifully with the rest of the dark brown bag. Two weeks later, my bag looked like new.
I now have a lovely bag that didn’t cost a fortune and is much easier to take care of than the old version of the bag. And my contribution to the world’s landfills was minimal: a panel of damaged haircalf instead of an entire bag.
Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist 
