Serling.

Several months after my agent Peter, my stalwart attorney Bob Stein and I were able to convince the powers that be at Dutton that, yes, I could still bring in the book without the cooperation — indeed, as now seemed clear, with the active opposition — of Serling’s obsessive widow-cum-executrix, I was notified that Penguin had closed Dutton as a separate division and that all book contracts (including mine!) were subject to review, and could well be terminated. Yes, that was a lovely moment, wasn’t it?

Fortunately, after a few more long weeks in literary purdah, the new Dutton/NAL ultimately decided that “Serling” was indeed worth going forward. And so I went forward, dodging the various roadblocks that Carol Serling — who feared I would focus on her husband’s well-known philandering, which, of course, I did not — had strewn in my path, from petitioning universities not to let me see their Serling archives (which, it fortunately turned out, he had donated on an unrestricted basis) to demanding Rod’s former friends and close associates not talk to me (occasionally, as in the case of John Frankenheimer, causing them to change their minds after frantic overnight phone calls).

Maybe this will help you understand why, one smoggy day in Los Angeles, after managing to gain access to the last of the five Serling archives at UCLA, surmounting all (and I mean all) the obstacles Mrs. Serling had essayed to block entrée to the prior four, I all but expected to find her standing there, physically blocking my way, probably with some sort of cross.

Or why, later that night, I suddenly started getting short of breath, and my host Mel Green (who, as the son of a doctor, knew exactly what to do) decided that it would be best that we pay a speedy visit to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Hospital.

Cedars-Sinai was the hospital where the great stars of yesterday went with medical problems — and, every so often, where said stars (or even, occasionally, biographers of said stars) did a Slow Fade to Black (to paraphrase the title of one of Serling’s best live television plays). So there I was, after the physician had given me a shot of nitroglycerine to slow down my heart rate, which was somewhere in the Belushi range (although I can promise you that I was on nothing heavier than Dexatrim), lying on a steel slab in the emergency clinic of Cedars Sinai, telling myself over and over, à la Emile Coue, the father of self-conscious autosuggestion: “I am not going to die. I am not going to die. I am not going to give Carol Serling her wish. I am not going to die.”

Well, I didn’t die, and somehow I did make it to the finish line (with the stellar support of my literary SWAT team, including my kamikaze researcher, Jason Scott), and “Serling” finally came out in November of 1992. Phew!

Maybe now you will understand what Peter meant when he said everything that could happen, did happen during the writing of my first book.

As well as why, every so often, Carol Serling — who actually happens to be a very nice person who clearly had the wrong idea concerning the kind of book I wanted to write about her late husband (whom I continue to revere, warts and all) — pops up in my dreams, cross in hand.

Of course, I am leaving out a lot of the other fun stuff that happened leading up to the blowout November 1992 publication party — like being hit on by one of my subject’s former girlfriends at L’Hermitage, the fabulous Beverly Hills hostelry that served as my base for a week during the Hollywood phase of field research. Oh, wasn’t that a weird moment! And wasn’t that a fabulous hotel! Wasn’t that a lovely time, lounging in the rooftop Jacuzzi, looking out over the lights of Los Angeles, before the craziness began? Where else could I have gotten a kiss from Mary Martin, whom I’d loved since watching her soar across the TV screen of my parents’ old black-and-white Crosley, just after she’d emerged from a white convertible with the top down — where else but at L’Hermitage? (And no, the hotel hasn’t paid me to say that.)

There’ll never be another “Serling” — at least, I hope there never will, insofar as it nearly killed me.

In the meantime, I somehow managed to write a book, which, in addition to still being acknowledged as the definitive biography of my collegiate hero, as well as one of the few bona fide books ever written about television, has gone on to become a cult hit of sorts in the cyber zone. If you doubt me, check out all the weird stuff that pops up when you Google “Serling,” like the guy from Massachusetts who lists it on his website as the ninth best book ever written! (Why ninth?!) Or the wonderful page-long review by The Philadelphia Inquirer book critic (and then head of the Book Critics Association of America) Carlin Romano, praising the book to the rafters. Or, just for good measure, the obtuse and petty one by the local Binghamtonian who took Serling to task for not being sufficiently hagiobiographical. (And, oh yes, for getting the name of Serling’s junior high school slightly wrong.)

Unfortunately, as with many other good books, Serling is currently out of print, a situation I intend to rectify shortly.