A Writer's Tale

Because Frank is a character in The Stake, he actually read the book. This is the first and only novel he has read since high school. And he assures me that he’ll read his second novel if I write a sequel to The Stake.

Because so much of The Stake was inspired by our earlier desert explorations, with some characters based on ourselves, the discovery of the actual skeleton in the ghost town resulted in a real-life scene that was amazing in its parallels to what I’d already written in the book. Some of the dialogue was identical.

Later, we rather wished that we had taken the skeleton with us.

Because we did make a return visit to Rhyolite several years later. By then, the bottle house had a chain-link fence around it. And there was a caretaker/moneytaker. Pay him, and he’d take you on a tour.

Over the years, visitors (vandals) had helped themselves to souvenirs. All that remained of the skeleton was a single thigh bone.

I finally finished The Stake on January 19, 1989. About ten months after starting it.

W.H. Allen gave me a two-book contract for The Stake and an untitled (unwritten) second book for a total advance of 36,000 pounds, or about $54,000 dollars. From St. Martin’s, we received an advance of $15,000.

Before W.H. Allen could publish The Stake, however, they were consumed by a larger company and vanished. For a while, things looked dismal for my career. But Headline came along and saved the day. They took over the W.H. Allen contract and published The Stake hardbound in 1990.

Here in the states, Thomas Dunne published it as a hardbound for St. Martin’s Press in 1991.

St. Martin’s later (without my knowledge, consent, etc.) sold the paperback rights to Zebra for $2,000 of which half would go toward my unearned royalties. While I was extremely upset to find out that The Stake and Midnight’s Lair had been sold to Zebra and for such trifling sums I did find myself pleased with Zebra’s handling of me and both books. They really did a pretty good job of getting the books into the stores.

Over the years, there has been a lot of TV and movie interest in The Stake. It was optioned on at least three different occasions. Some real Hollywood types actually wrote screen adaptations of it. But the story has never made it to the big screen or the little screen.

It has, however, been published in Italy, Spain (and Latin America) and Russia. The Headline paperback edition is now in its 12th printing.

Many of my fans consider The Stake to be their favorite book of mine. What some of them say they like best is the portrait of the writer with its behind-the-scenes information about the things that really go on in a novelist’s life. The Stake is the only book I know of that delves into such nitty-gritty details. And takes jabs at the publishers.

I don’t know if any publishers were offended. Those handling The Stake seemed quite amused, and kidded me about it.

Anyway, the book didn’t become a bestseller. Not here in the U.S., anyway. But it did gain me quite a lot of recognition among my fans and fellow writers.

It is still probably my most mainstream book. It is the least outrageous and offensive, and one of my best overall accomplishments. It is the book I’m most likely to recommend to a reader who has never tried anything of mine.

ONE RAINY NIGHT

Though I began writing One Rainy Night on January 21, 1989, two days after finishing The Stake, I had already spent a great deal of time thinking about what my next novel should be.

After finishing One Rainy Night on May 11, I sent a copy to my English agent, Bob Tanner. He was not exactly delighted by the book, and let me know about his problems with it in three letters that I received in early December, 1989.

To give you a special insight into several matters, here is the letter that I wrote in response to Bob’s criticisms.

Dear Bob,

I just received your three letters regarding One Rainy Night and thought I should respond to your comments right away.

First, thank you for giving me your honest reaction to the book. I much prefer criticism to being kept in the dark. Also, I’ve been heeding your advice and writing my books accordingly ever since Tread Softly, and I’m sure that my career has improved as a result of it.

As for some of the characters not “ringing true,” I am concerned. I tried to make them as real and multidimensional as possible, but maybe I failed. As far as Trev goes, I regret it if he seems wishywashy, but I never intended him to be a “hero.” He’s just a normal guy (a grown man who’s nervous at the start of the book about asking Maureen for a date) who gets caught up in a mess and tries to deal with it. In attempting to make my characters seem like real people, I give them weaknesses as well as strengths. But as I say, maybe I screwed up with some of them.