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story, “Small Fish,” was bought by Mel. (Was the title changed? I don’t know of a story by that tide being bought, rejected, or existing at all.) Sept. 14 I mailed Murder by the Book to agent Al Zuckerman. He chose not to take me on as a client, in a letter indicating that he had reached a stage in his career where he no longer handled authors of my kind. (Was that a dig?)
    Sept. - Nov. I didn’t put much in my calendar, but was apparently writing material for Mel and sometimes getting in pages on a novel.
    Nov. 21 Meanwhile, my career in the dumper in the U.S., I received the proofs for the New English Library edition of Beware!
    Nov. 22 Across the “big pond,” the New English Library edition of Night Show made the “best subscribed” list in The Bookseller (the British equivalent of Publishers Weekly).
    Dec. I was apparently dividing my time between an unidentified “kid novel” and something I called, “The Vision.”
     
    1985
     
    Jan. 13 I mailed the manuscript of my new novel, The Cellar II (which would be published as Beast House) to Jay Garon.
    Jan. - June I was apparently working on the first version of Alarums (or Alarms) during this period, but my records are missing.
    April 24 New English Library bought The Cellar II and Allhallow’s Eve.
    April 25 Night Show and Tread Softly were both bought by Tor for their new horror series.
    June 27 Though we were nearly flat broke, I had been owed payments for long periods of time from nearly all of my foreign and domestic publishers. (Except Pitman, which didn’t come through Garon.) Though I had often expressed my concerns to Jay Garon, he continued to suggest that I remain patient. Now, I ran short of patience. I wrote letters to several publishers and Garon’s subagents asking about numerous payments that I should’ve received, but hadn’t.
    June 30 I sent a letter Jay Garon, explaining what I’d done. It resulted in an angry phone call from Garon in which he accused me of “stabbing him in the back” and trying to ruin his reputation by making him look like a crook. During the next month or so, however, he sent me checks from about ten different publishers, totalling about $15,000. He had apparently received most of the payments long ago, and kept them. Records showed that he’d been holding my money for six months, a year, a year and a half and one payment for two and a half years after receiving it from the publisher.
    July A VERY IMPORTANT EVENT!!!! Dean Koontz recommended me to his agent, Bob Tanner of International Scripts in London. Not only did Dean promote me to Bob, but he knew how strapped we were, and he actually mailed the manuscript of Tread Softly to England. Thanks again, Dean. And thanks again to Bob Tanner for taking me on as a client and turning my career around.
    Aug. 4 I wrote a letter to Jay Garon, expressing my wish to no longer be represented by his UK subagent, Abner Stein. Aside from the problems of payments being withheld (which might not have been Abner Stein’s fault), I was being soaked for 30% agent fees between the two of them.
    Aug. 17 I wrote a letter to Jay Garon, firing him. I fired him mostly because of the way he’d kept my payments for such long periods of time. But also because he seemed to consider me a loose cannon for raising a stink about it. (If I’d really been a loose cannon, I would’ve filed criminal charges against him for embezzlement. One of his other clients, John Grisham, did sue Garon’s estate for similar practices.) Dec. 3 At Computer land, I bought my first computer, a Compaq Deskpro. It had no hard drive, and ran off a pair of 5” floppy disks.
     
    1986
     
    Jan. 25 I started a new novel with the working title, Parasite. Later, I changed the title to Snatcher, and it was eventually published as Flesh.
    Jan. 31 Over at the Law Offices of Hughes and Crandall, where I continued my full-time employment, I received a raise to $10 per hour.
    March 3 I wrote a letter to the agent, Sterling