
FROM THE MANOR TORN
STEPHEN MERTZ
STEPHEN MERTZ
My friend Stephen Mertz is a prolific wordslinger who always delivers
thrills and solid entertainment in every novel he writes. Like me, his early
short stories were published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine—so we are brothers
under the pen...Here in Steve's own words is the low down and dirty story of
his first novel and the evil empire known as Manor Books...
******
Manor Books was a low-end, New York, publishing house in the 1970s, operated by pack of thieving scuzzballs who published my first novel, Some Die Hard, many years ago. Happily, Some Die Hard is available again available in a dandy e-book edition from Wolfpack Publishing. Here, though, is the story of how Manor Books tried to screw me and how I screwed them right back, via long distance no less, without spending a penny.
I wrote Some Die Hard
in 1975 while I was living in Denver. Private eye Rock Dugan's first and only
case. I dedicated the book to my mentor and brother writer, the late Don
Pendleton, who was generous and helpful in his critique of the novel in
manuscript form.
Writing the book was fun. Finding a home for it with a
publisher took another four years. During those four years, I sold a handful of stories to Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine while a New
York agent circulated Some Die Hard
for publication consideration. It received a polite round of encouraging words,
but no acceptance.
After eventually quitting the agent and leaving Denver for
the rural mountain life, I spotted a market report in Writers Digest. A mass market publisher in New York was looking for
previously unpublished novelists who lived outside the New York area. The
suggestion was the publisher—Manor Books by name—was reaching beyond the
literary and pulp cliques of the Northeast, hunting for new talent in the
heartland. Hey, that was me!
At the time, I owned a small second hand bookshop in
Durango, Colorado—wall to wall unfinished wooden shelves packed with
paperbacks. Actually had an entire room devoted to Harlequin romances. Until
about five years earlier, Durango was strictly a cowboy and mining town. Then
the hippies discovered it. The tourists came next and, by the time I arrived in
the 1970s, Durango’s residents grew to include people drawn from everywhere.
Writers. Artists. Musicians. Movie people (parts of Butch Cassidy & The
Sundance Kid, among other films, were shot in the area). Everyone I hung out
with was from somewhere else. We preferred the back roads and the pines and
peace and quiet to the city life most of us had left behind. We were young,
broke and happy. A bohemian, hedonistic, fun lifestyle. Durango was that kind
of place.
So off went Some Die
Hard. (The novel’s original title was The
Flying Corpse, however it had been suggested a less, uh, spectacular title
might stand a better chance of acceptance). Not only did I think Some Die Hard was a serviceable title,
but so did writers Marvin H. Albert (under his Nick Quarry pseudonym) and
Carroll John Daly—both of whom had used the same title in their day. I
snail-mailed Some Die Hard over the
transom (unsolicited) to Manor, and it took those slicks all of a New York
minute to jump on a guy living way out in the Rockies, without a telephone.
They offered me $750.
Honestly, I was overjoyed. After four years, I felt finally
vindicated as a writer. This being my first novel, though, and thinking $750
really wasn’t that much money, I trudged through the snow to a neighbor’s house.
I asked to use their phone and called the only three published novelists I
knew: Michael Avallone in New Jersey, Don Pendleton in Indiana, and Bill
Pronzini in California. The unanimous advice from all three pros was to go for
it. Get published. Start building a career—And ask for more money.
So I did, via a collect telephone call. Editor Larry
Patterson was the soul of cordiality, promptly boosting the advance up to a
thousand dollars without batting an eye. He was probably thinking, What
the hell, we’re not going to pay the
chump anyway.
I was aware Manor Books was a bottom line concern, so I decided
to use a pseudonym to avoid getting boxed in as a low-rent writer. Hence, the
original penname Stephen Brett—the
surname being a tribute to Brett Halliday
(aka: Davis Dresser), a favorite writer of the private eye stories I’d been
reading since high school. Manor moved fast. There was money to be made. Within weeks I
had a contract in hand for the astronomical sum of one thousand dollars,
payment due upon publication.
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!
Dang. Where do I sign? My writing journal indicates I had
fifty-four cents to my name the day that contract arrived.
The book was printed and bound (cheaply, with a recycled
cover photo from an earlier Manor title, Tether’s
End by Margery Allingham) and shipped. It was on sale within months, even
in remote little ol’ Durango (the nearest cities being Albuquerque—4 hours away—and
Denver—8 hours away). Since local friends were buying my book, supposedly so
were readers from coast to coast. The book was reviewed in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. The reviewer thought it was okay.
However, I hadn’t gotten paid. Hmm. Okay. I’ll call Larry.
Quoth Larry, “Sorry, Steve. We’re a little backed up, blah, blah, blah. The
check will be in the mail by the end of the week.” Great…Except the check
wasn’t in the mail, that week or any of the following weeks.
The months dragged on. I still didn’t have a phone.
Sometimes I’d pester my neighbor. Other times, if I was in town, I’d used one
of the old-fashioned wooden telephone booths then in the lobby of Durango’s
Strater Hotel. I’d think of Louis L’Amour, a local celeb of sorts since he had
a summer place three miles north of town. It was known L’Amour had written some
of his 1950s pulp westerns while staying at the Strater between jobs working in
the area as a wrangler for what were then called dude ranches. I wondered if L’Amour
ever sat in the same booth in his hungry days, hustling up New York editors for
overdue payment. I’ll bet he had. Now it was my turn. I was young and this was
part of the adventure.
But the bastards still didn’t send me my check.
I was beginning to understand. In looking for new novelists outside the New York area,
what Manor Books was really doing was trolling the boonies for writers who were
good enough to be published, but who wouldn’t have the clout or the resources
to collect the money owed them. Manor would essentially be taking on books for
free and walking away with 100% of the profits—Like I said—thieving scuzzballs.
Among my customers at the book exchange was a nice guy with
whom I’d become friends. His story was he’d been burned out while being a big
city lawyer. At the time, he was on a soul search—holed up in a snowy mountain
town in the middle of nowhere, honing his skills as a mime. He was an avid
reader. And guess what? He still had his license to practice law in the state
of New York.
“How’s about this?” I suggested over beer and pizza down at
Farquart’s. “You get me that grand the sons of bitches owe me and you can waltz
in and out of my shop anytime you want and take home as many books as you want
for as long as the shop exists.” His eyes lit up. Some killer instincts do die hard, even in
one who’d rather be a mime than a lawyer.
He said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Find out if your publisher
has done this to anyone else. Then I’ll fire off a registered letter to them on
my New York stationary. We’ll threaten to sue for the thousand and for damages.
And if they’re doing this to other writers though the mail, we’ll threaten to
charge them under Federal law with conspiracy to defraud using the US Postal
System.”
Well, all right.
First thing I did was go down to the local book and magazine
store (remember those) that was stocked with Manor titles. I wrote down the
names of the authors of those books, and then went about searching for their
addresses. My primary resource was the library reference work, Contemporary
Authors. I made contact with two writers: Ralph Hayes, an active and not bad
pulpist living in Florida (Manor had published his Check Force series) and James Holding, the author of a western.
Around this time, I received a letter from another new
writer, James Reasoner, who’d sold
his first novel to Manor, but was having trouble getting paid and was hearing
bad things about them. What did I know? I’d been reading and enjoying James’
stories in Mike Shayne, which by then
had become a showcase for the emerging talent of my generation.
The following paragraph from my return letter to James
(dated 4/4/80) pretty much captures the situation at that point.
All you have heard
about Manor is only too true. They currently owe me a grand and the matter is
now in the hands of my attorney. They were supposed to pay on publication and
that was eight months ago. The lawyer gave them until April 10. But at least
they sent me copies of my book! A guy named Jim Holding (not MWA’s James
Holding, but his grandson) didn’t even know his book was out until I spotted it
on the stands and wrote him about it. Manor has simply clammed up on him
totally to keep from being hassled about on-publication payment. I also
exchanged letters with Ralph Hayes. His feeling was Larry Patterson is an okay
guy who unfortunately has editorial ambitions outstripping the company’s
ability to pay promptly. Ralph’s advice (and my and Jim Holding’s experience
bears this out) is to badger Patterson regularly (like every week) via collect
phone calls, urging for payment.
The windup: Upon receipt of the mime’s registered letter,
Manor Books promptly mailed me a check for one thousand dollars.
Manor Books closed shop a few years later. Word gets around.
The mime? Every book he took out of the book exchange, he
brought back after he’d read it so I could sell it again. So the whole deal
didn’t really cost me a penny. I knew good people in Durango in those days.
Everyone got what they deserved, and what more can you ask
for? Oh, and Some Die Hard remains—available
as an e-book, which might just net me another thousand dollars…
FOR MORE ON SOME DIE HARD CLICK
HERE
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