A UNIFORM SHADE OF RED

Part 3

“Oh, look, Arthur, Teddy sold a story,” Mom said.

Dad picked up the magazine that I had cleverly folded so it would automatically open to my story. He grunted.

“Two pages. What did they give you for that, ten bucks?”

I was strongly tempted to lie up the amount but didn’t.

“Yes, plus two free editions.”

“Say, that’s not bad, Teddy.” He sounded sincere. “Let’s see now, that works out to…to a little less than four mils per day. That is, allowing for weekends. Not bad. If we count the holidays when you were here for your handouts as null time, you could say it was an even four mils per day.” Dad was always good with numbers.

“I told you, Dad. Teddy’s just plain stupid,” Danny said.

I intended to tell them I was working on a book but decided to hold off on that, at least until it sold. Too much good news in one day might not have been easy on Dad’s heart.

#

I finished the book a year later. It had been three years in the writing, but I finished my first novel-length western, BOOTS AND BULLETS. I boxed up a copy of the manuscript and gave it to Shirley; a friend who worked at the local library. She also served as a critic in the local writer’s club. She agreed to read it and give me her comments. After a few days, she called to let me know she thought it had promise and that she had passed it along to one of her friends. He is a retired literary agent named Ace, who lived somewhere in the backwoods of Nova Scotia. One year after handing the box to Shirley, Ace called…collect.

“Listen to me, Mr. Pendergast,” he said. “There are four things you must do before you’ll be able to sell your book. One; change the title to something a little more catchy and consistent with the content. Something like THE BOOTLICKER OF BUFFALO BUTTE might do. Two; change the name of your protagonist. Timmy Tutweiler is not the sort of moniker a tough-as-nails saddle tramp is likely to have. Three; it’s all right for him to kiss the girl before he rides off, but making mad passionate love in the back of an abandoned stagecoach behind the jail is not acceptable western fodder, particularly not when we all know he’s going to ride off into the sunset, or whatever. Four; get yourself an agent. You’re not going to sell this kind of crap over the transom. Five; change your name. I mean, who the hell is going to buy a western by a guy named Pendergast? Use a nom de plume like Lance Lamont or Singing Threetrees, something catchy and western. No one is going to buy a western written by anyone with a name like yours.” All right, so he couldn’t count, but his comments sounded logical, so I took his advice and made the changes in the book.

I made up a long list of the roughest, tumblest names I could think of for my pen name and settled on Lash McGraw. Getting an agent, now that was something entirely different. One piece in a literary was not thought of as having been published, so the agents I contacted were not interested and few of the publishers wanted to see western manuscripts unless they came from agents. What was I supposed to do?

I called Ace and, after a lot of haggling, he agreed to come out of hiding just long enough to help market my book for what he said was a paltry twenty-five percent. I kicked a little, but he reminded me it was a small price to pay for dragging him from his comfy cottage to get my first book in print.

Five years after giving Mom a copy of that magazine, I had a contract and an advance for my book. My first book. The day the check arrived, Ace called…collect…to tell me he would be willing to drop his rate to twenty percent for the second book if I promised to get on it right away. I told him I had been working on it for some time and he insisted I send him a couple of chapters and an outline. What with all the attention I was getting, I was beginning to feel…well, successful.

All this happened in time for Mom’s birthday, so I made copies of the stuff I had received and hurried across town. In the five years since my first bit of good news, my brother had obtained nine more locations and begun a chain of quick shoe outlets called Pendergast’s Pedifast. Danny had always been good at organizing and conniving. In fact, everybody said Danny would wind up running heaven a week after he got there. It was a joke, of course, but that’s what they said.

#

“Did they really say that?” the wall interjected.

“Yeah. It was always a comment presented in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, but, yeah, that’s what they said,” Theodore responded.

“Okay,” the wall said. “Please…continue with your story.”

#

Um, where was I? Oh, yeah, during the same period, I had acceded to full-time night manager of BurgerBeast.

Anyway, when I arrived at their house, I was so excited I forgot to turn off the engine of my car. I just jumped out and charged into the house waving the copies and shouting, “Mom. Dad. Great news. I sold my first book.”
“That’s nice,” they said in concert.

“Teddy, did you hear? Danny’s getting married,” Mom said. She was bubbling with excitement. Dad wrapped his arm tightly around my little brother and gave a little squeeze. A proud smile graced his face. Danny sneered at me.

“No. Really? Who’s the lucky girl?” What I really wanted to know was, who would voluntarily marry a putz like Danny?

“Milly Stapleton,” Danny said in his usual, snotty style. It was the first time he had spoken to me directly in eight years.

“You mean Milly, the daughter of Stapleton Shoes?” I was taken aback by that news. The Stapletons were worth more annually than the IRS could extort from the citizenry, or so the story went. By the time I left, my car had overheated and was squirting coolant from several new leaks. Not everything was going well.

Book two sold six months after BOOTLICKER went to print. I couldn’t go home with the news since my parents had moved into a house on a lake Danny bought for them upstate, both the house and the lake, and my schedule at BurgerBeast wouldn’t allow enough time to make the trip. I called Mom to tell her about what was happening, and to apologize for not visiting. She told me Danny and Milly were considering going international with a new idea in marketing.

My third book, PETTICOATS ’N’ PISTOLS, got picked up by a different publisher and Ace assured me it was a good move. They had a better approach to marketing and guaranteed a larger first run, ergo, more money. He lowered his rate a couple of points in another show of confidence and demanded an outline for book number four immediately. In the meantime, I couldn’t walk three blocks without encountering a Staplegast International Factory Shoe Outlet.

Then it happened, the thing that started all that got me where I am now. I received a call from Ace, a call he paid for, although I knew it would be added to his fees later. Sales on PETTICOATS had fallen off drastically and the publisher, though not pulling out, threatened to shorten the first run on RANGE REVENGE if the trend continued.

The trend continued and the publisher reduced the first printing of book four by twenty-five percent. That hit me hard. One month after release, the sales hovered between mediocre and dismal. Ace called…collect.

“Ted, we know why all the trouble,” he said. “Have you ever heard of a critic named Maxwell Storm?”

“No, I can’t say that I’ve had that pleasure,” I admitted.

“He writes for the Tribune. He started there at the same time PETTICOATS hit the stores.”

“Wait a minute. I thought all the reviews on PETTICOATS had been good. Maybe not raves or anything like that, but they were all positive, right?”

“They were, yeah. All but this jerk, Storm. He’s internationally syndicated and I heard through some of my sources that he’s paying those who wouldn’t buy his column to carry it anyway.”

“He sounds like a real schmuck, Ace,” I said. I was fuming. “So, what can we do about him?”

“We can’t do anything about him. He’s a critic — a critic with a lot of money — and critics can be as rotten as they want, as long as it’s opinion. They have what equates to diplomatic immunity. He’s said nothing libelous or slanderous, so he’s in the clear. I had quite a discussion with the editors and they told me they love your style.”

“That’s nice to hear, Ace, but it’s not selling.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but listen to this.” He sounded excited. “They said that if you can come up with something really different — not a western — they’ll take a chance and go with it. They think the guy might have some kind of personal problem with your Lash McGraw, and I agree with them. Change your name and give us anything but a western. Let’s see what happens.”

I did. I changed my name to Frederick Sharp and produced the bones of a mystery and horror piece that, after reading the outline, excited Ace. He hand-carried it to the editors.

I called home to tell Mom about the problem, but she didn’t understand. She said Danny had bought some property in the south of France and, if I wanted to get out of the country for a while, she was sure he’d rent it to me for a reasonable price. Mom didn’t understand much of anything.

Click here for Part 4 [agnostic.com]