Undo | Page 6

client list of acclaimed literary
and mainstream authors. After Gloria's introduction, I sent my novel to
Ed Victor, and although he'd rejected the novel six years ago,
suggesting it needed a lot of work (advise I took to heart), this time he
responded positively, saying he had enjoyed it.
Yet, because his client list was so full and active, he was at the time not
taking on new fiction writers. He did however direct me to an agent
named Juliet Nicolson, with whom he had begun a working alliance,
and to whom he would be happy to send my novel for consideration. A
spirited British woman, Juliet had lived and worked in publishing in the
United States for many years, and had decided to return to London to
start her own agency. Several weeks later she faxed me to say that she
thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and that Ed Victor lends his full support
to her should I decide to have her represent me. I called her back thirty
seconds later and shouted "Yes," and, another long and short of it,
despite their combined efforts, their long careers of landing huge book
deals, the novel "Double Click" still found no publishing house.
After sending the novel to a long list of hardback publishers, then
trying, as before, to secure a paperback original deal, Juliet felt it was
time to put the book away and concentrate on my next novel, which I
had in fits and starts tried to get off the ground for the last however
many years. She stressed that someday we would sell "Double Click,"
possibly after my next novel or the one after that, and assured me that
this was how first novels sometimes turned out (after all, although John
Grisham's blockbuster "The Firm" made him a household name, his
first novel was the small-press-published "A Time to Kill," which
Doubleday/Dell then rereleased to astonishing success). So I put
"Double Click" away once more and went back to writing the video
game strategy guides I'd found my way into to pay the rent, and that
was the end of that...
For about six months, anyway.
Then I was struck by an idea: To rewrite "Double Click" just one more
time, but this time around, fix the number one complaint that editors
had voiced: That the story was too dated. So instead of playing out the
trials and tribulations of my characters on a stage set in the by-now
commonplace (and therefore, predictable) personal and mainframe
computer market, I decided to shift the backdrop to a more modern

setting: advanced handheld computers and pocket communicators, also
known as PDAs, or personal digital assistants.
I told my agent none of this, and quietly set to reworking the plot and
backdrop to accommodate my change of heart. To make the story feel
fresh to me I changed most of the characters names, but other than that
each of their stories and struggles remained the same. To ensure that I
didn't date the story before I even finished it, I wove in a number of not
quite ready for prime time technologies, including practical speech
synthesis and voice recognition. The final rewrite in effect put the
novel ever so slightly into the future, and as far as I could tell squashed
the criticism that the story was too stale.
Taking my agent by complete surprise, I sent her the new manuscript,
which I had retitled "Undo" (a contemporary term, recognizable to
readers, that represents the novel's premise and the underlying theme at
play in each of the primary characters' lives - and, a little closer to
home, sums up my own story in trying to turn around the mysterious
forces that have stood in the way of getting this novel published). Well,
she was shocked, to say the least, and complimented me on my
patience and perseverance.
While my agent was busy reading and considering what to do with the
new and improved "Undo," I'd begun, and have since completed, my
second novel, "r.g.b." The book's first chapter, which I'd written a few
years ago, was excerpted in a small literary journal called "Puck," and
represents for me my "other" style of writing, which, for lack of a better
word, I can only describe as more...intricate and challenging to read,
less mainstream.
Which brings us to the present. Because "r.g.b." is not what my agent -
make that, former agent - considers commercially viable, she has
decided to drop me as a client, suggesting with a wish of good luck that
I find myself an agent who wants to represent both of my "voices" - the
mainstream style of "Undo," and the less mainstream style of "r.g.b."
So, here we are. My old friend John Michel has offered to help me find