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Update

I wonder, sometimes, if Alice, in stepping through the looking glass, didn’t arrive after all in the world of publishing.

As detailed on this Web site for many months now, I have been engaged in researching and crafting a novel set against the events of the terrible Chernobyl reactor fire of 1986. I had traveled to Ukraine to see the reactor as well as the abandoned radioactive lands surrounding it in Ukraine and Belarus. I’d read volumes on nuclear power generation plus atomic physics, and had developed advisors and mentors in the nuclear field to check my facts and teach me the intricacies of the science.

Forget it.

The book is off the table now and likely forever.

My agents – William Morris, Inc – and I, after long consultation, made the decision to continue my writing career at a different publishing house than Bantam Dell, my publisher for the last seven novels. Though several issues were on the table, we chiefly saw creative differences looming ahead. My agent found me a new home with Simon & Schuster, a publisher of long standing and great repute. I am thrilled to be a member of their stable of writers. But they, along with several other houses, did not want a novel on Chernobyl.

Their reason was that they did not believe (and we heard this consistently from every publisher we spoke with) that the American reading public would rush to their local bookstore to buy a novel that tells them how Chernobyl could have been 800 percent worse. I argued, of course, that with the world’s quickening return to nuclear power, it might be topical, even important, to craft a book detailing what happened the last time we relied so heavily on atoms for power generation.

Nope. They stuck to their guns and the novel, despite my thousands of miles and dollars spent researching, hundreds of hours writing, and the first quarter of the novel being completed, has been shelved.

I did so without a moment of regret or remorse.

Why? Because I still get to be a writer of fiction for my livelihood. That’s so important to me that a switch in subjects was dwarfed by my happiness at being given the opportunity by a major, respected publisher to continue doing what I love most.

Here’s the good news. In addition to being very happy with Simon & Schuster and my new editor there, I am equally excited about the new topic for my next book. I’m returning to WWII. This time, I’ll tell a story set against the battle with the Japanese army in the Pacific theater. That’s all I’ll say for now, but I’m on my way to the Orient for three weeks of travel and site research. I’ve already found participants who lived through the actual historical events I will depict, and my reading has left me gaping with fascination for the material. Many of my readers have asked if I might turn my attention to the war with Japan as the basis for a novel, and now I may stay there for a few more books, the tales are so riveting, and many of them essentially untold.

So, the lesson here? I’ll quote an old editing friend, who once told me: We (publishers) can buy any book we want. You can write any book you want. Happy day when they’re the same book.

Enough said.

On other fronts, I continue to proudly serve as Writer-in-Residence at my alma mater, the College of William and Mary. There is some movement that I may return next academic year in a regular professorial role, but that remains to be seen.

The James River Writers, our collection of professional and aspirant writers here in Richmond, Va., continues to grow and inspire me and hundreds of others. I’m also engaged in helping to establish a new urban debate league in conjunction with the city’s Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. The opportunity this will give to inner city youths to exercise their brains and talents is incalculable, and many of us are eager to see it happen.

That’s it for now. It’s winter here, and I have a fire in the fireplace as I write this, a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich in my immediate future – my mother’s comfort food for grey days. I wish for you the same: good work, loyal friends, comfort and peace. In this looming election year, I ask all of you to be active and choose wisely.

Be well, and please feel free to write. Thank you for reading my books, and for checking my Web site. God bless.

David R.

—Posted 1.28.08