The wheels of the cataclysm were set in motion innocuously enough by press agent Jerry Augburn, whose desk jammed beside mine in a large, open office packed with approximately 20 hustling press agents and secretaries.
Unusual in that raucous atmosphere, Jerry was a well-mannered WASP from Muncie, Indiana with B.A. in English from Ball State U and Ph.D. from Columbia. Through some trick of fate, instead of becoming a professor, he landed in entertainment publicity. Together we represented the New York Playboy Club, and individually worked for other clients.
One day Jerry complained he wasn’t feeling well. Soon afterwards he was diagnosed with leukaemia, stopped coming to the office, and left word he didn’t want calls. A few months later he died around age 35. Intelligent, capable, good guy, husband and father—suddenly gone. Wow.
I never thought much about death until Jerry’s passing. According to Hinduism which I studied at the time, death is a normal stage through which all sentient beings pass on journeys to next incarnations. Perhaps I’d return as a chimpanzee, fish or possibly a cockroach someone would stomp.
Weeks passed; the office seemed to forget Jerry, like he never existed. Jerry’s desk was taken over by Jay Russell, press agent in his 50s, who spent his days writing column items.
One night approximately three months after Jerry’s demise, Jay and I worked late. I went home around 9pm, leaving him behind. Next morning, I learned that he died of a heart attack that night sitting on his home toilet, writing column items. I’m not making this up. That’s the story I was told. Perhaps he wrote one so funny, his heart burst with glee.
After Jay’s funeral, I reflected upon Death striking twice at the chair beside mine. Was I next on the hit parade? Meanwhile, the office returned to its usual pressure cooker atmosphere. After a few weeks Jay was forgotten like Jerry.
I was 35, looking down the road at 40. If I died at my desk or on the toilet, unquestionably I too would soon be forgotten by co-workers and clients. What was the point of busting my chops if it meant nothing in the end?
I’m not exaggerating about busting my chops. Competition for clients was ferocious. A press agent was only as good as his last media break. If it didn’t break—it never happened. If you didn’t produce steady breaks—you were on the street.
In pursuit of my paycheck, I spent substantial time on the phone asking editors and reporters to run my press releases, interview clients, and cover events. All too often they rejected my pleading, because they only had so much space, and their phones never stopped ringing from press agents’ calls, their mailboxes stuffed daily with press releases.
Gradually it dawned upon me that I was in the wrong job for my personality type. But what on earth was the right job for my personality type?
Since the fifth grade my grandest ambition remained: novelist. In light of Jerry’s and Jay’s passing, I slowly came to the life-altering realization that I didn’t want to kick the bucket without at least attempting to fulfil my highest career aspiration.
I’d already tried writing at home evenings, after working in the office, but my mind was too tired. If I wanted to be a novelist, I needed to approach it like a job, first thing in the morning, four hours on the typewriter, no distractions. That meant I’d need to quit my regular job. My savings would support me for around a year. Surely I’d appear on the bestseller list by them.
But I wasn’t totally delusional. I knew that substantial risk including possible homelessness accompanied the novelist’s life. I had no family to provide financial assistance if I hit the skids.
On the other hand, if I played it safe and remained in PR, suppressing unhappiness, I’d probably evolve into a well-pensioned, gray bearded, ex-PR semi-alcoholic residing comfortably in a West Side co-op, or gated community in Boca Raton, happily married to a former Playboy Bunny.
BUT the day inevitably would arrive when I’d be flat on my back in a hospital bed, tubes up my nose and jabbing into my arms, on the cusp of Death Itself. And knowing how my mind tends to function, I’d reproach myself viciously for not at least attempting to live my dream, since I was going to die regardless. Why not go for the gold ring of the novelist’s life, instead of getting put down daily by journalists?
After much meditation on death, heaven, hell, destiny, mendacity and art, I resigned my press agent career and threw my heart and brain cells completely into writing novels. It was the bravest, most consequential and possibly most foolish decision of my life.
You can call me shallow, immature, irresponsible and/or insane. But I never betrayed my ideal. Against the odds, I went on to write those 83 paperback novels, mostly in the high adventure category, about cops, cowboys, soldiers, spies, cab drivers, race car drivers, ordinary individuals seeking justice in an unjust world, and other lunatics, but never rose above bottom rungs of the literary ladder, and probably was considered a hack. Sometimes even I suspected myself of hackery.
One of my novels, The Bar Studs by Leonard Jordan (Fawcett) sold 95,000 copies, and I was on my way to the big time, or so I’d thought at the time. Publishers Weekly judged it: “Tough as they come, but surprisingly well done.” My next sold around 20,000.
My favorite, The Last Buffoon by Leonard Jordan (Belmont-Tower), was possibly most vulgar and disgusting novel in the history of the world. A photo of me adorned the cover, standing in a trash can in Greenwich Village, true metaphor for my so-called literary career. Amazingly, The Last Buffoon got optioned for the movies, but like most such deals, no movie was made.
Walter Zacharius, President of Kensington Publishing Corporation, took me to dinner at the Palm restaurant near the UN and said he expected my The Sergeant series by Gordon Davis, nine novels (Zebra and Bantam), to make a million dollars. But Lady Luck had other plans.
Then came The Rat Bastards by John Mackie (Jove), 16 novels about a platoon of American soldiers fighting the Japanese Imperial Army in the South Pacific during World War II. This unquestionably was one of the most freaked-out, violent literary projects ever devised by a sick mind. Soldiers constantly were stabbing each other with bayonets, or blowing up each other with hand grenades, or machine-gunning each other to smithereens. Blood, guts, profanity and occasional heads flew through the air. How could such novels, spiced with gallows humor, possibly fail in the gutbucket action-adventure marketplace? They didn’t exactly fail, but didn’t set sales records either.
I felt certain that my Western series The Pecos Kid, six novels by Jack Bodine (Harper), would soar to the top of the Western market, becoming worthy successors to Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey and Max Brand. Pecos contained huge dollops of all possible melodramatic elements such as gunfights, fistfights, knife fights, romance, intrigue, suspense, treachery, deeply researched Apache lore, gags, quips, paradoxes, puns, even a cynical horse named Nestor providing his own unique viewpoint. But the Western market wasn’t very impressed.
My final series, The Apache Wars Saga, six novels by Frank Burleson (Signet), achieved the status of “important historical fiction” in my estimation, comparable to War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy or Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Again the market didn’t agree.
My so-called literary career crashed totally in 1997. My last editor, Todd Keithley at Signet, said: “They don’t want little profits. They want BIG profits.”
I didn’t take it personally. Many action-adventure writers got dumped during the 1990s, due to hot new policies implemented by rapidly conglomerating publishing houses. Advances usually paid to low profit writers like us got redirected to possibly profitable new authors, especially in the bestselling category, women’s romances.
Between 1997 and now, four of my manuscripts failed to find publishers. Obviously, based on cold, cruel reality, my big gamble ultimately flopped. Not everyone’s dream comes true forever, evidently. Just because you place your offerings on the altar of pulp fiction, doesn’t mean every one will be accepted.
But my so-called literary career wasn’t 100% mistaken, I don’t think. At least I needn’t torment myself on my deathbed for not attempting to become a novelist.
Moreover, I must confess that I enjoyed writing those 83 nutty novels. They allowed me to explore my bottomless imagination, always best destination for an introvert, instead of daily brush-offs by journalists, plus insults from temperamental clients.
Sometimes when you lose—you also might win. Perhaps the novelist’s life is its own reward. And punishment.
My so-called literary career isn’t over yet. Every morning I look forward to sitting at my computer. I’m working on a new novel which I consider my best achievement ever, based on the greatest love affair of my life, played for laughs. It probably won’t be published because I’ve relocated to rural Illinois and lost contact with the NYC literary scene. But even that doesn’t stop me.
In the words of Janis Joplin, as written by Kris Kristoffersen: “Freedom’s just another word—for nothin’ left to lose.”
Since the above, I’ve discovered that bloggers have been writing about me. Joe Kenney in his blog GLORIOUS TRASH referred to me as a “trash genius”. People are buying and selling my old books. Can it be—is it possible—is it conceivable that my new e-books suddenly will go viral, and I’ll become a zillionaire, appear on the Jay Leno Show, relocate to Paris, and marry a dancer from the Follies Bergere? Like I said, my so-called literary career isn’t over yet.