Undo | Page 4

Nicolson Juliet Nicolson Ltd. Literary Agency 71 Chester
Row London England SW1W 8JL
Dear Juliet:

Thank you for dropping off Joe Hutsko's ms. while you were in New
York. I must say that I am impressed with Mr. Hutsko's writing and
believe him to be a talent to watch in the future. His story, however,
seemed to me to be a bit stale - it seems to be about six or eight years
too late in the making - as I could see, and indeed have seen, this kind
of corporate intrigue take place in the world of non-fiction. Because the
plot was not as timely as it would need to be to succeed in the
commercial marketplace, I will have to pass.
Please do keep me informed of Mr. Hutsko's projects, should he decide
to embark upon writing another ms.
Sincerely, [Signed] Brian Tart Associate Editor
Enc.
- - - - - - - - - -

Give or take a few sentiments, the gist of Mr. Tart's encouraging but
ultimately downer letter was repeated by all of the top trade publishing
houses. A number of enthusiastic editors - in particular a young editor
named John Michel, who pleaded with his senior editors to acquire the
novel first at HarperCollins, then later when he moved to Crown (and
who has since become a friend, so something good has survived those
battles) - tried their best to acquire the book, and in one case an offer
was extended to my then-agent, but then two days later the publisher
backed out, apologizing that the editor who'd made the offer was in no
position to do so, please forgive the error in our ways.
The really troubling thing for me was that when I set out to write my

novel, another novel called "The Bonfire of the Vanities," by Tom
Wolfe, had taken the reading population by storm. Was not Mr. Wolfe's
novel inspired by real-life, by the bond trading schemes that at the time
were making front page news? Readers of fiction turned the book into a
best-seller, and as one of those readers, I cannot say that I would have
read the book were Tom Wolfe to have written it as a non-fiction title.
That it was inspired by actual characters and events, and turned by
Wolfe's expert hands into a compelling modern-day tale of murder and
mortality, were enough to convince me that I could pull off the same
sort of magic with my own "what if" scenario, swapping Silicon Valley
for New York, and the personal computer business for bond trading.
That this was my first attempt at writing a novel goes a long way
toward explaining the earliest rejections of the work, then titled
"Silicon Dreams," by editors unlucky enough to have had it land with a
thud on their desks. Somehow I'd lost sight of Mr. Wolfe's excellent
illustration and found myself mimicking, all at once, the likes of Sidney
Sheldon, Arthur Hailey, Jackie Collins, and, believe it or not, Stephen
King (who happens to be my favorite mainstream read). With so many
influences at play in the already befuddled head of an aspiring young
writer with dreams of hitting the number one spot on all of the
best-seller lists, you (and of course I, this much later) can understand
how my storytelling ability left something to be desired.
Still, I pressed on, heeding suggestions I believed were valid (such as:
"How dare you kill that character in the middle of the book just because
you don't know what to do with her next!"). More than once I put the
whole thing on the shelf to give it, and myself, a breather; to put a little
space between us so that our respective flaws could be considered the
next time around with a clearer, colder eye. Four rewrites later,
including a no-holds-barred excising, I finally had a book, still known
then as "Silicon Dreams," that I believed was as good as it was going to
get.
And then it happened. A publisher bought it. I had the literary critic
Digby Diehl to thank for this good news. At the time Digby was a book
reviewer for "Playboy," and also a daily book columnist for the Prodigy
online service (where I'd done a brief stint ghost writing for a highly
paid high-tech analyst who will remain unnamed). Via e-mail I asked
Digby if he'd read my novel and, if he liked it, to suggest editors who

may want to take a look at it. Well, Digby'd read it and liked it - enough
to personally pass it along to the head of a new and
small-but-going-for-the-big-time publisher named Knightsbridge
Publishing, an imprint distributed by the reputable Hearst Corporation.
Knightsbridge was founded around the time of the Gulf