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September 1973:
What I Did Last Summer

What I did last summer. I did many things last summer. I wrote three novels in the Berkley Lone Wolf series. I did some short stories. I did a novelization of the Lindsay Anderson film O Lucky Man! but it's never going to be published, unfortunately, because Lindsay Anderson wants to do his own version with stills from the picture. Boy was I mad! Not as mad as Warner Books, though, who are out twenty-five-hundred dollars. I'm not giving it back, Jack. Those are some of the things I did last summer. I went to Saratoga with my family and lost three hundred dollars. I got a new Calais Coupe and drove it all over Bergen and Rockland counties looking for a way out. (No luck.) But the important and memorable thing I did last summer was to write a science fiction novel.

It is called Tactics of Conquest and Pyramid Books will publish it in January. I have already seen it in galleys; it is what they call a rush job. A copy editor called me last week to check a certain term and to ask if I had ever heard of Bobby Fischer, adding, "By the way this is a very good novel, not at all like science fiction." Was it exciting to hear that! But of course it is just like science fiction. I wrote it in four days for a four-thousand-dollar advance. It is fifty-five-thousand words.

Here is how I got to write the novel: an editor named Roger Elwood got a contract with Pyramid Books to deliver twelve science fiction novels and he called on me to do one. Whew! Before I had even said yes he handed me a contract and it called for two thousand dollars right then. I didn't even have to offer any material. Or a plot outline or synopsis or anything. Just sign the contracts in June promising to deliver the novel by August 1 because Roger Elwood needed to deliver his first book fast. I was proud. Two thousand dollars for signing your name makes you proud. But then I knew that I had to write a whole novel in less than a month by the time the two thousand dollars came into my hands and I got scared. I never write anything until the money gets into my hands. That is the smart and shrewd way to deal when you are mostly working in paperback original.

It sure is scary writing a novel on a one-month deadline. But I knew what to do. Even though it is only six and a half years since my first sale to Galaxy, I am an experienced science fiction writer with a lot of novels to my credit and the first thing you need is to write a novel fast, particularly in science fiction, where you can't fill up the pages with fornication like in the other stuff, is to have something to base it on. It is always easier to rework something already written. For one thing it reminds you that you got the thing done once somehow and can do it again, and for another it gives you something to hang on to.

So I decided to expand a twenty-six-hundred-word short story I had written last November called "Closed Sicilian," which I sold to Fantasy and Science Fiction for eighty dollars. It was a chess story describing a fool's mate in four moves from the point of view of the fool, who is so arrogant that he doesn't know what has happened to him, even at the end. I based the story on the world chess championship matches during the summer of 1972 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Bobby Fischer, who beat poor Boris Spassky, struck me as being an interesting character for a short story narrator since he had no insight at the same time that he was megalomaniacal. Also I had spent all this time staring at the television where they got the moves in from Iceland one by one and had experts talking about them. I had to do something to justify all of that staring, right? Because science fiction is the only thing I know how to sell (other than mysteries and pornography and novelizations that Lindsay Anderson won't let go through), I framed it as a science fiction story, so I had my narrator and opponent playing for the fate of the universe with the aliens as referees. I have done this kind of thing before and dealing with aliens controlling the fate of the universe gave me a warm, comfortable feeling as I sat down at the typewriter on Tuesday afternoon, August 2 or 3 it must have been. "What are you going to do now?" a neighbor had asked me a few minutes before while I was standing outside looking at the trees as if for the last time. "I'm going to write a novel in four days," I said. "You don't mean that," the neighbor said and giggled. I could tell that she thought I was crazy but that didn't bother me. Everyone here where I live who has heard that I am a science fiction writer thinks that I am crazy, except those who think I am really a criminal or dirty movie distributor. After all, none of them have ever seen my books. I mentioned the story length.

Now you may think that you would have trouble expanding a twenty-six-hundred-word story into a fifty-five-thousand-word novel. You would be right. My oh my did I pad and overload! Sentences became pages, paragraphs became chapters. Megalomania became grandiosity with lots of examples. Whole flashback chapters were devoted to his life as a chess champion: scenes in Berne and Moscow and Philadelphia, the traveling life of the chess master. Also some sex scenes, but within good taste because this is the science fiction market. It turns out that the narrator has really had a secret homosexual relationship with his opponent for years but it is said in a subtle way.

Roger Elwood, when I delivered the novel, wanted the narrator and his opponent to be the same person but I said nothing doing. I have my integrity. I did write the epilogue he wanted, though, where the world gets destroyed. For four thousand dollars you don't get sticky. It is the biggest advance I ever got in my life.

I wrote the novel in four days filling in all of the background and details that the short story implied. I smoked many cigarettes—I know this is bad and I'll cut down soon—and drank ten ounces of scotch a day, five before lunch and five before dinner. Also beer. It helped me not to vomit when I ate and did I eat! When I finished the novel, it was late Friday; I said to myself, you've worked four days and made four thousand dollars. That is smart. That is good. Who makes a thousand dollars a day in Bergen County? Not even shrinks or crime bosses make a thousand a day. At least, not consistently.

I was so proud. I had shown the world what a fine writer I was and Roger Elwood and Pyramid Books how quick. I knew they would appreciate it. I mailed the novel to Roger and he called me and said he liked it so much he would like me to do another Pyramid novel. So now I am thinking of what I can do. I think I will expand my story "A Galaxy Called Rome," which I also wrote last summer. I can fill in on that too, and this story is nine thousand words, not twenty-six hundred, which makes it easier to bloat. Roger only wants to pay me thirty-five-hundred dollars for this one though because Tactics of Conquest and the new program at Pyramid have to prove themselves in the market. I think I'll take it. That is still almost nine hundred dollars a day and who in Bergen County is making nine hundred dollars a day? I am smart and shrewd and doing better than almost any thirty-four-year-old in Bergen County. That is what I did last summer and what I will do this fall, and next summer too until I make so much money that I can stop doing all of this and really enjoy my life. I know that I will enjoy my life once I can relax but first I have to do this "Galaxy Called Rome" thing, and then I will get back to the Lone Wolf stuff. I am going to end this composition now because I am very tired and you only asked for fourteen hundred words on what I did last summer and here they are and I hope my fourteen-dollar check will be payable on receipt because I really need the money. I really do. I always will. I'll make sure of it.

 

1980: New Jersey

 

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