Uncurse this Book

Every writer has a reason (excuse, alibi, rationalization) his Great American Novel hasn’t found a home. Here’s mine: The sucker is cursed. But you can help lift the hex.

True story. My editor at the Dallas Morning News wants me out of her hair, so she hands me this one-by-two display ad from the back of the paper and says, “Give me twelve inches on this advertiser. Maybe she’ll buy a bigger spot next week.” I read the ad. Right. Or maybe next century.

She’s Madam Gorka (not her real name), fortune-teller and reader of palms. Over the phone Madam tells me she’s closed for renovations at the home office palmist shop, but she will make time to see me. Of course, she’ll make time—the story’s a free ad six times the size of the one she buys.

It’s a nice house in a middling neighborhood. “We’ll have to sit on the porch because of the noise,” she says over slamming hammers and shrieking saws. “Construction.” Not to mention howling. From her brat kids, whom she silences with, “Shut up in there or somebody is going to come in and paddle some butts.” Telling fortunes ten seconds into the interview.

She is of the Middle Eastern complexion, but neither a gown nor turban nor even an airy scarf for this Madam. She’s dumped-out in shorts and flip-flops and a red-on-purple man’s rugby shirt, oversized because she’s pregnant. And chain-smoking—I guess the warning on the packaging hasn’t yet crossed over from the other side.

Routine interview. I like the lady. She’s more normal than para-, a good-neighbor type, and somebody who could warn you about Texas tornadoes before the Weather Radar even had a clue besides. I wrap it up with the inevitable. “I should get a reading, don’t you think? For authenticity?” Listen to me with authenticity. She’s not the only one full of it.

Madam shrugs, What the hell. She reads my palm and riffs through the Tarot cards for good measure. Bottom line: “You want to write books. You’re gonna write a best-seller.”

It must have showed on my face: Yeah, so? What journalist doesn’t have wet dreams about writing a best-seller? She slides into Plan B without a blink. “But you want to write, what is it, the kind where it isn’t the true facts, but the made-up kind . . . ?” Hesitation.

I’m thinking Journalism, but I say, “Fiction?”

“Yeah, fiction novels.” Hear that? Fiction novels. Nice touch, huh? “You want to write them but your best-seller is gonna be . . .” hand to her head.

“Nonfiction?”

“Yeah, that.”

Well, crap. In my head I know this whole fortune-telling gig is baloney, but in my heart it’s, Just crap. I wanna write best-selling fiction novels.

In retaliation I resort to the most perverse sin a journalist can commit. I tell the truth. My story has hammers, saws, howls, baby bumps, smokes, brats—the works. Sometimes sources thank you when they like a story. They always bitch when they hate it. Madam Gorka? (“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; above all, don’t fool with the fortune teller.”) Yep, she cursed my Great American Novel.

Oh, I tried to beat the curse, all right. I thought I had outflanked her with my Boy Book at Penguin. Madam countered by not letting it earn out the advances. Even so, I landed a five-book contract; Gorka would not let the titles be found in the bookstores (and you know what “not-found” is). I begged my editor at Bantam to let me show him a mainstream novel; he said, “I really like the helicopters—got any more helicopters you can throw into your fiction novel?”

At the Indianapolis News, I finally found the curse-breaker. I did a piece on a teacher in the maximum security unit at the state reform school, a one-room schoolhouse behind bars with rapists, arsonists, murderers—X-rated deviants in PG bodies. Juice that up and how is Prison of the Soul not a best-seller?

To illustrate how not, I will here compress the timeline. I quit my job to write the novel. During first revisions, I read a front-page New York Times story that shocked the nation. A baby-faced twelve-year-old shot a man in the head at an ATM by day, killing him for a lousy two-hundred bucks. I jumped all over it, breaking every agently protocol. I faxed queries to twenty-one agencies and went for a walk. When I got back, my fax had spewed thirty feet of paper onto the floor. Of the twelve agents who wanted to read the manuscript, five offered to represent it. I researched every applicant and chose the one I wanted. The agency put the manuscript before every big name you can name. One editor asked me to rewrite the novel into third-person, I suppose because he preferred rejecting third-person novels. All the others were kind enough to go thumbs-down on the first-person version.

And now to micro-compress because this tale is years from over: I rewrote, edited, enlarged, revised, re-cut, and re-marketed Prison. Decades later, a second agent represented the novel, yadda, yadda . . . seventy-plus rejections over the years. You gonna tell me Madam Gorka didn’t lay a curse on that novel? I didn’t think so.

The worst of this sad history? In 1984 (yeah, 1984, right?), Madam went Medieval on me, in the cratered face of F. Murray Abraham in the character of Antonio Salieri in the film, Amadeus, in the words: “ . . . why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?” Talking to God. Or maybe me.

I keep telling myself I’m not superstitious. But. Nothing since compares to the alarum in Salieri’s words to a writer. I hear you, Salieri, and Madam Gorka, too. Not only am I lost; I am afraid.

Only one thing to do: Ask for a crowd-source un-cursing for this novel. Buy it, if you can afford the $0.99. If not, review what you can read for free using the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon—at a minimum you can than comment here to tell me the novel isn’t really cursed, it’s just a POS. If you can’t even do that, please at least click the YES at the bottom of the Catherine Gibson review so it will stay on top. What do you think? I got a chance with you? Or I gotta rewrite it for scratch for NaNoWriMo?