If on the rare occasion anyone cares enough to ask, of all the novels I have written, I always answer that Magic Man is my favorite, the love of my ill-starred literary life.

As soon as I say this I am usually rewarded with a blank stare and a nervous half-smile. Magic Man?

The fight to get Magic Man published is a saga of hope and heartbreak. The hope is you have written a great novel, an international bestseller that will place you firmly on the literary map. The heartbreak is the realization you haven’t.

 Here is the story: A mysterious young man named Brae Orrack arrives in Venice, California, in 1928. He claims to be a magic man who can turn stones into bees and is under a curse: he will die unless he finds true love. Brae, in need of money, becomes the chauffeur and bodyguard for a young actor named Gary Cooper. He enters the glamorous and chaotic world of early Hollywood, where he encounters real-life figures like Clara Bow and George Raft, and gets involved with gangsters and bootleggers.

An adventure novel, a fantasy, and a love story that I began writing while living in Los Angeles. Over the four years I worked on the book, it underwent many incarnations and a lot of frustration. What kept me going was the joy not only of taking the story to places I never would have imagined but also in doing the period research at the Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and in the archives of the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

I finally finished a version of the book after my wife Kathy and I moved to Montreal. Trepidatiously,  I turned it over to my longtime agents, Francis Hanna and her husband Bill. They moved heaven and earth attempting to sell it in Canada and the U.S. To their everlasting credit, they never gave up. Bill pulled off some real life magic when he finally sold Magic Man to St. Martin’s Press in New York. A moment of euphoria was followed by the usual intrusion of stomach-churning reality.

The advance St. Martin’s Press offered was a pittance and, although I didn’t realize it at the time, signalled then and there they weren’t going to put much effort into marketing the book. The editor, Pete Wolverton—I was one of two hundred and fifty books Pitbull Pete, as one author nicknamed him, would be handling that year—liked the book but hated the ending. Months of rewrites ensued. The ending changed. The book only got better. Pitbull Pete was eventually, well, at least satisfied. Then silence to the point where I was certain they weren’t going to publish the book. Pitbull Pete was reassuring—it would be published.

Three years after the manuscript landed on Pete Wolverton’s desk, and seven years after I started to write it, Magic Man was finally a reality. Very  quietly. I was told a publicist would get in touch. No publicist ever did.

 The day of its publication, I happened to be in Chicago. I dropped into a big downtown bookstore. They were sure they had a copy in stock. A…copy? They tried their best, they searched high and low over the immense store, but they couldn’t find the book. They were sure they had it. Somewhere. Many apologies. A year or so later, I finally came across a single copy in Toronto’s The World’s Biggest Bookstore. It was the only time I ever saw the book in an actual bookstore. Every time I think about this, I still scratch my head. Why did St. Martin’s Press even bother?

The reviews were mixed. The book trade bible, Kirkus Reviews, gave it a starred review: “Beautiful women and gangsters, movie stars and dictators all rub shoulders in this delicious tongue-in-cheek debut set in 1920s Hollywood…. Base works his own magic as he crisply choreographs the entrances and exits of his large cast. There will be thrills aplenty before we are done, and disillusionment, but never defeat for the resilient Brae. A page-turner, spiffy and irresistible.”

In Canada, the Edmonton Journal liked it: “It takes off with relentless speed, refusing to permit us to catch our breath. Never boring, Magic Man makes for an entertaining and engrossing tale…”

But other reviews were less enthusiastic. The Globe and Mail thought the period detail was okay but otherwise… Entertainment Weekly, which could have made a difference with booksellers, gave it a no-sale B minus. In my dreams that B minus still comes back to haunt me.

Not that any of it made much difference when all was said and quickly done. No matter what happened to it—and nothing much did—I loved Magic Man then and I love it still. For me it said all the things I had always wanted to say about love and movies, the two things I could never have gotten this far in life without.

On Sunday I will be at the Eden Mills Writers Festival in the Ontario town of Eden Mills, courtesy of my good friend Stephen Froom. I will have copies of Magic Man with me. Like Brae Orrack, the hero of the book, I refuse to give up. Hope and heartbreak—the essence of life and book publishing.

If you are in Eden Mills this weekend, please drop by. I’m the guy with the big smile, holding a book, hoping…