Four rewrites later, including a
no-holds-barred excising, I finally had a book, still known then
as "Silicon Dreams," that I believed was as good as it was going
to get.
And then it happened. A publisher bought it. I had the literary
critic Digby Diehl to thank for this good news. At the time Digby
was a book reviewer for "Playboy," and also a daily book
columnist for the Prodigy online service (where I'd done a brief
stint ghost writing for a highly paid high-tech analyst who will
remain unnamed). Via e-mail I asked Digby if he'd read my novel
and, if he liked it, to suggest editors who may want to take a
look at it. Well, Digby'd read it and liked it - enough to
personally pass it along to the head of a new and
small-but-going-for-the-big-time publisher named Knightsbridge
Publishing, an imprint distributed by the reputable Hearst
Corporation. Knightsbridge was founded around the time of the
Gulf War, and made its killing, so to speak, with a mass market
paperback best-seller, "The Rape of Kuwait."
The deal was for both hardback and paperback rights, and the
publisher himself called me to offer $5000 for the whole package,
which I came close to accepting. However, I knew that money
matters were best handled by my agent - despite the fact that I
had fired her a few months earlier for not having sold the novel
herself.
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