Trail of Words

One novelist's four decade journey to publicatoin

Like tears, the words trail behind me into a past covered in cobwebs until they vanish over the horizon of time. So much has happened since 1968, when I was honorably discharged from the United States Marines and started attending Citrus Community College in Southern California where I eventually earned an Associate of Science Degree.

 

I do not remember the name of my first creative writing teacher in 1968. I recall that he sort of reminded me of a French frog. He was a round man with that kind of face. He spent a lot of time in class talking about his rejection slips for his own work. However, he encouraged me with my writing.

 

While I was still at Citrus College, Ray Bradbury came to speak. His lecture in the student union after school motivated me to write and is the primary reason why I eventually gave up wanting to be an architect. I went on to earn a BA degree in journalism from California State University at Fresno in 1973. Everything I did after listening to Ray Bradbury was designed to make me a better writer. I even became a teacher so I would have more time to write.

 

Most serious writers hear the joke about wallpapering a room with rejection slips. I had hundreds of rejection slips up until a couple of years ago—maybe more than a thousand. Except for a few of the encouraging ones, the rest, the unsigned clones, were dumped in a recycle bin. I’ve misplaced a few of the good ones, but in this piece, I want to write about the trail of words that liters more than four decades with the ‘good ones’—the ones that kept me going.

 

On February 11, 1972, Ben Bova had his secretary type a letter to me that he signed. I had submitted Sacrifice, a short story. At that time, Bova was the editor of Analog Science Fiction, Science Fact magazine. I was a fan of the magazine for years.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse
   Thank you for giving us the opportunity of looking at this manuscript, but I have found it not quite suitable for our present needs.
   I rather like your style of writing and suggest that you try us again.

Sincerely.
Ben Bova
Editor
BB:fh
enc.

 

I did try Analog again but never received a personal rejection slip from anyone. They were all clones after that.

 

It would be over a year before I received another personal rejection. On May 10, 1973, Charles Platt, the science fiction consultant for Avon Books wrote:

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse,

   Thanks for letting us see A Choice of Living, and my apologies for taking so long to read it.

You write well, and I think the structure of your proposed novel is fine. I am not very happy about the scientific plausibility of the novel, however; it seems on a Marvel comics level (where radioactivity can be used to substantiate almost every bizarre event), and I’m afraid that I feel science fiction readers tend to expect slightly more realistic scientific justification.

This may just be my own idiosyncratic outlook, however, so it’s quite possible you might have better luck trying this elsewhere

Yours sincerely,
Charles Platt
Science fiction consultant

 

Due to Platt’s encouraging words, I revised A Choice of Living and took the radioactivity element out of it. On May 24, 1973, I received the third personal rejection from Gay Bryant, the fiction editor for Penthouse magazine.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     Thank you for sending us “Caution”.

     While I regret that this piece would not be right for PENTHOUSE, I did enjoy your writing and would very much like to see more of your work.

     Looking forward to hearing from you.

Cordially,
Gay Bryant
Fiction Editor

GB: pe
enc.

 

Another letter arrived from Charles Platt at Avon Books on January 10, 1974.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse

     I’m sorry to have taken so long over your manuscript. Things are always delayed to some extent over Christmas.

     I think it is good of its kind, and an improvement on its original form, but it isn’t quite the kind of science fiction I’m looking for, for Avon. It is hard for me to define what I mean, because it’s really a matter of taste; if you read, for example, THE LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula K. LeGuin, which we published last year, you will perhaps see the kind of direction I am interested in, and will be able to contrast it with the way you chose to develop your ideas.

     I think you should be able to place this manuscript else-where; Ballantine and Daw are two publishers in the paper-back field who would be worth trying.

Your Sincerely
Charles Platt.

 

As a long time science fiction fan, I’d already read everything Ursula K. LeGuin had written. I love her Left Hand of Darkness—one of my favorite books. I wasn’t LeGuin, and I wasn’t about to write like her’s.

 

Over the years, every time one manuscript struck out (usually after a minimum of a hundred rejection slips from agents and editors), I would write another. My next novel, Connubial Contract, was a story based on my first marriage while I was still in it. That marriage inspired me to write a farce.

 

Ruth Goddard from Jenkins Publishing Company, Austin, Texas wrote:

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     As you will see by the enclosed list of Books-in-Print, we do not handle fiction; we are a small, regional press and mostly concerned with Southwestern history. But we do thank you for letting us see Connubial Contract and we do wish you well with your work.

     It may interest you to know that I found Chapter 1 more readable and convincing in the first fifteen pages than in the subsequent pages. Pace in earlier portion seems better. Writing, on the whole, is smooth and entertaining. Good luck to you.

Sincerely,
Ruth Goddard

 

After Connubial Contract, I returned to science fiction and wrote two novels, Moiety Man and The Elixir Man. At this time I was working for Pacific Motor Trucking as a supervisor in the maintenance division out of Los Angeles. The truck company was part of Southern Pacific Railroad. My work days ran twelve hours and that sometimes weekends. I wrote at three in the morning and anytime I could squeeze an hour or two. The next interesting rejection on August 2, 1974, came from the Editor of Aurora in Nashville.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     Your manuscript, MOIETY MAN, is still under consideration. Unfortunately, our first reader, a professor at Vanderbilt, did not give it as good a report as I. However, I am going to obtain another reader’s evaluation. Personally, I enjoyed it very much.

     If our publisher decides against publication, I will immediate return it so that you may try to place it elsewhere. It most certainly is publishable. I thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,
Shirley E. George
Editor

SEG/s

 

On September 10, 1974, I received another personal rejection from ACE BOOKS.

 

Dear L. F. Lofthouse:

     Although I enjoyed reading your novel, The Elixir Man, I regret to say that it is not quite right for Ace’s line at present. However, I want to thank you for thinking of Ace, and for allowing me the time to consider your manuscript. I am sorry I cannot comment on it, but the volume of submissions that come into my office make it impossible.

     Best of luck in finding a publisher for your book.

Sincerely,
Patrick LoBrutto
Associate Editor

PL:bad

 

The next letter from Aurora arrived September 23, 1974. By this time I had collected 179 rejection slips for this novel.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse

     Your writing is exciting and interest-holding. From a personal viewpoint, I would like to see the entire manuscript of The Elixir Man, but from an editor’s viewpoint, I have to say we are holding several SF manuscripts just now, contemplating publication. I feel it would be unfair to hold up your manuscript’s circulation as I am aware we are still holding Moiety Man.

     However, if your manuscript is not placed within the next few months, please write again.

Sincerely,
Shirley E. George
Editor

SEG/s

 

The final letter from Aurora was written on January 6, 1975.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     Thank you for giving Aurora the opportunity to consider Moiety Man. Although it is certainly a publishable manuscript, we are unable, for numerous reasons, to place it in our publishing list as we had initially hoped. Therefore I am returning it with our best wishes for success in placing your work with the right publisher.

     Thank you again for submitting your manuscript to Aurora.

Sincerely
Carolyn G. Aylor
Assistant Editor

CGA/s

 

A letter from Ashley Books, a publisher in Port Washington, NY, was written March 21, 1975. In December 1974, Ashley Books expressed interest in Elixir Man.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     Thank you for sending us your manuscript. I’m sorry that it doesn’t quite make it for us. You write well but we are going to have to pass this one by. I wish you much success in placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely,
Paul Korea
Senior Editor

P.S. Very interesting concept. The book is unusual and along the way I found certain similarities between Morris and Kennedy between the lines. However, I’m sorry to say that this is not for our list at the present time.

 

In May of 1975, I received the final letter from John F. Blair, Publisher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I had submitted a short children’s story to this publisher a year earlier and Blair had expressed interest in more stories for a collection. I still have six of the letters from Blair. It didn’t work out as you will see in the final letter dated May 29, 1975.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     I wish we could reward your patience with a more favorable report, but I am afraid we can’t. As you know, we have taken great interest in your stories, and several of them appeal to us quite a bit. The main problem is with grouping them in a collection. There is just too much of a pattern in structure and theme in “Man of the Mountains.” “The Huggable Cow,” “A Tree is for Climbing,” “The Wind My Friend,” and, to a lesser extended, “Guardians of the Night” and the “The Garden of Good.” The idea of some natural force taking on a supernatural flavor to help someone is a good one. It works in each of the stories individually, but becomes a little tiresome when they are read in succession.

     The other stories, because they are more diverse, hang together better, if that makes sense. But “Icicles, Popsicles, and Frozen Uncles?” and “A Ghost of a Town” do not appeal to us as much as Elp Ror did. “Flubbergasted,” on the other hand, is one of your best.

Perhaps the problem is that you have been sending us the stories piecemeal rather than as a collection. It is very difficult to strike a balance in a volume of shorter pieces.

     Thank you for your patience and cooperation. I am returning the stories to you under separate cover.

Best wishes,
Rick Mashburn, Editor
John F. Blair, Publisher

 

In 1979, my personal life took a bitter turn due to a divorce. It wouldn’t be until November of 1981 before I would start sending material out to publishers and agents again.

 

After the divorce, I leaped with both feet into an MFA program. I taught days, worked nights as a maitre d’ at a huge nightclub called the Red Onion and on my nights off, took classes toward that MFA. I slept about two hours a night. That would go on for two years. The final product was a memoir focusing on my tour in Vietnam. This rejection comes from Polaris Press, Los Gatos, CA, November 20, 1981. After the MFA, I started driving one hundred and thirty miles once a week to UCLA where I attended a writing workshop for seven years from an instructor that taught in the extension program.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse

     Thanks for letting me see MEMORIES. It’s a very good book, extremely well-written, and I have no criticism of it. It should find a market.

     But for us, we’re, first of all, overstocked. Aside from that fact, we’ve published so far only small books for students of high school and college age and are just getting a toehold on the science fiction and science fantasy field. Our markets, and our representatives, are geared, first, to the educational type of books and, second, to the science fiction groups. These readers, faithful or casual, expect those types of books from us. We’re having a devil of a time just trying to expand our too-small list.

     A novel about the Vietnam War would be cutting our program too widely. I’m afraid our titles would become a hodge-podge of subjects. A single title each, for example, on science fiction, a juvenile, a popular science book, and romance, etc., plus a how-to-something, would be a jumble.

     So I have great sympathy for veterans of all kinds. God knows I spent four years overseas myself and had my share of shrapnel (no bullets, happily) raining on my helmet.

But we can’t publish ‘em all! Probably one fothe larger New York-based publishers would be a better bet.

Sincerely,
Edward W. Ludwig.

p.s. Don’t know if you made a copy of your letter so will return it to you.

 

In 1984 Harriet P. McDougal, Editorial Vice Present of TOR Books expressed interest in Elixir. I mailed off the manuscript and it fell Into a black hole. Doubleday expressed interest in another manuscript I’d finished but that didn’t go anywhere but into box where I tossed all of the rejections.

 

My final ‘good’ rejection came from Charles Scribner’s Sons, December 9, 1986.

 

Dear Mr. Lofthouse:

     Thank you for your letter of September 22 to Laurie Matheson, who is no longer at Scribner’s

I enjoyed reading the sample pages you sent of your novel Hong Kong Nights, and under other circumstances I would normally be interested in seeing the rest of the manuscript. However, we have cut back somewhat on our list at the same time that we are publishing more and more books by repeat authors, and I am afraid we do not have an open slot for your mystery. I do thank you for thinking of Scribner’s, and I wish you well in placing your manuscript with another publisher.

Most Sincerely,
Carrie Chase
Assistant to Susanne Kirk.

 

The industry started to change after that. Many publishers were gobbled up by conglomerates and started to only accept agented material. MFA programs started sprouting all over the country like mushrooms. Due to the increase in colleges offering MFA degrees in writing and the increase in manuscripts from that assembly line, personal letters from agents and editors would become rare. More likely, the standard cloned rejection slip would arrive or nothing at all. Many query letters went out and vanished—never to be heard from again.

 

Near the end of the twentieth century, the Internet and POD publishing arrived changing the industry in amazing way. Authors no longer needed the approval of an agent or editor to have a chance to reach an audience of readers. So, here I am with my work on AuthorsDen. I have a novel published through a POD publisher. My work is in brick and mortar bookstores. Anyone in the world can visit Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com and buy my book. My first novel is selling and has collected a few good reviews. I’ve had three book signings at local bookstores. I’ve been a guest on thirty radio talk shows.

 

I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to achieve my goals without the need of the traditional publishing industry, a dinosaur waiting for extinction to arrive. It would be interesting to know how many others have traveled a similar path.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

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Reviews

[dianne]

Wow, that was quite a journey. I have never attempted to publish and probably won't ever attempt it. My writing is personal (a memoir) and I am happy to share it with family and friends. But I can certainly understand the need to write.

I am happy that you succeeded in your goal after so much rejection. I will try to read some of your work here on Writer's Cafe.