When I first joined this group, a couple of years ago, one of
the questions I asked was "What ever happened to Tom
Kakonis?" He had written a handful of very fine hardboiled
novels in the late Eighties/early Nineties, most memorably
the excellent MICHIGAN ROLL and CRISS-CROSS, which I'm
convinced is going to go down as a neglected classic, one of
those collectibles you're going to have spend big bucks for
at trade shows in the future.
Well, Mr. Crider and a couple of others told me that he
published a couple of novels under a pseudonym and then
promptly dropped off the radar screen. Imagine my surprise
the other day when Mr. Kakonis himself emailed me! The
internet -- you've gotta love it. :) Messages have a life of
their own.
Here's an excerpt of his message to me, posted here with his
permission:
"In 1993 I published the third and final novel in the Waverly
series, entitled SHADOW COUNTER (set in Las Vegas). The
publisher was the same as for DOUBLE DOWN, i.e., Dutton, and
S.C. fulfilled my two book contract obligation to them. My
agent next negotiated another two book contract with
Hyperion, but Dutton had a ten percent topping clause they
chose to invoke, so I was stuck with them for those
subsequent two novels. A Dutton editor, who shall remain
nameless, insisted that I publish those novels under a
pseudonym, using the implied threat of no promotion if I
balked at this idea. Consequently, and foolishly, I agreed
and those books came out under the name "Adam Barrow":
FLAWLESS, 1995, and BLIND SPOT, 1997. Meantime, the whole
publishing industry was undergoing a sea change which I, a
Midwestern waif, was utterly unaware of; that is, we mid-list
writers were being dropped like bad habits in favor of the
big and bankable names. As a result, neither of the Barrow
books received any promotion whatsoever and both died quick
and painless (to everyone but me) deaths, though FLAWLESS did
somehow make it to People magazine's
"chiller of the week" status.
Anyway (and to wind down this melancholy tale), after
that debacle all of my proposals and sample chapter ideas
were summarily rejected, as was the fate of a novel written
in silence and desperation and completed in the summer of
1997. By then I guess I felt that the game was no longer
worth the candle, in the words of the old saw. Of course,
when I see a message like yours (forwarded to me by a nephew,
by the way) I'm almost tempted to get back into the fray one
more time, and I do thank you for the kind words on my
earlier novels. I'm particularly pleased that there's at
least one other person out there who enjoyed CRISS CROSS,
which I believe, on reflection, may be the best work I've
done."
So Mr. Kakonis is yet another victim of the midlist crunch.
You know, I still occasionally get messages from people who
are interested in Mr. Kakonis's work
--I really believe he still has an audience. Perhaps
somewhere out there is a publisher who feels the same
way.
If anyone would like to get in touch with Mr. Kakonis,
contact me off-list and I'll provide you with his email
address.
doug
===== Doug Bassett
dj_bassett@yahoo.com
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great
prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Mar 2001 EST