Undo by Joe Hutsko (first ebook reader .txt) 📕

My friend Gloria Nagy, a splendid novelist with seven novels under her belt (one of which, “Looking for Leo,” is on its way to becoming a CBS miniseries), put me in touch with her then-agent, Ed Victor, who is based in London, and enjoys a long client list of acclaimed literary and mainstream authors. After Gloria’s introduction, I sent my novel to Ed Victor, and although he’d rejected the novel six years ago, suggesting it needed a lot of work (advise I took to heart), this time he responded positively, saying he had enjoyed it.

Yet, because his client list was so full and active, he was at the time not taking on new fiction writers. He did however direct me to an agent named Juliet Nicolson, with whom he had begun a working alliance, and to whom he would be happy to send my novel for consideration. A spirited British woman, Juliet had lived and worked in publishing in the United States for many years, and had decided to return to London to start her own agency. Several weeks later she faxed me to say that she thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and that Ed Victor lends his full support to her should I decide to have her represent me. I called her back thirty seconds later and shouted “Yes,” and, another long and short of it, despite their combined efforts, their long careers of landing huge book deals, the novel “Double Click” still found no publishing house.

After sending the novel to a long list of hardback publishers, then trying, as before, to secure a paperback original deal, Juliet felt it was time to put the book away and concentrate on my next novel, which I had in fits and starts tried to get off the ground for the last however many years. She stressed that someday we would sell “Double Click,” possibly after my next novel or the one after that, and assured me that this was how first novels sometimes turned out (after all, although John Grisham’s blockbuster “The Firm” made him a household name, his first novel was the small-press-published “A Time to Kill,” which Doubleday/Dell then rereleased to astonishing success). So I put “Double Click” away once more and went back to writing the video game strategy guides I’d found my way into to pay the rent, and that was the end of that…

For about six months, anyway.

Then I was struck by an idea: To rewrite “Double Click” just one more time, but this time around, fix the number one complaint that editors had voiced: That the story was too dated. So instead of playing out the trials and tribulations of my characters on a stage set in the by-now commonplace (and therefore, predictable) personal and mainframe computer market, I decided to shift the backdrop to a more modern setting: advanced handheld computers and pocket communicators, also known as PDAs, or personal digital assistants.

I told my agent none of this, and quietly set to reworking the plot and backdrop to accommodate my change of heart. To make the story feel fresh to me I changed most of the characters names, but other than that each of their stories and struggles remained the same. To ensure that I didn’t date the story before I even finished it, I wove in a number of not quite ready for prime time technologies, including practical speech synthesis and voice recognition. The final rewrite in effect put the novel ever so slightly into the future, and as far as I could tell squashed the criticism that the story was too stale.

Taking my agent by complete surprise, I sent her the new manuscript, which I had retitled “Undo” (a contemporary term, recognizable to readers, that represents the novel’s premise and the underlying theme at play in each of the primary characters’ lives - and, a little closer to home, sums up my own story in trying to turn around the mysterious forces that have stood in the way of getting this novel published). Well, she was shocked, to say the least, and complimented me on my patience and perseverance.

While my agent was busy reading and considering what to do with the new and improved “Undo,” I’d begun, and have since completed, my second novel, “r.g.b.” The book’s first chapter, which I’d written a few years ago, was excerpted in a small literary journal called “Puck,” and represents for me my “other” style of writing, which, for lack of a better word, I can only describe as more…intricate and challenging to read, less mainstream.

Which brings us to the present. Because “r.g.b.” is not what my agent - make that, former agent - considers commercially viable, she has decided to drop me as a client, suggesting with a wish of good luck that I find myself an agent who wants to represent both of my “voices” - the mainstream style of “Undo,” and the less mainstream style of “r.g.b.”

So, here we are. My old friend John Michel has offered to help me find a new literary agent, and I’m about to begin writing a screenplay called “Misguided Angel” that I’ve wanted to write for years. Plus, I’m already thinking about the second screenplay I’ll write after that, and the next mainstream novel, and the next less mainstream novel too. So I’m anything but down for the final count.

Have I learned anything in all these years? Tons. For one thing, my first two agents weren’t so unfit after all - each did the best job she could in trying to sell the novel, and in the end even my third, highly esteemed agent met with the same resistance that the previous two encountered. Second, the publishing business is more a mystery to me than ever. That this book has not found a home has somehow turned in my heart from a troubling fact of life, to something of a testament to optimism, a proud eccentricity, a character-building battle scar of sorts. I suppose that’s just how we fragile beings adapt to unrealized expectations, dashed hopes. Still, having just completed my new novel, I’m all juiced up and feeling groovy, raring to give it another go - after all, it’s all anyone who decides to try to make a living telling stories can do…try, try again.

Will “Undo” ever find its way between the sheets of pulpy paper and glossy covers? Will it ever find its way onto the big screen, or, if I had my choice, the little screen? And, perhaps most important of all, does this novel really matter to anyone besides me? The first two questions I have no way of knowing the outcomes of - both are in Fate’s all-knowing hands and only time will tell.

As for that last question, whether this novel matters to anyone besides me, I can only answer by saying I hope so.

What you’re about to read is a novel I have labored over for a very long time. It gives me great pleasure to hand it over, once and for all, to you, gentle reader, whoever, and wherever you are. I hope you like it.

Joe Hutsko [email protected] January, 1996