Overview
Margot Buxam is Ben Etxina’s literary agent and packager in Scenebux. She runs M.B. Literary from Parnassus Heights and manages Ben’s commercial erotic-fiction work, including his Melrose Milan identity.
Ben characterizes Margot as a short, stout Gen Xer with a New England background and an Italian mix-in who uses a motherly manner with him while pressing him for pages.
Publishing Work
Margot pressures Ben to deliver pages for Sultry Succubus and pushes him toward more appearances and virtual book-tour rooms. She also manages payments, rights, and business opportunities, including the Portuguese-language rights offer from Editora Foida and quarterly statements after Ben’s Melrose Milan work becomes more profitable.
After Ben returns from Laos, Margot lets him stay with her in Parnassus Heights. She continues demanding pages, but she also becomes one of his few stable supports. She helps arrange his public Melrose Milan face reveal through Sultry Succubus Publishing’s Instagram and books him for a signing in Sacramento.
Later Role
Margot admits to Ben that she tried feeding his stories to an AI to see whether it could imitate his style, then abandoned the attempt. Ben treats the act as a kind of professional betrayal but continues planning to write for her after he finishes personal work connected to Carl Froht and The Filter.
Recovery and the end of Melrose Milan
After Ben’s fall from the coastal cliff, Margot houses him while his broken arm heals and he gives depositions about Froht. Their arrangement becomes sexual when she masturbates him after joking about his injured arm. He remains with her for months before deciding to live independently and find other paid work.
The release of Chub 4.2, a model capable of imitating his erotic fiction, ends their successful publishing arrangement. Ben portrays Margot as moving from managing writers to managing machine output. She negotiates a proposed $20,000 purchase of the Melrose Milan pen name and seven percent of future net earnings from its books. Ben refuses to sell the name but permits a $6,000 training-data deal instead. He attributes their professional separation to the model’s arrival rather than their sexual involvement.