by Les Edgerton
What was the kicker was that St. Martin’s had offered $5,000 more and wanted to publish it without changing as much as a comma and they wanted an additional 2- or 3-book deal after it came out. The editor who participated for them was Charlie Spicer and Jimmy told me that after they lost out in the auction, Charlie told him that “if Edgerton ever wanted to leave RH, we’d take him in a minute.” He said later, that if “Edgerton wrote another novel like that that they wanted first crack at it.”
Which made what transpired next hard for me to get the logical part of my brain around. After the RH fiasco, I asked Jimmy if he could take it to St. Martin’s as only a handful of people had even read it—RH and St. Martin’s and maybe a dozen others who had participated early in the auction. No, Jimmy said, it’s a dead issue now, but as soon as we sell your next one, then we can get it published. That never made sense to me being as no one had read the book except the ones mentioned above. It wasn’t as if the public was aware of it or had read it or anything.
Anyway, Scott was very apologetic and said he’d make sure I would never have to repay the part of the advance I’d already received ($12,500). Sometime after that, he left RH and I’ve never heard from him again. About two years later, I got a bill from RH for the 12.5 and I wrote them back, relaying what Scott had told me. Nothing happened until a couple of years after that and I got another bill and I told them the same thing and again, haven’t heard from them since.
This whole thing really impacted my life in ways that are still happening. At the time, my wife and I owned a very successful hairstyling business. At the exact time I signed with RH, our lease for our shop was up and we had to make a decision to sign a new 5-year lease or not. I’d always tried to be realistic and practical and even though I’d sold a number of books before the RH thing, never succumbed to the temptation of quitting my day job. Well, this seemed to be the perfect time to do so. I was given enough money to live on for the next year while I rewrote; Ann Godoff had guaranteed Jimmy (accding to him anyway) my book would be #1; they wanted at least two more books after this one, etc. I felt it was time to become a truly full-time writer. So we closed the business and my wife went to work at another salon and I settled down to all that I’ve related above. The upshot was that after a year of all that, our business was gone and I was jobless and went through some health problems that wiped out our savings and put us heavily into debt, etc. We’ve never caught up since. You can’t go back and regain your clients--they’re gone forever, for the most part. I feel pretty sure that Bertlesmann taking over probably put all this into action—there was probably some sort of house cleaning and lots of books like mine were probably thrown overboard, and people jettisoned, etc. I have no way of knowing this—just a strong suspicion.
I’m not a whiner and I don’t blame the world for the bad things that happen to me—it’s just part of the deal of life and usually because of bad choices I’d made on my own. The reason I wanted to share this with you is that I still have this novel and it’s a good one and I’d like your opinion as to if I should send it out.
Mr. ______, thank you for reading this and taking your valuable time to do so. If any of this intrigues you and you’d like a look at it, I’d be very happy to send it to you. Also, if you know Charlie Spicer and run into him you might ask him about the deal. We don’t get “do-overs” in live as a rule, but that’s one guy I wish I’d gone with. He really liked my work and in every dealing with him I always felt he was a true gentleman.
Thank you so much for taking time for someone who isn’t even earning any money for you.
Blue skies,
Les
The agent’s reply to this was:
Les-
You don’t owe Random House squat. Having “won” you at auction, followed up by having you rewrite the book multiple times, what they did is completely shitty behavior. And it happens every day. I’m actually surprised they bothered to send you two bills. For Das Random Haus, $12,500 is pocket change and they probably cleared it from their books as a write-off years ago.
When Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp Inc bought a company, (name deleted), they cancelled a lot of contracts... only they found other ways of saying it so CEO Jane Friedman could be quoted in the press saying, “We didn’t cancel any contracts.”
I do business with Random House every day, and would sell them one of my represented books in a heartbeat. To booksellers and book reviewers that little house on the spine, or even better, that little Borzoi dog, still carries a lot of cachet and helps get reviews and in-store display space. The fact is, though, the Random House of Bennet Cerf, or even Bob Bernstein is long gone. They do some books brilliantly. Most others are little more than putting a cover on the barely edited manuscript and shipping it out the door. Sadly, that’s true most places. The hard part for old grizzlies is that they remember what Random House used to be -- before it was a division of an arm of a media conglomerate and expected to cough up 15% quarterly profits to the Mother Ship. The old souls have either fled the building (actually “the building” is gone too) or sit in their offices, bitterly waiting for the day they can full advantage of a fat 401K.
Ann Godoff is over at Penguin now. She “might” view this as an opportunity to do right by a book and an author she once seduced with fantasies of a #1 New York Times best seller ** or she might want to slink away in embarrassment. Plus, who knows what portraits of you as a madman had to be painted by Scott or others in order for them to look less evil.
I’m actually surprised Ann would do such an amateur thing. She is a total pro and I think brilliant publisher. I love the way she works between the cracks. Who could have predicted the huge best selling audience for Orchid Thief or Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil before they were published? All those previous best sellers about Savannah or orchids? What was the obvious category for these books? They are not typical true crime or travel or anything but extremely well written. I love Ann for that. But I would NEVER promise an author a best seller. The fates are too fickle. Why is Marley & Me a massive and ongoing seller, where Mark Doty’s version of the same book (only MUCH better) a quiet success and no one reads Willie Morris’ classic My Dog Skip. I’m not even sure the Morris is still in print.
There is a great essay by E.B. White called Here is New York. White wrote it in 1949 and it is absolutely relevant to this day. In writing about New York City, I think he nailed the right attitude for anyone aspiring to be a writer. He wrote (and I paraphrase badly, having not read the piece for ten years), “If you come to New York, you having to be willing to be lucky.”
So yeah, dust off Over Easy and send it in. I am even more surprised than Ann’s promised best seller that your agent would say it’s a dead book and nor resubmit it to St. Martin’s. This happens all the time. After David Ulin had post-Harper Morrow back away from his book, he resold it to Viking. And heck, what’s gotten more press this last year than the passed around If I Did It by O.J. Simpson?
Best,
Mr. ________
Mr. ______ and I ended up not hooking up, as I have other forms of work he doesn’t represent, such as sports books, a YA, etc. He’s a great guy, though, and very generous in sharing his advice and wisdom with me as he did with the above. I just thought it’d be easier to show our correspondence about the PERFECT CRIME/OVER EASY book as it contains all the pertinent facts about what happened so you’d know the history.
I had some other worries about this novel. When I wrote it, the idea behind the crime was truly original. Such a crime had never been committed. My worry was that some outlaw would eventually come up with the same idea and even though I had thought of it first, his effort would trump mine in the public’s eye. Well, a couple of years ago that very thing happened. And then again. The good thing is that neither were really the “perfect crime.” They’d made some mistakes—which is why they were caught. Mistakes I’d foreseen and hadn’t had my character make. So, while yes, there have been a couple of instances where the
basic idea has been used, they still haven’t reached the “perfect” level mine has.
And now, I have a publisher—thanks, Aaron Patterson!
I hope this little saga proves of interest to the writers out there. This isn’t stuff that’s reported on in English class or even your MFA workshops as a rule… The Cosa Nostra has very little on publishing…
Blue skies,
Les
www.lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Les Edgerton is a full-time writer and writing teacher. He formerly taught creative writing in the famed UCLA Extension Writers Program, was the writer-in-residence at the University of Toledo for three years and enjoyed the same position for a year at Trine University. He obtained a B.A. from Indiana Universy and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Currently, he teaches creative writing classes online for Writer’s Digest and Phoenix College and is in demand nationally for writer’s workshops and conferences. Les lives in Ft. Wayne, Indiana with his wife Mary, a talented hairdresser, and their son Michael Bud. Les has two daughters, Britney and Sienna, from a former marriage.
He is an ex-con, having served over two years at Pendleton Reformatory on a 2-5 sentence for second-degree burglary back in the late sixties. He is completely reformed now and you can have him over for dinner at your house and won’t have to count the silverware when he leaves...
Edgerton has won 16 state hairstyling championships, co-hosted a Cox Cable TV show on fashion with Paul Cimino in New Orleans, and when he was the Artistic Director for the Snobs Salon in New Orleans, they were the hairstylists for the 1987 spring release fashion show for Liz Clairborne. He has held various jobs in not-so-ordinary lines of work, including working for an escort service (whose clients were older, wealthy women), a gambler, a drug user and dealer, and a singer in a rock band (very minor rock band... very minor singer...). He was also elected student body president for Indiana University at South Bend, was a sports reporter for the South Bend Tribune, performed in three stag movies and acted in an indie movie, drove a T-Bird at speeds over 120 mph down city streets in a police chase, and has been shot at more than once (and shot back) as well as being the victim of an attempted stabbing. All of these things (and others) happened at different times in his life if you thought he was just having a busy week.
He currently has nine books in print, including two writer’s how-tos, a novel, a collection of short stories, two baseball books, and three business books focused on the hair design business. He uses his criminal background to bring a verisimilitude to his novels that other writers sometimes lack.
Electronic Edition Copyright ©2011 by Les Edgerton
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.
StoneGate Ink 2011
StoneGate Ink
Boise ID 83713
http://www.stonegateink.com
First eBook Edition: 2011
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover design by Fuji Aamabreorn
Published in the United States of America
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
Background for The Perfect Crime
About the Author
Copyright Info
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
Background for The Perfect Crime
About the Author
Copyright Info