"A. R. Morlan - Dear DB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morlan A R)

As I mentally congratulated myself for making a sale to _Skin_ without
an agent (_mine, mine, the money will be all_ miiiine!) I had to do a
double-take when the editor said, "You had me going there, D.B., the part in
the story where the protagonist is still a woman is _fantastic_ I do know my
women, and _I_ almost believed for a minute there that you _are_ a woman!
Believe me, man, that is no mean feat, fooling an old 'letch' like me! By the
way, I've been following your _Bloodbath_ work, and I wish we'd have grabbed
some of your stuff sooner you're right up there, fellah. Not a King or Barker
yet, but someday, right? One more thing, do you still want to run this under
the Denton Blair name or okay, I'll change it right now. Well, nice talking to
you, D.B., and thanks for thinking of us..." and so on, and when he finally
got off the line I threw down the receiver and began to paw through my files
(some system an old cardboard box from Keebler cookies I keep under my bed ...
I don't think Stephen King ever did it _this_ way), looking for all my
correspondence, rejection slips, contracts, and whatnot.
After culling what I wanted, I spread the mass of papers out on the
floor (the dogs were stretched out against the walls, rumbling at me, heads on
paws, eyes half-lidded), and began looking them over carefully, pausing only
to swat away an occasional roach ... looking at the pages _fearfully,_ too....
It was all there, in unwavering black on white. My name, "D.B.
Winston," on my submissions (upper right hand coner, except for the occasional
wise-guy editors who wanted it on the _left_ hand side, like it _mattered_),
no "Devorah," no "Ms.," or "Miss," or any indication of my sex, no inkling
given that "D.B. Winston" was a woman. Oh, _occasionally_ my checks from
_Bloodbath_ including the one which caused me so much grief at the bank came
addressed to "Devorah Winston," since the editor there wormed the name out of
me while I was still living back in Ewerton, but those checks were the
exception, not the rule ... according to my contracts, my few magazine
subscriptions, and my bills, I was "D.B. Winston, Neuter"... except now, even
_that_ was subject to debate....
Likewise, those 'zines which sent me either handwritten or personalized
form rejections were all part of the pattern either "Dear D. B." or "Dear
D.B.W" or "Dear D.B. Winston," or, much worse, "Dear Mr. Winston"... something
which had ohmigod! _amused me before! While the people who knew me, who saw me
daily,_ still thought I was a woman. What did the opinion of someone I'd never
seen matter? _I_ knew that I was a woman, and everyone else _seemed_ to know
it when they saw me ... then the loss of my literary feminity didn't seem very
threatening. In fact, I figured it was _helping_ me! Apparently others thought
the same thing; one of the letters I got from the editor over at _Gore
Magazine_ (who did realize that I was a woman) put it best: "It's fun when I
get the occasional comment about D.B. Winston: that guy's work is really
good.' Tee-hee. Ah, the prejudices of the genre. Did you know that V.C.
Andrews didn't know about her publisher substituting her initials until her
first book came out?"
I only hoped that V.C. Andrews didn't have to go through _this_ happy
horseshit! Maybe that's why she gave interviews, telling people about the
change ... but I think that people at least _guessed_ that she _was_ a she.
But most of my stories take a male point of view (or woodpile creature point
of view, and so on), so the readers and editors had no way of _knowing_ unless
I actually told them that I was a woman. I picked up a rejection slip from