Old Manuscript Resurfaces

When I was a kid, my old man, Izzy Bloom, used to tell me my instincts were as off base as a runner from first rounding second just as the shortstop gets around to catching the pop up. When I got a little older, good old Dad kept pace with my libido by saying I had the instincts of a eunuch in a whorehouse.

I have to admit, there were times when I proved him right.

Still, I've always said if a fellow can't believe in himself, who can he believe in, right? And so when I looked at the 8 x 10 glossy in my hand, I accepted my premonition without question. I was so sure, in fact, that if old Izzy himself--God rest his soul--had been standing there betting his last ten bucks that I was crazy to think this dame was going to bring me trouble, I would have taken his bet at a hundred to one odds.

This is the first page of the first book I wrote over 15 years ago. It was right after I'd sold my mystery weekend business, which had been a huge personal (if not financial) success for seven years, and it was an adaptation of one of my mystery weekend scripts.

I signed with a NY agent who found "Drawn to Murder" promising, and she spent two years getting it rejected by all the big publishers. She sent me one rejection from an editor at St. Martin Press saying they'd like to see anything else this "promising" writer had to offer.

I've never been great at handling rejection, and I finally told my agent to throw in the towel. I had written a children's novel that she'd liked, too, but that never found a publishing home either, and in the back of my mind this meant I wasn't as good of a writer as I thought I was. Both books had been hard work, and although to this day I get encouragement/harassment from Katz to write that million dollar book so he can quit his job, I never have sat down and started another one . . . until now.

"Drawn to Murder" surfaced again, soggy but salvageable from the second of two basement floods that hit us in July. The pages are curled and look a little aged, but for the first time in 15-some years, I'm reading the book I wrote so long ago. The tone of the book is humorous, the writing is taut, and I like what I've read so far.

It's nice to know it really was a very good manuscript making the rounds back then, and I'm less embarrassed by the memory of my failure. Even more importantly, I'm anxious to get back to the new book. It has faced the obstacles of multiple power failures, floods, summer distractions, and an all-absorbing garden tour, and has barely progressed this summer. Although the first book had a beginning, a middle and an end before I even started writing it, I remember it took a year of hard work to finish. The book I'm writing now has an idea, a setting, and some characters, and I've given myself the same 12-month deadline, so I'm already feeling the difficulty quotient rise. Still, after seeing what I did once, I am encouraged I can do it again.