Total Creative Control

"Pure delicious pleasure! This witty romance is full of toe-curling chemistry, slow-burn fun, and gasp-worthy plot twists. The drop-everything read of the year!" New York Times bestselling author Annika Martin Sunshine PA, meet Grumpy Boss... When fanfic writer Aaron Page landed a temp job with the creator of hit TV show, Leeches, it was only meant to last a week. Three years later, Aaron's still there... It could be because he loves the creative challenge. It could be because he's a huge Leeches fanboy. It's definitely not because of Lewis Hunter, his extremely demanding, staggeringly rude...and breathtakingly gorgeous boss. Is it? Lewis Hunter grew up the hard way and fought for everything he's got. His priority is the show, and personal relationships come a distant second. Besides, who needs romance when you have a steady stream of hot men hopping in and out of your bed? His only meaningful relationship is with Aaron, his chief confidante and indispensable assistant. And no matter how appealing he finds Aaron's cute boy-next-door charms, Lewis would never risk their professional partnership just to scratch an itch. But when Lewis finds himself trapped at a hilariously awful corporate retreat, Aaron is his only friend and ally. As the professional lines between them begin to blur, their simmering attraction starts to sizzle ... And they're both about to get burned.

After a traumatic illness robs her of her looks, Rose Davenport has little expectation of making a good marriage—until her feckless father, Miles, unexpectedly brokers a dazzling match for her with the heir to the Earl of Stanhope. Unfortunately, the marriage doesn’t live up to her hopes. Instead of the kindly bridegroom she’s expecting, Rose gets a sullen young husband who can barely stand to look at her. Gil Truman is in love with the beautiful Tilly when his father informs him that he must instead marry plain, sickly Rose. Forced to agree to the marriage to recover the family fortune his father lost to Miles Davenport in a game of cards, Gil is bitter and heartbroken. Their wretched wedding trip ends with him abandoning Rose at his remote Northumbrian estate, intending never to return. After five years of exile, Rose loses patience and travels to London to make a bid at seducing her errant, faithless husband. But their first encounter at a masked ball changes everything. When Rose learns the secret truth of how Gil was blackmailed into their marriage, her appetite for revenge dissolves. It’s too late to turn back, though. Their night of passion has had consequences that force Rose to confront Gil again. Gil’s discovery that the lovely, masked stranger he fell for is none other than his own wife, leaves him feeling sick and betrayed. As for Rose, she has deep wounds of her own from years of Gil’s neglect. With such unpromising beginnings, can Rose and Gil make any kind of life together? Or are some wrongs too painful to ever be forgiven?

Often the decision between a customer choosing you over someone like you is your ability to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to make it count. Phil M. Jones has trained more than two million people across five continents and over fifty countries in the lost art of spoken communication. In Exactly What to Say, he delivers the tactics you need to get more of what you want.

Michael L. Siciliano draws on nearly two years of ethnographic research as a participant-observer in a Los Angeles music studio and a multichannel YouTube network to explore the contradictions of creative work. Creative Control explains why "cool" jobs help us understand how workers can participate in their own exploitation.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the unique structure of the Nigerian popular music industry. It explores the dissonance between copyright’s thematic support for creative autonomy and the practical ways in which the law allows singer-songwriters’ (performing authors') creative autonomy to be subverted in their contractual relationships with record labels. The book establishes the concept of creative autonomy for performing authors as a key criterion for sustainable economic development, and makes innovative legal and policy recommendations to help stakeholders preserve it.

Finding an alternative to supplement military ways of resolving international conflicts has been taken up by many people skilled in various areas such as political science, economics, social studies, modelling and simulation, artificial intelligence and expert systems, military strategy and weaponry as well as private business and industry. The Workshop will therefore be of use as it looks at various control methods which would create a conciliatory social and political environment or climate for seeking and obtaining non-military solutions to international conflicts and to solutions to national conflicts which may lead to international conflicts.

It's friends-to-enemies-to-friends-to-lovers in this LGBTQIA+ Romance for fans of Red, White & Royal Blue and The Pros of Cons who enjoy: Ex-best-friends falling in love Gaming, conventions, fandom & cosplay Nerd culture at its finest Learning how to be true to yourself Jasper Quigley is tired of being everyone's favorite sidekick. He wants to become the hero of his own life, but that's not going to happen if he agrees to help out his former best friend turned king of the jocks, Milo Lionetti. High school was miserable enough, thanks, and Jasper has no interest in dredging up painful memories of his old secret crush. But Milo's got nowhere else to go. His life is spiraling out of control and he's looking to turn things back around. Step one? Replace the rare Odyssey cards he lost in an idiotic bet. Step two? Tell his ex-best-friend exactly how he feels—how he's always felt. Jasper may be reluctant to reopen old wounds, but he never could resist Milo. There's a catch, though: if Milo wants his help, he's going to have to pitch in to make the upcoming children's hospital charity ball the best ever. But as the two don cosplay for the kids and hunt for rare cards, nostalgia for their lost friendship may turn into something even more lasting... Praise for Conventionally Yours: "Fast, funny, and fantastic."—Eoin Colfer, New York Times bestselling author "Uniquely quirky."—Carrie Ryan, New York Times and USA Today bestelling author "You will ship this couple."—Sarina Bowen, USA Today bestselling author