Writer Basks in Glow of First Novel’s Success

Former Orange County newspaper writer Robert Ferrigno, whose incomplete first novel earned him a heady $150,000 advance when it sold to William Morrow & Co./Avon last November, says he was “thrilled” when a book-sized, bound copy of his uncorrected manuscript arrived at his Long Beach home recently.

“I never realized how good a plain wrapper could look,” he said with a laugh.

Ferrigno, who quit his feature-writing job at the Orange County Register last summer to finish “The Horse Latitudes,” did not complete the last chapter of his novel until mid-June--a good five months later than he expected.

“I never thought the last 50 pages would take so long,” said Ferrigno, 41, who lives in Belmont Shore in Long Beach with his wife, Jody, and their 3-year-old old son, Jake.

“The Horse Latitudes” has a March 19 publication date.

Shortly thereafter, the novel--a crime story wrapped around a love story set in Newport Beach and Belmont Shore--will be released in audiocassette which, Ferrigno says, is rare for a first novel.

The audiocassette sale for an undisclosed sum is in addition to his $150,000 advance and the more than $150,000 he earned for foreign-rights sales to Britain, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands. An agent at Creative Artists Associates in Hollywood also is working on a movie sale, and just this week Ferrigno learned from his literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra,that the Book of the Month Club has purchased “The Horse Latitudes” as a featured alternate. Ferrigno said Book of the Month Club prefers not to reveal sales figures, but he did say that “she (Dijkstra) was happy and I was happy.”

The bound, uncorrected manuscript arrived the same week Ferrigno began working on the first chapter of his second novel, which he figures will take a year to write. Although he has no contract for his next novel, he’s not concerned: “My editor (at William Morrow) has already made it clear they’ll buy it from me.”

The as-yet-untitled new novel will be set in Southern California, but Ferrigno is not sure if the action once again will take place in Orange County. He’s also considering Santa Barbara. And while it is too early to provide specifics, Ferrigno did say that, like his first novel, the second will deal with “crime and failed ambition--that kind of stuff. At this point, I’m just playing with the characters.”

Ferrigno’s literary windfall has allowed him to buy a house in a lake-front community near Seattle, where he was the editor of a music magazine in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Otherwise, it’s life as usual in the Ferrigno home.

Jody Ferrigno is a speech therapist with the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach and, come fall, Ferrigno will once again teach a journalism class at Cal State Fullerton. He said they’ll continue living in their two-bedroom apartment two blocks from the beach and won’t move to Seattle for a couple of years--until after the publication of his second novel.

“I love Southern California, and I draw a lot of inspiration from the way of life here. If the movie deal goes, maybe we’ll just use (the house in Seattle) as a summer home,” he said.

More than the monetary rewards the sale of his first novel has provided, Ferrigno said he is pleased with the sense of validation the sale has given his writing.

One of the first things he did after signing his book contract was to write a note to best-selling novelist Elmore Leonard. Ferrigno had interviewed Leonard when he was at the Register, slipping the author a copy of a profile he had done on an ex-CIA agent “as something to read on the plane.”

“I warned him, ‘If you like this, you’ll be hearing from me.’ I said I had been ‘working at’ working on a novel.”

Leonard wrote Ferrigno a letter saying he thought the newspaper story was wonderful and offered him encouragement in his fiction writing.

“He really demystified the process of becoming a novelist for me,” Ferrigno said. “His attitude was that you do it every day for X number of hours and at the end of the year you’ve got a book. It got me feeling that writing a novel was not a superhuman task; it was a human task.”

In his note to Leonard after he sold his novel, Ferrigno let the author know how much he had appreciated his earlier encouragement.

“I got a really wonderful letter back from him, saying it had taken him seven books before he could quit his day job and congratulating me on doing it with one book. There is a satisfaction knowing that he is certainly a superstar, and I’m just a new guy on the block. It’s like somehow we’re in the same league, and that gives you real satisfaction.”

Having spent seven years working on newspapers, Ferrigno said he enjoyed his working relationship with Douglas Stumpf, his editor at William Morrow. Stumpf also edited Laguna Beach novelist Michael Chabon’s first novel, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.”

“Obviously, this was my first time working with a book editor,” Ferrigno said. “One time, when we were talking about the editing process, I said, ‘How does it work?’ He said, ‘I’ll send back your manuscript with my edits on it. You, of course, should feel free to disregard any of my edits. You have the last word. It’s your book.’ ”

As a newspaper writer, Ferrigno said with a laugh, “we never get the last word.”

Ferrigno said Stumpf was “a dream to work with.”

“He was as obsessed with the book as I was. One time, we spent an hour on the phone. He called back a couple of hours later. He had been thinking about it on the subway home.”

Since word of his book sale became known late last fall, Ferrigno said he has been surprised at the number of reporters who have told him they have incomplete novel manuscripts tucked away in their desk drawers.

“I always tell them that’s fine,” he said. “That’s where mine was.”

“Sometimes,” he added, “there are happy endings.”

BOOK SIGNING: Melodie Johnson Howe will sign her new mystery, “Mother Shadow,” from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Book Carnival, 870 N. Tustin Ave., Orange.

PHOTO EXHIBIT: Rizzoli International Bookstore in South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is exhibiting the work of Irvine photographer Robert Tracy through Aug. 30. Tracy’s salon prints have been shown in group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally.

Send information about book-related events to: Books & Authors, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Deadline is two weeks before publication.