The Annual December 27th Post

When I wrote the first of these posts back in 2004, it never occurred to me that I'd still be writing them seventeen years later. I've missed posting about it a year or two along the way, but I've never forgotten what it was like to make that first sale on December 27, 1976, and to be able to consider myself a professional writer.

This year I was trying to think of something to write about those days that I haven't rehashed before. I've talked about the first story that sold and how I came to write it . . . but I don't think I've ever written anything about the stories that didn't sell, for the very good reason that I don't remember much about them. But I recall a few titles and plot details, yarns that I scribbled out with a fountain pen on notebook paper or in a spiral notebook while I was working in my father's TV repair shop. Then either Livia or I would type them, I'd go over them and make revisions, then one of us would type a final draft to go in the manila envelope (with SASE, of course) to go winging off to editorial offices in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago . . . where they went right back in those SASEs and limped back home to me. Those manuscripts are long gone, of course, so I'm working by memory, but here are a few I recall.

"On the Dead Run" -- this was a mystery story about a heist crew that targeted a big party held by degenerate jetsetters in Cancun. All elements about which 23-year-old me knew little or nothing.

"Over on the Hot Side" -- a science fiction story about a radioactive zone, mutants, and other stuff that had been done to death even then.

"The Long and the Short of It" -- another science fiction story. I don't remember anything about it except that one of the editors who saw it handwrote a note on the rejection slip about what an offensive story it was.

"Key Allegro" -- some sort of tropical adventure yarn that I targeted at the men's adventure magazine market. The title came from a housing development in Rockport, Texas, a town I had visited with Livia a few months earlier. That's all I remember.

"No-Hitter" -- now this one, I remember a little better, because Sam Merwin Jr. almost bought it for MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. It was about a major league baseball pitcher who got in trouble with the Mob. He was ordered to tank a game he was pitching, but a few innings in, he realizes he has a no-hitter going, and he's torn between his competitive nature and his desire to save his skin from the gangsters. It was a suspense story, told from inside his head as the game progresses, and probably the best story I'd written up to that time. But Merwin hated the ending so much that he didn't even ask me to revise it, as he did with another story of mine that he wound up buying a short time later.

For every one of these stories, I wrote at least five or six others that never sold, either. I tried to have three or four stories out in the mail, minimum, all the time. I look back on those days now with nostalgia and think about what a great time it was to be alive, a newlywed with a beautiful bride and a head full of hopes and dreams, but I'm also realistic enough to know that it was a lot of hard, grinding work, too, and I'm not surprised that I almost gave up a few times.

But I'm glad that I didn't, because today marks 45 years that I've been in this business of telling stories. I hope I have a few more years of it left in me. For now, a big thanks as always to the editors who bought the stories and the novels, those of you who read them, and Livia, Shayna, and Joanna, who continue to make it all worthwhile and possible.