MY FIRST NOVEL: DICK LOCHTE

MY FIRST NOVEL: DICK LOCHTE

I’ve written several times about how my debut novel, SLEEPING DOG, wound up in

print. The details have appeared on this blog not very long ago and also can be

found as an afterward in the new Brash Books edition of the novel. But, though

SLEEPING DOG  was my first published book, it was not the first that I wrote. 

That was a novel I pounded out on an electric typewriter at the tail end of the

1960s, while in my post-college youth toiling daily in Chicago as a member of

the promotion department at Playboy magazine.

The novel was then titled THE FROG PRINCE, and it was a satiric comedy novel

very much – honestly, waaay too much – influenced by Joseph Heller’s CATCH-22,

which was then, and is now, my all-time favorite novel. Unlike that book’s

protagonist who was trapped with a lot of oddball characters in a war horribly

short on logic or even common sense, mine was entangled in a

much-too-comfortable job at a men’s magazine where logic and common sense were

not just missing, their absence was waved like a flag. The novel being a work of

fiction, its magazine was not Playboy. Its name was Ogle, and its symbol was not

a rabbit but, as the book’s title may suggest, a slimy tailless amphibian.

Beyond that, THE FROG PRINCE was pathetically close to autobiography, even at

its most bizarre moments.

There was only one person at PLAYBOY who knew about the book – the noted science

fiction writer AJ Budrys, who was then the editor of Playboy Press. During one

of our lunches, he offered to “look over” the pages. He liked them and his

suggestions and encouragement were responsible for my finishing the manuscript.

Before he moved on, AJ recommended me and the novel to a couple of agents. One

was in the late stages of retirement and not taking on new clients, the other

passed away shortly after I’d sent her a copy of the manuscript, no cause and

effect there to my knowledge. At that point I began sending inquiry letters and

sample chapters to publishers, maybe ten, with six replying that they’d be

willing to look at what I’d done. This was during the dark days before

electronic files could be emailed and I spent hours lurking around the office

Xerox machines after hours, making copies of the book’s four-hundred-plus pages.

My effort resulted in several form-letter kiss-offs, a short note from a

Doubleday editor that he’d been amused, but not enough, and a longer note from

an editor at Dutton stating that she felt the ms. had “something” but needed

work and, if I were willing to listen to her editorial advice, she’d try to get

me a contract and an advance.

I immediately wrote back that I’d be happy to follow her advice. Then began

weeks of waiting. Finally, she mailed back her regrets. There would be no

contract. Her boss was “not quite as sanguine about the novel’s potential,” were

her exact words, still branded on my memory after all the years.

So, THE FROG PRINCE was tossed into a trunk where it rested gathering dust until

about nine years ago. By then I’d published four crime novels and a short story

collection, been nominated for every mystery award, won the Nero, and been

translated into more than a dozen languages. I’d just finished co-writing a

series of legal thrillers with attorney Christopher Darden and was about to

embark on a series with THE TODAY SHOW’s Al Roker. I wanted to put out another

solo novel, but wasn’t sure I could get it done before starting in on the

Rokers.

That’s when I thought of THE FROG PRINCE. The main problem was that, by then,  I

was a “mystery writer” and there was no mystery element in the ms.  I thought

that problem could be solved without too much effort. Drop a body here and

there, shift a few things around.

It didn’t turn out that way. It never does.

I kept the novel in the Swinging Sixties, in my opinion, the period when men’s

magazines were at their, ah, peak. But I added a few significant events of the

era that were taking place beyond the magazine, like the Civil Rights Act and

the start of the Vietnam conflict, that I hoped would bring the story a little

closer to the ground than it had been. I kept the characters, and quite a few

scenes and then spent nearly seven months coming up with what I hoped was a

dark, funny fairplay whodunit that for a number of reasons (fear of a lawsuit

being one of them) I placed in 1969 Southern California instead of Playboy’s

home town of Chicago.

Also, since there were countless numbers  of  books called THE FROG PRINCE, most

of them for children (Amazon it, if you don’t believe me), I slapped on a new,

more unique title, CROAKED!

That’s when I showed it to you, Ed, and thanks to your recommendation, my first

novel finally appeared in print, nearly forty years after I’d begun working on it.

it.