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War, and made
its killing, so to speak, with a mass market paperback best-seller, "The
Rape of Kuwait."
The deal was for both hardback and paperback rights, and the publisher
himself called me to offer $5000 for the whole package, which I came
close to accepting. However, I knew that money matters were best
handled by my agent - despite the fact that I had fired her a few months
earlier for not having sold the novel herself. Fortunately she forgave me
my actions and signed me back up, compelling Knightsbridge to
increase its offer to $25,000.
Too bad neither of us ever saw most of that money. Unfortunately,
Knightsbridge went out of business - but not without first boosting my
expectations through the exhilarating prepublication process. I was
assigned a marvelous editor named Lynette Padwa, whose keen
suggestions helped me to make the book a better read. There was even
a glossy lavender and gold embossed book jacket with my photo on
back atop Digby Diehl's encouraging blurb, and two months before the
publication date I received my first bound galley copy, to double-check
for typesetting errors before it went off to the printer. The
prepublication buzz started up, and a Hollywood producer named
Andrew Karsch, who'd just released "The Prince of Tides" with Barbra
Streisand, was considering buying a film option on the novel to adapt
for a possible a feature film or television miniseries. And just when
things couldn't possibly look brighter, they did, when both Kirkus
Review and Publishers Weekly asked to see advance reader's copies of
the book.
And then the impossible dream turned into a nightmare. I should have
known the end was near when instead of receiving the signing advance
in one lump sum, as agreed upon, it was coming in smaller and smaller
portions (and then only after my hounding the accounting department
every day telling them my rent and phone bill were late). You see, I
wanted to believe. It was difficult enough to accept that this was finally
happening to me - that my first novel was about to be published in

hardback to building fanfare. To think otherwise, that something might
stop the novel from being published, wasn't a "happy thought," and
anything but happy thoughts, my agent advised, would seep
disagreeably into the novel's successful launch. But unhappy did things
turn when Knightsbridge announced that it was closing shop.
But I was not to be put off. Armed with ten bound galleys, my agent
appealed to several hardback publishers...and when they all said no - in
almost every case for the same reasons Brian Tart at Bantam gave us -
we tried paperback publishers, lowering our expectations and hoping
then for a paperback original deal. Twice we came close. First Ace,
then Berkley, however editors at both houses met resistance from
editorial boards who felt that the novel would find no audience.
Feeling dejected and down on my luck, I had to blame someone for this
conspiracy, so once again I contacted my agent and told her I would be
seeking representation elsewhere. This time she told me she wouldn't
take me back if I changed my mind, and who could blame her. My next
agent, who'd left an old and very successful New York literary agency
to start her own agency, was young and fresh and building a name for
herself as one to watch in the business, with editors chasing her all over
the floor at the first American Booksellers Association conference she
attended on her own. She had a more focused approach: Talk up the
book to a few editors she knew very well and try to get something of a
rivalry going for it - before any of them even read it. Brilliant thinking;
this was the kind of agent I wanted on my side. Shooting for freshness,
we decided to change the novel's title from "Silicon Dreams" to
"Double Click," and off it went to the waiting editors. The long and
short of it: Neither Random House nor Viking wanted it. Adding insult
to injury, one even suggested that if I were to write a non-fiction book
he would publish that. What a depressing thought.
Before she'd signed me up, my agent and I had agreed to treat our
relationship as a trial agreement. After the rejection, I decided that
though she was fast becoming a very hot agent, mainstream fiction
wasn't her area of expertise; what I really, really needed was an agent
who represented best-selling mainstream authors.
My friend Gloria Nagy, a splendid novelist with seven novels under her
belt (one of which, "Looking for Leo," is on its way to becoming a
CBS miniseries), put me in touch with her then-agent, Ed Victor, who

is based in London, and enjoys a long