Novelist sighting

Last night I went to a reception, hosted by WIRED Managing Editor Martha Baer, for author Frederic Tuten. Tuten was Martha's old prof and mentor in New York, and she invited a passel of writers and journalists over to her Mission District digs to meet him. Tuten's new novel The Green Hour, garnered a review by John Updike in the Nov. 11, 2002 New Yorker. I read the book in preparation for meeting him. His writing is casually elegant, beautifully paced, and he's not afraid to be romantic. (The NYT Book Review even said the characters belonged in a romance novel, which I think is way overdoing it.) Tuten himself was warm, generous, and cheerfully energized by the crowd of youthful admirers. Martha said she told him all about the "Joey Bishop novel" I'm working on, which was a nice introduction to give me.

Looking at her collection of Tuten's novels, I noticed with amusement that his first book, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March, was "A Richard Kasak Book." As Kasak was my first publisher, I went to Tuten to compare notes. He told an amusing anecdote about a disagreement he'd later had with Kasak -- a figure in New York publishing for many years -- who bragged about low-balling young naive authors who were so eager to get their first book published that they'd accept pitifully small advances. "They'd even pay me!" Kasak reportedly said. This was especially humorous in light of the experience of my friend Marilyn, who has had dealings with Kasak on and off for several years; he published her first book too. Recently he's started a new venture of bringing out "Erotic Romance" books, reportedly offering ridiculously low pay.