Rob Roberge writes:
I was just talking about the story behind More Than They Could Chew’s publication in hopes of cheering up a writer friend of mine, since it was such an odd and long journey. A few years ago, I’d finished the book and my agent sent it out. The responses were good (though some hated it…especially, and I’m quoting a couple of editors here, the “weird sex” and “relentlessly dark” vision…I don’t agree with either of these, though it’s slightly frightening when someone says you’re weird and relentlessly dark when you thought you were romantic and funny, but that’s another story…), a few rejections that were nice.
Then one day my agent said, “it looks like we may have a bidding war.” For about a week, people were calling him, trying to get copies of the ms. Everything looked good…pirated copies were making their way to the west coast, and all of the sudden I was getting rejections from people we’d never even sent the book to. CAA wrote that I was talented and the book was good, if weird and relentlessly dark and, “the mind that thought up that enema scene, we don’t want to meet.”
So, at least I had that going for me.
And then, nothing. The book died. 20+ rejections. This was my 2nd novel my fine agent couldn’t sell, and I was beginning to think my stuff would never sell. Maybe I was too weird. Too relentlessly dark, after all. A lot of years work not adding up to much. Gun in your mouth math, as the saying goes. I knew it was a good book, as good as I could do at that time, anyway, and I figured it was back to work on a new one that probably wouldn’t sell. It was a depressing time.
I finished that book, and then got a call from my agent that an editor at Dark Alley (who turned out to be Mike Scholl) had been having lunch with a guy named Drew Reed who’d read one of the copies sent to the west coast (and whom I’ve never met, but he helped me and my career a lot over this lunch—so, thank you Drew Reed), who said that he’d read a book a while back that might be good for Dark Alley. He figured it had probably sold, but, maybe not, and that Dark Alley should try to get a look at it.
It had, of course, not sold. It was available…astoundingly so. Mike read it, liked it, had some ideas for changes that made it a better book, and they ended up taking it. A happy ending of sorts, not in the massage pallor way, but happy enough. You never know who's reading you in the middle of all the rejection. And what good news it might bring down the road.
Rob Roberge is the author of More Than They Could Chew and a teacher at the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program. He also wrote, directed and edited the short movie Honest Pete. Along with writing, he collects and repairs both quack medical devices and old crappy guitars.
