Deborah Jones is on the fast track. With a ‘can do, get it done’ attitude, a freshly minted MBA from a prestigious business school and wholesome ‘Girl Next Door’ looks admired by men and women alike, the world is her oyster. With single minded ambition, she’s managed to land a coveted spot in the Management Trainee Program in one of the hottest hi-tech companies. Artemis Solutions Systems is the company everyone is talking about and everyone wants to work at— an innovator with a core competency in empowering female professionals through personal technology. Founded and led by Jennifer Page, a proud advocate of feminist values, Artemis is exactly the kind of place Deborah has always wanted to launch her career at.

But timing is everything—and for once in her life, Deborah’s timing may be badly off. The collision between Deborah and Hunter Downe will signal the beginning of a calculated campaign that will upend the well laid plans of everyone around them.

Company Man is an epic-length adult novel chronicling the subversion and ultimate conquest of a high-tech corporation. At stake is unimaginable wealth, power and sexual control of the company’s most valuable asset— it’s female employees. Technology and social engineering, medical and pharmaceutical, psychological and artificial intelligence are all utilised to ensure former female managers and executives submit and comply with their new masters’ whims and desires. Limits are explored, taboos are challenged and boundaries erased, as Corporate ‘Company Men’ enjoy the Executive Privileges they have earned in ever varied manners.
Through Deborah Jones eyes, we see a corporate nightmare unfold, as staff are reduced to virtual wage slavery. Women serve under a glass ceiling that is rapidly descending, derailing their careers and, through social media, forcing them to participate in their own degradation. Policies and regulations are used to introduce invasive and humiliating disclosures and behaviour. Even as Deborah finally comes to terms with one shameful requirement, another is added to her burdens.

Welcome to Company Man— your onboarding has begun!

Now available on Amazon as Kindle e-books.

Sample chapters can be found here.

In addition to the Novels, Selecta has created many worldbuilding assets, including a significant piece of interactive fiction detailing a week with Debbie. 

 

COMPANY MAN 1: JOCKEYING FOR POSITION

Deborah Jones is on the fast track. With a ‘can do, get it done’ attitude, a freshly minted MBA from a prestigious business school and wholesome ‘Girl Next Door’ looks admired by men and women alike, the world is her oyster. With single minded ambition, she’s managed to land a coveted spot in the Management Trainee Program in one of the hottest hi-tech companies. Artemis Solutions Systems is the company everyone is talking about and everyone wants to work at— an innovator with a core competency in empowering female professionals through personal technology. Founded and led by Jennifer Page, a proud advocate of feminist values, Artemis is exactly the kind of place Deborah has always wanted to launch her career at.

Enter Hunter Downe. Hired only to satisfy a court settlement, he’s a token male exec in a company dominated by women. At first, Deborah and the others consider him a dead man walking, a beta boy doomed to be washed out as soon as the guidelines allow. But as he mutates from nuisance to rival, Deborah begins to realise there is much more to Hunter Downe than she, or else anyone at Artemis, could have possibly foreseen.
Welcome to a future of corporate dystopia, where policies and programs, technology and techniques are used to cruelly trap, transform and train female staff to submit and serve cruel corporate overlords.

COMPANY MAN 2: SKIN IN THE GAME

Deborah Jones finds herself in an unthinkable position. She’s been forced to accept an ultimatum from her one-time rival Hunter Downe: accept a job as his secretary or face a financial and career apocalypse. Now she struggles to follow her new manager’s increasingly Byzantine and arbitrary rules– and avoid the demerits and penalties designed to impoverish and humiliate her. As Downe ascends the Artemis corporate ladder, Deborah has no choice but to assist him as he expands his power base within Artemis.

COMPANY MAN 3: CAREER LIMITING MOVES

Hunter Downe continues his relentless conquest of key departments, taking strategic pieces off the board and replacing them with his own. Once a bastion of progressive feminism, Artemis is increasingly male dominated, as female executives are dismissed or worse—re-trained for new roles under the new management philosophy. As CEO Jennifer Page is happily distracted by the growing promise of the approaching IPO, Downe positions himself as her inevitable successor. Deborah struggles to please her boss in ways she never learned about in B School, while facing competition from an unexpected quarter!

COMPANY MAN 4: PUSHING HER ENVELOPE

Hunter Downe stands on the brink of professional and personal triumph, as the worm turns for Jennifer Page and Artemis at last. His own inner circle now dominates the company, as well as the female employees now at their disposal. Freedom slips away day by day as the managers introduce coercive new policies designed to break their female underlings, all under a rubric of corporate commitments to ‘progressive values’. Deborah, her former pride draining away day by day, is offered the opportunity to escape her corporate servitude. Will she take it— or be drawn back forever, under the thumb of Hunter Downe? And will her reunion with her little sister Katherine be one to look forward to—or be terrified of?