Former HarperCollins editor Judith Regan showed her true colors to Rick Douglas, and they weren't pretty. Image from Vanity Fair

"Judith would like to see you in Los Angeles. Can you get down there? She'll meet you for dinner."

I had sent a query letter a few weeks prior. It was a proposal for a book about the historic roots of the white supremacist movement in the Rocky Mountain West.

"She really liked your letter. Says you are a great writer."

Okay. It was Judith-freakin-Regan, the hottest name at the time in New York publishing circles. And she was inviting me to have dinner in L.A. What could I say but yes?

I had to ask for a day off from my job as a TV news anchor at the NBC affiliate in Spokane to make it a long weekend. There were no problems from my boss, who'd never had heard of Regan, but thought it would be another chapter for the book we both joked I might write someday.

I called a friend of mine at the local paper who had had a book published by ReganBooks. His was an investigative account of the now-famous shoot-out between a white supremacist and federal agents at Ruby Ridge, atop a mountain in the Idaho Panhandle. It was short-handed "Ruby Ridge" by news types in eastern Washington. Regan had pushed hard for it, since she felt strongly that it would also make a great TV movie of the week. Her gut instincts, not yet legendary outside Manhattan, later proved her right.

"Should I go?"

"Let's put it this way. You'll have an interesting time."

A cold, cramped luxury hotel

The possibility of a deal was all I could think of as the plane descended over the beaches of Malibu into LAX.

I rented a small car and got myself an economy room at a nearby motel. I wasn't expecting an advance on my first book pitch, so I had to be cautious.

Judith's secretary already had given me the address of her boss's hotel, the kind of upscale place only rock stars and the very rich know about, tucked away in the Wilshire district. I was surprised by how well it blended into an otherwise residential neighborhood that overflowed with bougainvillea and Bentleys.

The concierge rang her room and I got on the phone. Judith was in a meeting and would be down shortly, I was told.

"Just make yourself comfortable in the lobby," a male voice at the other end told me.

For a luxury hotel, the lobby was tiny, cramped and rather cold. I waited for a half hour. Then Judith arrived, in the company of a man she introduced as her attorney. She was smaller than I expected, with long brown hair and dressed in a dark skirt and form-fitting jacket, much as I imagined she might for a business meeting with her then-boss Rupert Murdoch.

The attorney friend was genial. Handshakes all around.

"Well, shall we go?" Judith was out the door.

The attorney turned to me as we both headed for the door and whispered, "It should be an interesting evening, if you play your cards right."

Judith was all business. "So where's your car?"

"Around the corner."

"How big is it?"

"It's a compact."

"Oh. If you don't mind, we'll take my car."

Judith got behind the wheel of her large rental, and we raced off to dinner.

"We're going to the Ivy. I hope you don't mind. Oh, and I hope you don't mind that I'm driving, but I like to be in control when I'm in L.A.” She chuckled.

Figuring we were still a distance away from the restaurant, I tried filling the void by appearing worldly and editor-friendly. I wasn’t in the driver’s seat, but maybe I could drive the conversation a little.

“So what do you look for in a writer?”

“It’s harder than you can imagine. Probably a singular voice. I have published writers who are fast and some who take forever to get me a manuscript. I’ve got a guy right now who might not have his book finished for a couple of years. But I’m always looking for a star.”

Cue 'Interesting Evening'

We pulled up to the Ivy and a crisply dressed valet eased us into the celebrity haven.

"We're inside. I hate it out here on the patio. I hope you don't mind."

I followed Judith into the candlelit dining room and was mesmerized by the number of heads that snapped to attention as we passed.

The sort of Hollywood hang-out where corner tables are coveted, at the Ivy, diners are always craning their necks to see who’s walking in the door. However, if anyone recognized my dinner companion, it was hard to tell. No one got up from a table to greet her, as is usually customary in New York. But you have to figure anyone being seated in a corner at the Ivy has earned the honor, as Judith apparently had. Dining-room geography is power on either coast.

At this point, having ordered drinks and with menus in hand, I figured we would begin talking about my book proposal. That was a serious miscalculation.

With the menus, the all-business Judith disappeared and a different person emerged. All of a sudden, conversation turned to her personal life. I found myself in uncharted territory, as the angry Judith launched into a two-hour dissertation on the agony of a loveless marriage, abusive husbands, and the all-around rottenness of men.

She was as passionate as she was profane, using four-letter words that clouded the air like confetti.

"He’s a f---ing moron!"

"I hate his guts."

"I was miserable from day one."

"He’s a f---ing loser!"

"F--k. F--k. F--k!"

It was the kind of language dockworkers toss around as casually as empty packing crates. It left me awestruck and squirming in my seat. Judith talked like this through the soup, the salad and the main course.

It wasn't until we got to dessert that I was finally able to get a few words in about my book proposal. I was only starting the outline when the attorney friend showed up. Evidently, it was his job to raise the drawbridge and call it a day -- or night -- when Judith decided it was time for her to go.

During the drive back to her hotel, Judith said I should craft my project so it could be turned into some kind of TV drama, a movie of the week. She said she was interested only in subjects that would make good TV.

"I see myself as both a publisher and a producer."

We shook hands outside the hotel and she went in, with the attorney in tow. I climbed into my little rental car and headed for Malibu.

Judith had said I showed promise as a writer and suggested I pitch to a few magazines first, to get my name out there.

“I know the editors at all the top magazines, so send me some ideas.”

A few weeks later, when I tried getting through to her in New York with a proposal for a piece, I dealt with an assistant editor who had no knowledge of me or Judith's and my dinner in L.A.

I was crestfallen and never wrote the articles or the book. A scholarly deconstruction of white supremacy would only suffer as a movie, while a movie that would get Hollywood's attention would have to be based on a book bearing no resemblance to the one I wanted to write.

Like any smart editor, Judith was seeking a project she could sell to the masses. She was FOX, I was NPR. She wanted something gritty and sexy that could be splattered all over prime-time TV. I was more interested in what was motivating seemingly ordinary family men to hole up in the mountains of the Northwest with stockpiles of weapons and nutty dreams of a coming battle with the federal government.

The more I think about it, though, the more I believe that Judith was spot-on. She clearly knew from the start of my pitch that it wasn’t commercial.

Back in L.A. that night, as I drove through the dark streets trying to put distance between myself and what had just happened, I joined so many other would-be writers with dreams of making it big. But that didn't make the hard reality any easier to swallow. You just know in your marrow that somewhere close, someone is about to become a star, and it isn’t going to be you.

Rick Douglas lives in upstate New York and owns a freelance media company called Pen & Inc. He can be reached at rdougla3 AT nycap DOT rr DOT com.