A Writer's Tale Read Free

lived on to write my fiction.
     
    1970
     
    After one year at the University of Arizona, I dropped out of the MFA program and moved to Los Angeles. I enrolled in Loyola University of Los Angeles to pursue a Masters Degree in English literature.
    April 10 I received a contract in the mail. My short story, “Desert Pickup,” had been bought for $75.00 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It would be published in the magazine’s “Department of First Stories.” I went crazy wild with joy.
    September I got a job teaching ninth grade English to girls at Bishop Conaty High School. (A teaching certificate wasn’t required for being a teacher at private schools.) I experienced a real life version of The Blackboard Jungle. I also started working on a Masters Degree in English literature at Loyola University of Los Angeles.
     
    1971
     
    I experienced my first major earthquake, a 6.6 that struck at 6 a.m. on the morning of February 9. Not knowing whether school would be in session at Bishop Conaty, I hopped into the car and drove downtown to Pico and Normandie. Traffic signals were dead. Fire hydrants were shooting water into the air. I used some of this experience, years later, when writing Quake.
    At the end of my first year of teaching at Bishop Conaty, I resigned to publish a pamphlet called Smoker’s Blend, which I thought would be sold by the thousands to pipe smokers and make me rich. It didn’t. I published four monthly issues (July-Sept., 1971) before going out of business.
    The issues contain articles, tips and jokes for pipe smokers mostly written by me.
    December 27 I began working on my novel, Dark Road.
    I worked as a library clerk at Mount St. Mary’s College in Brentwood.
    June 17 I received a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Loyola University of Los Angeles.
    Summer I took classes in Library Science at University of Southern California, working toward a Masters Degree in Library Science in order to become a certificated librarian.
    In October and November, I published Smoker’s Blend II, two follow-up issues of my original periodical.
     
    1973
     
    March 5 I joined Mystery Writers of America. Soon afterward, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Pink Tea writer’s group. I ended up belonging to the group for about a decade.
    September I quit my job at Mount St. Mary’s and took a good job as the library assistant at John Adams Junior High School in Santa Monica.
    While working at John Adams, I attended USC and UCLA in my spare time (night and summer sessions). Over a period of about four years, I took teacher training and worked on a Masters Degree in Librarianship. I came out of it with a lifetime California teaching credential. I am permanently licensed in this state to teach secondary school and junior college English, and to be a secondary school and junior college librarian. Nice to have something to fall back on.
     
    1974
     
    April 25 My second story, “Roadside Pickup,” was bought by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
    August I briefly worked as the editor of The Executioner Mystery Magazine and The 87th Precinct Mystery Magazine. These magazines were published by Leonard Ackerman. They appeared to be sponsored and intended as some sort of conduit for stories written by clients of a certain famous literary agency that I’d better not name in print.
     
    1975
     
    Oct. 3 I sent a manuscript of my novel, Ravished (a revised version of the 1971 novel, Dark Road), to literary agent Richard Curtis. He didn’t think much of it. More than twenty years later, a significantly revised version would be published as the novella, “Fiends.”
    (This goes to show that rejected stuff is not necessarily without merit and value.) Oct. 9 In a letter to Richard Curtis, I told him about my current work in progress, Substitutes, which I had been working on “during the past 18 months.”
    June 24 Having sent Substitutes to Richard Curtis, I received a letter from him. He wrote that he and