A most improbable thing has happened to me. On August 14, at age 67, I have published my debut novel,
The Little Book. And not only is it my debut novel, but it is my first piece of commercial fiction ever, and after an entire adult life of trying. I began writing seriously shortly after getting my first English teaching job in the early 1960s. In the late '60s I paid out a lot of money to The Famous Writers School, which was later exposed as something of a scam. But it got me going and started me on a quest for my own novel. I began writing short stories and sending them out to magazines, with a few encouraging letters, but always rejections. In 1974, I started a graduate year in education at Stanford University, and it was there that I wrote the first draft of what I called "my Vienna novel." I had read an intriguing book about 1897 Vienna, and I fantasized about time traveling there and finding the child Hitler:
Would you kill him? I asked. And that was the simple idea. A fellow from San Francisco named Wheeler Burden wakes up in 1897 Vienna and sets out to find the evil child, meeting a beautiful American woman in the process — pretty simple plot line. That manuscript was rejected unceremoniously, and I put it away, having been told that it was improbable, impractical, and unpublishable.
Then, about five years later, I got it out again, having done quite a bit of reading about the fascinating fin de siecle period in the meantime. I wrote another draft, adding quite a bit of detail and complexity to the story. Same result — unceremonious rejection, near-terminal disappointment, and another five- or six-year hiatus. But the story wouldn’t go away in my mind. I kept thinking of new characters, wrinkles, and plot twists. In 1988, I got it out again, did a major overhaul, finished a lengthy draft, and sent it out to more unceremonious rejections and a deepening feeling of hopelessness: my story was just too unconventional and improbable. By this time I was fully invested in my career as a private school headmaster, so my writing time was reduced to holidays and vacations, and during the 1990s I also pursued an advanced degree in mythology and depth psychology.
When I retired in 2003, I set about pulling my very complicated story together and finished a draft and sent it out. It was rejected nine times, and another feeling of depressed hopelessness set in, but this time I made the move that turned the whole project around. In 2006, I found a wonderful freelance editor in New York named Pat LoBrutto, and he — the first person to read the whole thing from cover to cover — made some excellent editing suggestions. Also, he had contacts in the publishing world. He began telling my story to a great young agent in NYC named Scott Miller, so when we finished the editing job, and I sent it to Scott, he accepted it immediately. Scott knew my editor at Dutton, Ben Sevier, and Dutton made an offer almost immediately. In February 2007 I had a contract, and a year and a half later, The Little Book appeared in bookstores, excellently promoted — I must add — by Dutton.
In the past few weeks, my debut novel has been appearing on national bestseller lists, and I pinch myself daily. "My Vienna novel," the improbable story that I began at Stanford in 1974 of a '70s rock and roll star who wakes up in Vienna 1897, has become a publishing success. Who would have thought? Certainly not the numerous publishers and agents who turned it down, and certainly not the author who suffered through 30-plus years of the manic-depressive practice of trying to get a first novel published.