Predictably, this vision of a halcyon season, brimming with empty days, was never fulfilled. I had neither privacy nor long peaceful afternoons. That's the lesson in seeing one's plans crash to bits: it reminds us that it's never a good idea to take ourselves too seriously or to count on things we cannot control.

Among the things I couldn't control this summer were, first, the collapse of a book deal which had been in negotiation since late 1996. After writing my crisply cantankerous ode to the dating scene, Where the Boys Are, my editors at Avon were so delighted by how bitchy I could be, they promptly asked me to do another one. This one was going to be THE COSMO BOOK OF SEX. There was only one small hurdle: Cosmo's new editor, Bonnie Fuller, who'd recently replaced Helen Gurley Brown, had to approve it. Unbeknownst to me, Ms. Fuller wasn't in a very approving mood.

Since I was given a firm commitment and promised a contract from the get-go, it was a tad aggravating when, six months later, and with with one hasty phonecall from the snotty and incompetent senior editor at Avon who had strung me along with false promises, the book deal died. Ms. Fuller, I was told, was uncertain about the direction she wanted the Avon/Cosmo book-line to go and was putting it on hold indefinitely. My book proposal was too "old Cosmo." Sic transit gloria. In two minutes, the income I'd been counting on was no longer. And, since the senior editor had basically guaranteed the book deal would go through, I had not attempted to line up any other kind of paying work for 1997. In other words, my dog Bobo's biscuit larder was in serious jeopardy.

Further, this happened just one day before leaving for New York. There I was, packing calmly for the trip, secure in the knowledge that the biggest decisions I'd have to make all summer would be picking a fetish outfit to wear to Leather Pride Night and selecting the perfect cafe to haunt.

And then The Phonecall of Doom. Predictable, n'est-ce pas?

On the other hand, do not think that my summer would have been completely without intellectual challenge. Picking the right cafe is a complicated matter for a writer. It must be convenient to where you live. It must have tables large enough to spread out a notebook, books, a purse, cigarettes, and an ashtray, and still leave room for a coffee cup and a water glass. The light must be good and the chairs must be comfortable enough to sit in for hours at a time. You need a place that is big enough so you have a constantly changing cast of characters to watch as you pretend to read or write. But it must be small enough that the wait staff and management remember you, because the service will then improve on a daily basis until they greet you by name, remember your regular order, and (most important of all) share details about their lives, their boyfriends, their travel plans, where they study, and what they hope to do with their lives.

Collecting stores of useless-in-the-moment but possibly-useful-in-the-future information is part of the writer's job. Just as archaeologists dig up piles of dirt and carry them to the lab to screen carefully for fossils, shards and relics, writers collect life stories only to sift through them at some indeterminate future date for those priceless gems which may illuminate a manuscript.

But to continue, chronologically. My hopes for an uneventful summer now dashed by the necessity of earning money, the first item on the agenda when I arrived in New York was to devise a way to pay my bills this year. My options were either to salvage the original project (a general guide to sex) or come up with a new one, perhaps one nearer and dearer to my heart than instructing women on how to give good blow jobs.

(An art we mastered long ago, and whose techniques we don't think it dignified to reveal. In too much explicit detail. Unless the situation calls for it. Or we're in the right mood.)

Coming up with an idea, actually, wasn't the hard part. The hard part, indeed the unimaginably daunting part, was SELLING an idea in a publishing environment that is, to say the least, wracked with fear, bad profit margins, and general confusion about what people really want to read.

(For more insights into the turmoil in publishing, check out author Vonda McIntyre's observations on the crises in the Science Fiction markets. Those of you who are curious about the impact of the economic crisis in commercial publishing on small presses can also take a gander at A Letter to Sue Neubauer, publisher of ELF which I wrote after one of my trips to New York.)

Nancy, the great freelance editor who worked with me on the first Avon/Cosmo book and was instructed to recruit me for the second, was nearly as upset by her boss's behavior as I was. Partly because we had, by then, become friends, but mainly to exorcise her guilt at the raw deal I got, she took me to lunch at a hot spot in SoHo (where, by the way, I couldn't help noticing that portabello mushrooms seemed to be holding the kitchen hostage. In fact, Portabello Mushroom Madness seemed to have seized all of New York City. No matter where I went, I could not escape that damn fungus).

In any event, Nancy said she thought I should rework my proposal and consider writing a book about D&S; sex. When I pointed out that I already had done just that, she said she meant a very different kind of book: one which had the same upbeat, wise-cracking, friendly style I used in the dating guide and which covered questions that a more mainstream audience would have.

I met with my agent the next day. To my surprise, she had a similar idea: that I write a book which drew on letters I've received from readers of DIFFERENT LOVING and which offered advice on all aspects of kinky sex--from "what is normal? to how to meet someone who shares your interests to what kinds of scenarios you can enact. She too thought a more reader-friendly, personal style was the way to go. So, in the course of a three-hour meeting, we developed the concept.

And thus began the huge push this summer to sell a new book. Although I did settle on the perfect cafe--Vivaldi's on Jones Street--more days than not, I stayed indoors at the house of the friend who was putting me up (or putting up with me, depending on your point of view), glued to the PC, making notes and outlining a new proposal. While I typed, my agent phoned. She called a number of editors who she felt would be interested in the project, and--to my amazement--cajoled five of them into meeting with me in person on my next trip up. (Note: complete details of these meetings will appear in a future installment, titled: "Chesty Vampyra Rides Again.")

One of the odd things, you see, about being known as the author of an SM book is that people form very interesting ideas about you long before they've met you. Often these ideas are so colorful that people are afraid to have truck with you. This can work to one's advantage, of course. It winnows out the wienies right away. But when it comes to publishing, being able to reassure potential editors that you are not actually the spawn of Satan is a plus. I had just, in fact, had an educational contretemps with an editor at a famous business magazine. He called me on the phone and hired me to write a short piece for him on poetry and business. Until he visited this site, that is. I've never been hired and fired so fast in my entire life.

So a face-to-face meeting would allay any fears editors might have about my presentability and (dare I say it) my moral fiber. Because, after all, while I may well be one of the most polymorphously perverse people ever to walk the earth, I am still a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn. Something which is easier to believe in person than in print.

As noted above, I'll be writing a complete description of those meetings sometime soon. For now, in a nutshell: I ultimately met six editors. One changed firms a week after our meeting so that was that. A few weeks after that, two who wanted to bid said they couldn't get their marketing/editorial colleagues to agree. So my book died in meeting as being too controversial, too risky.

Now, if you've gotten to this page from the Different Loving site, you're probably wondering how a book on kinky sex could be too controversial in this day and age--especially since every major magazine seems to be hopping on the kinky sex wagon, and publishing articles about how trendy and mainstream SM has become.

Well, some of it is economics. The publishing industry is in an advanced state of fear and trembling over their lousy profit margins. Books perceived as risky, books in market niches that don't generate huge profits, books that step outside familiar territory are not the kind of books that publishers want right now. They want steady, reliable income from safe, dependable titles.

Many publishers also remain rooted to fixed Puritan Eliterati notions--for example, that, even in 1997, certain subjects aren't quite proper for printed discussion. For example, nice people just don't talk about fetishes and kinky sex...even if they fantasize about them obsessively. Or, as one publisher wrote in a rejection letter on my first novel (and I quote):

Ambitious? Is that really the word he was looking for?

While editors were existentially roiling over the nice/naughty dialectic, I was doing a bit of roiling myself. First, I had never "pitched" before, at least not so directly and aggressively. Where oh where had my literary morals gone? I went to those meetings fiercely determined to sell not only my book but myself. Several friends in the business warned that editors would be looking me over to see if I was the sort of person they could put on television. And I hate television. They would want to feel reassured that I am normal. And, let's face it, I'm not normal. I'm a sadomasochist, for goodness sake.

So chant along with me, this mantra that silently played in my head as I meditated on the cases of gourmet dog chow I could buy for Bobo if I succeeded and the empty bowl which he would disconsolately lick if I did not.