A Writer's Tale

Jan. 25 The contract arrived for a story called, “The Caller,” from Mel Cebulash at Pitman Learning.

Feb. 3-14 I worked as an office temporary for a company called EJM.

Feb. 21 My short story, “Marathon,” was bought by Mel.

Feb. 28 I worked again at Budget Furniture.

March 13 I worked at a place called Paradyne.

March 15 - April 6 More work at General Telephone. Meanwhile, I was writing almost constantly for Pitman Learning, turning out numerous stories, including my four-story SOS series, which remains in print as of this writing.

April 23 Feeling rather desperate, I bypassed my agent and sent letters to ten U.S. publishers, trying to hawk my novel, Night Show.

May 9 I started working on a new novel with the working title, Mystery Mystery. I later changed the title to Murder by the Book. (Never sold.) May 10 I finished and mailed Passion Storm, by Carla Laymon. Blue Heron Press apparently went out of business, however, and this book (to my knowledge) was never published.

May 22 I mailed sample chapters and an outline of Night Show to Little, Brown. This publisher had responded to my self-promotion letter. They rejected the book.

May 30 On a trip to Belmont, California, I met with Mel Cebu-lash to plan further work for Pitman. After the meeting, we drove to Santa Cruz. Ann, Kelly and I spent the night there. We noticed a lot of “homeless” people in the area. There, they were called “Trolls.”

May 31 Ann, Kelly and I went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk amusement park. Out of that visit and a newspaper article found by Ann, the idea for Funland was born.

June 11 I worked one day as an office temporary at Reback Design.

June 13 I worked again for General Telephone.

June 14 I worked at a law office.

June 15 -July 12 Back to General Telephone.

July 13 I began my four-year stint working as a researcher and report writer for the Law Offices of Hughes & Crandall. I was given the job by Richard Hughes, a friend from the Pink Tea writer’s group. My job mostly entailed investigating medical reports in hopes of defending the L.A. bus company (and sometimes the Sheriff’s Department) against personal injury lawsuits.

July 13 My short story, “Cobra,” was bought by Mel.

July 22 I started working on the outline for a novel called Blood Sisters. (Whatever that was.)

Aug. 10 My story, “Small Fish,” was bought by Mel. (Was the title changed? I don’t know of a story by that tide being bought, rejected, or existing at all.) Sept. 14 I mailed Murder by the Book to agent Al Zuckerman. He chose not to take me on as a client, in a letter indicating that he had reached a stage in his career where he no longer handled authors of my kind. (Was that a dig?)

Sept. - Nov. I didn’t put much in my calendar, but was apparently writing material for Mel and sometimes getting in pages on a novel.

Nov. 21 Meanwhile, my career in the dumper in the U.S., I received the proofs for the New English Library edition of Beware!

Nov. 22 Across the “big pond,” the New English Library edition of Night Show made the “best subscribed” list in The Bookseller (the British equivalent of Publishers Weekly).

Dec. I was apparently dividing my time between an unidentified “kid novel” and something I called, “The Vision.”

1985

Jan. 13 I mailed the manuscript of my new novel, The Cellar II (which would be published as Beast House) to Jay Garon.

Jan. - June I was apparently working on the first version of Alarums (or Alarms) during this period, but my records are missing.

April 24 New English Library bought The Cellar II and Allhallow’s Eve.

April 25 Night Show and Tread Softly were both bought by Tor for their new horror series.

June 27 Though we were nearly flat broke, I had been owed payments for long periods of time from nearly all of my foreign and domestic publishers. (Except Pitman, which didn’t come through Garon.) Though I had often expressed my concerns to Jay Garon, he continued to suggest that I remain patient. Now, I ran short of patience. I wrote letters to several publishers and Garon’s subagents asking about numerous payments that I should’ve received, but hadn’t.

June 30 I sent a letter Jay Garon, explaining what I’d done. It resulted in an angry phone call from Garon in which he accused me of “stabbing him in the back” and trying to ruin his reputation by making him look like a crook. During the next month or so, however, he sent me checks from about ten different publishers, totalling about $15,000. He had apparently received most of the payments long ago, and kept them. Records showed that he’d been holding my money for six months, a year, a year and a half and one payment for two and a half years after receiving it from the publisher.