Rejections Just Kept Rolling In Until . . . : Author Noreen Ayres’ luck changed radically when she attended a writers conference at Squaw Valley--and she had almost stayed home.

Writer Noreen Ayres hadn’t had much luck finding a literary agent. After all, 36 of them passed on the chance to take on her first novel.

But Ayres’ luck changed dramatically after she began writing a new novel and attended the Squaw Valley Writers Conference in August.

She not only met an agent from the William Morris Agency, but the agent loved the first 30 pages of Ayres’ new novel so much that he agreed to represent her on the spot.

The result: Ayres’ Orange County-set suspense mystery, tentatively titled “A World the Color of Salt,” has just been sold to William Morrow & Co. for a “six-figure advance.” And the novel--about a forensic scientist, an ex-cop, ex-stripper named Smokey Brandon, working in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department crime lab--is only half completed.

“I really feel lucky,” said Ayres, 50, a former technical writer who began writing fiction five years ago. “Actually, I feel lucky just getting the agent and everything after that is anticlimactic.”

Although most writers go to Squaw Valley with hopes of making valuable contacts among the editors and agents who lead workshops during the weeklong conference, Ayres said she went “with very low expectations.”

“In fact, I almost didn’t go,” she said. “It’s hot up there, and I couldn’t afford it. I guess I went thinking the best I could do would be to get some current feedback on my work. But I really walked off with three prizes.”

She said she not only met Michael Carlisle, a vice president of the William Morris Agency (“He doesn’t even take on clients of his own any more”) but also Doug Stumpf, who would become her editor at William Morrow.

“He conducted a workshop where my stuff was critiqued. He told me he was extremely interested and wanted to see the rest of it,” she said. (Stumpf was Long Beach novelist Robert Ferrigno’s editor on “The Horse Latitudes,” also set in Orange County.)

Ayres’ “third prize” was meeting a movie producer who also expressed interest in her novel. But, she said, “we’re not pursuing the movie thing right now.”

For Ayres, it was all too good to be true.

“I first went into this depression, thinking, ‘This can’t be happening.’ You’d think I would be walking on air. But I kept thinking of Robert Duvall’s line in ‘Tender Mercies’: ‘I don’t trust happiness; I never have and I never will.’

“To me the biggest thing was getting an agent. It’s so hard to get an agent.”

Ayres knows that all too well.

Her unpublished first novel, “South of Midnight,” is a mystery set in Pasadena. The 36 agents Ayres sent it to told her they liked the writing but didn’t like the story.

At her lowest point, Ayres said, she sent her 30 sample pages to one agent “I had my heart set on. But before I even got to let him read it, I talked to his answering machine and said, ‘I know this is terrible thing for a writer to do, but I just want to tell you I think what I’ve given you is dreck and you shouldn’t even read it.’ ”

And, she said, “this was after (former Irvine mystery writer-writing instructor) Bob Ray went out of his way to introduce me to this man.”

Ayres remembers “sitting in the dark with tears rolling down my face, thinking what a fool I am. What more self-defeating thing could a writer do?

“I guess the whole thing is indicative of the roller coaster of emotions all artists have. Some artists have this wonderful, pinnacle ego, but I think most of us go through these peaks and valleys of doubt and confidence.”

Ayres, who is a member of Fictionaires, the elite Orange County writers workshop group, gave up trying to sell her Pasadena mystery five months ago. But by then she had already started to work on her Orange County mystery.

“I think you have to move on, you have to start a new thing that you can get excited about,” said Ayres, who is writing six hours a day to meet the novel’s January delivery date to her publisher.

Ayres recalled driving home from her first forensic science class at UC Irvine, which she was taking for background information, when the startling first line of the new novel came to her: “First they shot him in the mouth.”

Recalled Ayres: “When this first line came to me, I knew I was going to sell it.”

Book Signings: KUSC radio host Jim Svejda (“The Record Shelf Guide to the Classical Repertoire”) will sign from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Rizzoli International Bookstore in South Coast Plaza. . . . Ross Thomas (“Twilight at Mac’s Place”) and James Lee Burke (“A Morning for Flamingos”) will sign from noon to 2 p.m. Sunday at Book Carnival, 870 N. Tustin Ave., Orange.

Sci-Fi Women: Science fiction writer Nancy Kress (“An Alien Light”) will discuss “Women in Science Fiction” at 8 tonight at Crystal Cove Auditorium in the UC Irvine Student Center. General Admission: $8. Program information: (714) 856-6379.

Author Reading: T. Coraghessan Boyle will read from his latest novel, “East Is East,” from 7 to 9 tonight at Rizzoli International Bookstore, South Coast Plaza. Boyle will also sign copies of his book.

Writers Conference: The annual Chapman College Writers Conference will meet on the campus from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Among the topics will be structure, character, plot, voice, narrative hook, adaptations, blockbusters, the agent’s role and selling to Hollywood. Cost is $85 and includes lunch and parking.

Among the speakers will be novelists MacDonald Harris (“Hemingway’s Suitcase”), Gordon McAlpine (“Joy in Mudville”) and S.L. Stebel (“Vorovich Affair”); screenwriters Mann Rubin (“Hotel,” “Dynasty”), Roy Langsdon and John Platt (“Monster High”); short story writer Jay Gummerman (“We Find Ourselves in Moontown”), television producer Michael Nankin (“Life Goes On”), romance novelist Miriam Pace (“Delta Desire”), Orange County literary lawyer Louise Healy and Janet Eastman, assistant View editor for The Times Orange County Edition.

Champlin Talk: Charles Champlin, critic at large for the Los Angeles Times, will discuss “Women of Mystery: Writers and Sleuths” at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Fullerton Public Library at 2 p.m. Sunday in the library main auditorium, 353 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton. Free. Seating is limited.

Independent Writers: Laguna Beach author Sherwood Kiraly (“California Rush”) will share his publishing experiences at a meeting of the Orange County chapter of the Independent Writers of Southern California at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Pomona First Federal Savings, 17851 17th St., Tustin. Admission: Free to members; $10 for others.

Factory Readings: Poets Carine Topal and Bill Douglas will read at the Factory Readings meeting at 8 p.m. Monday at Casa Palma Restaurant, 122 E. 17th St., Santa Ana. Free.

Sandburg Poetry: The poetry of Carl Sandburg will be discussed from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Wednesday in the community room at the Newport Beach Public Library, 856 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. The free program is part of “Voice and Visions: Poetry in Public Places.”