I had bill collectors chasing me. We were skipping from town to town, not leaving forwarding addresses. The agent couldn't find me when he sold my book. He finally found me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
When I was twelve, Uncle Randall looked up long enough to see that I was a reader as well, so he walked me down his hall to a linen-closet door and opened it up onto a wall of paperbacks. There were books behind books, as deep in as I could reach. He told me to take three, and when I was done, bring them back and take three more.
My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.
I had an agent who spent eight years - eight years! - trying to sell my stories. She sold other people's work; she just didn't sell mine.
I used to collect comic books. I had a substantial collection. I collect records also, but those have gone the way of the world.
My address book of dealers and private collectors, smugglers and fixers, agents, runners and the peculiar assortment of art hangers-on was longer than anyone else's in the field.
I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.
One of the first times that I went into a book store and saw a bunch of my books, my impulse was to put them all under my coat and run away so that no one else could see them, even though, of course, I wanted everyone to see them.
Over a four-month period, I sat down and wrote every day. And then there was a novel, and all of a sudden, there were agents and offers.
One day a guy tried to rob me on the street, and I had no money. So I charged him.