Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Blind Submission"

Debra Ginsberg is the author of the memoirs Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress, Raising Blaze: Bringing Up an Extraordinary Son in an Ordinary World, and About My Sisters.

Blind Submission, her first novel, was published last month.

I asked Debra to put her book to the "page 69 test," and here is what she reported:

Part of the challenge in writing Blind Submission was to highlight the shades of gray between the poles of black and white, good and evil, fiction and reality. My protagonist, Angel Robinson, is the assistant to Lucy Fiamma, one of the country’s most successful literary agents. Lucy hasn’t achieved her success by being nice – or even decent – to her employees and her reputation as a dragon-lady is well deserved. Yet Lucy is far from one-dimensionally wicked. She is also very, very good at what she does. And part of what she does is to create that most elusive and desired of literary qualities: buzz. Sometimes this involves blurring the aforementioned lines between fiction and reality in some very creative ways. Sometimes it involves an innate entrepreneurial spirit and keen business sense. And sometimes it involves all of the above. Lucy’s ability to manufacture desire and to cajole editors into spending large sums of money on her projects is what makes her agency the hottest ticket in town, even while her personality often leaves them cold.

Page 69 describes how Lucy prepares to auction a manuscript by a sexy (she hopes) Italian author whose work has arrived over the transom, been given Angel’s stamp of approval, and is now generating quite a bit of heat among publishers who are always hungry for the next big thing. The following scene illustrates how well Lucy knows her territory and how expertly she plays her game.

From p. 69:

Lucy gave the ten editors less than a week to prepare for the auction (“Have to keep it fresh,” she said, “so that they stay ravenous”), during which time she debated endlessly whether of not to throw a few more into the mix. “I’m just wondering if Susie Parker might not just love this book,” she’d say. And, “You know, we haven’t tried Nadia Fiori. She is Italian.” Ultimately, she hooked three additional editors, with more frantic overnight deliveries, to make a baker’s dozen. I was sure that had she wanted to, Lucy could have involved half the editors in New York, along with many heads of houses. Gordon Hart was among those heads, and he called a few times during the course of that next week, never once actually speaking to Lucy on the phone, but managing to communicate with her through me.

“Are you still working there?” he asked every time I answered his call. “This has got to be a new record for her.” That was another thing about Gordon Hart: He never referred to her as Lucy; it was always she or her.

Many thanks to Debra for the input.

Click here or here to read an excerpt from Blind Submission.

Among the praise for the novel:

“Wicked fun and suspense from a talented new writer with an original, clever voice.”
--Lisa Scottoline

“If you’ve ever considered a career in publishing, read Blind Submission, a ‘boss from hell’ story that’s as funny as it is frightening. It will make you love your job.”
--Harley Jane Kozak, author of Dating Dead Men and Dating Is Murder

“A wonderful read from start to finish. Ginsberg’s writing is clever and seductive as she spins this tale of psychological peril and illumination.”
--T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Fallen

“Ginsberg brings a fresh voice to her offbeat fiction debut, a novel about novels and the novelists who write them. It’s a taut, fun, complex tale that will keep you guessing till the last page.”
--Patricia Gaffney, author of The Saving Graces

To read reviews from the Washington Post, USA Today, the Boston Globe, and other major newspaper and book reviews, click here.

Click here, here, and here to listen to Debra's commentaries on National Public Radio.