He met the requirement by hatching a plot that involved hunting and dog training. "The Sleeping Dog" was 6,000 words long and typically complex; Millar had to labor to keep the story down to SI's limit. "It certainly contains the germ of a book," he thought. He mailed the story in August.
Alas, Sports Illustrated decided the short story's sporting peg was too thin after all, though they encouraged the author to try another one on them. Millar thought not. He made clear to Olding it hadn't been his fault: "[The editor's] original request to me, you should know, was quite vague, giving as one illustration of a 'sports background' 'sipping rum in the sun.' But I expected to have to waste a story to get from him the truth, which editors can constitutionally yield up only in the form of a negative reaction." He requested she sell the story elsewhere if she could.
"The Sleeping Dog" was submitted to and turned down by The Saturday Evening Post, This Week, and Cosmopolitan before Argosy bid $500. Millar said fine, and it was published there in April of ’65.
Millar still thought the story had book or TV potential, but the experience of writing it "to order" and then having it rejected left a bad taste that lingered. When young publisher Otto Penzler contracted to collect all the Archer short stories in hardcover for the first time in 1976, Millar didn't want "The Sleeping Dog" included. (Penzler insisted it should be, and it was.)
From first to last, Millar/Macdonald's short stories gave glimpses of (and opportunities for) Lew Archer's development as a character, and Ross Macdonald's growth as an artist — from the young but already skilled professional of 1945’s "Death by Air" and "Death by Water" to the older and wiser man of such 1960s masterworks as The Chill.
This mutual progress always held the keenest professional and personal interest for Kenneth Millar. As he told Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times in 1975, while working on what would prove to be the final Lew Archer noveclass="underline" "Archer began as a child of the genre and gradually became an individual. I hope that that happened to his writer as well."
Notes
" 'The Pacific bears some resemblance' ": Kenneth Millar to Professor Louis I. Bredvold, March 10, 1945, Louis I. Bredvold Correspondence, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
" 'a work of almost insane penetration' ": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, February 25, 1945, K. Millar Papers, UCI.
" 'still a masterpiece' ": Ibid.
" 'no masterpiece' ": Ibid.
" 'often amusing' ": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 10, 1945, K Millar Papers, UCI.
" 'far and away' ": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 21, 1945, UCI. Millar had not read Oliver Onions before, but: "I remember my mother used to talk about him…"
"'had a riproarious time'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 4, 1945, UCI; KM to MM, June 5, 1945, UCI.
"'a stinker'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 5, 1945, UCI.
"'the first really good movie'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 24, 1945, UCI.
"'so bad'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 12, 1945, UCI.
"'really first class'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 4, 1945, UCI.
"'playing around with ideas'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 14, 1945, UCI.
"'the only place I imagine'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 12, 1945, UCI.
"'psychological love-story'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 17, 1945, UCI.
"'No doubt it doesn't mean much'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 22, 1945, UCI.
"'the successor to Tunnel'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 23, 1945, UCI.
"'I couldn't go to sleep'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 24, 1945, UCI.
"'somewhat outlandish'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 28, 1945, UCI.
"'treasured bits'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, March 30, 1945, UCI.
"'In the light of what you've done'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 8, 1945, UCI.
"'[I]f Chandler ever brings out another'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 25, 1945, UCI.
"'a stinker'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 2, 1945, UCI.
"'a bum B picture'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 4, 1945, UCI.
"'I lasted about 20 minutes'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 23, 1945, UCI.
"'a prime stinker'": Ibid.
"'surely the world's most passive actress'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar June 5, 1945, UCI.
"'started well'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 8, 1945, UCI.
"'ghastly'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, May 29, 1945, UCI.
"'at which I lasted… just five minutes'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 4, 1945, UCI.
Millar flattered himself and underestimated the movie-makers: the killer in this picture doesn't appear until much later.
"'plays a fairly hot clarinet'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 7, 1945, UCI.
" ' "Don't Cry Baby" ' ": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 4, 1945, UCI.
"a song he urged amateur-pianist Maggie to put music to": Ibid.
"'I'd not be averse'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, May 18, 1945, UCI.
"'big slick material'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 4, 1945, UCI.
"'The word is inarticulate'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, May 11, 1945, UCI.
"'I think I'm writing freer'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, April 8, 1945, UCI.
"'not my soul-mate'": Margaret to Kenneth Millar, May 27, 1945, The Margaret Millar Papers, Special Collections and Archives, UC Irvine Libraries.
"'I never dreamed'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, May 14, 1945, K. Millar Papers, UCI.
"'Your friend (and her detective!)'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 5, 1945, UCI.
"'My shipmates'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 22, 1945, UCI.
"'Hemingway got only 12 grand'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 24, 1945, UCI.
"'Okinawa'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 22, 1945, UCI.
"No city had ever looked better": Millar interview with Arthur Kaye, K. Millar Papers, UCI.
"'Pretty good picture'": Margaret to Kenneth Millar, July 28, 1945, M. Millar Papers, UCI.
"'We… found'": Millar preface to "Find the Woman" in Maiden Murders: Mystery Writers of America (Harper, 1952).
"'the unholy grandeur'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, June 12–13, 1945, M. Millar Papers, UCI.
"'the favorite author'": Millar to Fred Dannay, November 25, 1946, Frederic Dannay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
"'about the best detective story'": Kenneth to Margaret Millar, December 17, 1945, K. Millar Papers, UCI.
"'Did you get the impression'": Ibid.
"'writing laboriously'": Millar to H. C. Branson, October 7, 1945, UCI.