The box arrived on a Tuesday, and for a long moment, Duke just stared at it like it was an unexploded mortar shell sitting on his porch.
It was a plain, brown cardboard cube, bound with heavy industrial tape.
Inside, nestled in crisp white tissue paper that crinkled like static electricity, were ten copies of his work.
The cover was exactly what Duke had demanded in those late-night, high-stress calls to New York.
It was a stark, brilliant white, the kind of white that hurts the eyes under a desk lamp.
The title, Jaws, was rendered in massive, jagged, blood-red letters that looked like they'd been hacked out of the page with a serrated blade.
Below it, in the lower third, was a minimalist illustration of a great white surging from the deep blue toward an unsuspecting swimmer.
Duke picked one up.
The weight of it, the smell of fresh ink and industrial glue, was more real than any memory he had of 2025.
The name at the bottom wasn't Connor Hauser. It wasn't "Duke."
It was C.H. Blackwell.
He'd spent weeks agonizing over that name.
He needed a mask. He was nineteen years old with a bum leg and a head full of spoilers for the rest of history.
If the world knew a teenager wrote this, they'd treat it like a novelty, maybe a fluke.
But C.H. Blackwell?
He sounded like a man who had spent forty years drinking and hunting big game.
The name was the ultimate camouflage.
It made the prose feel seasoned, cynical, and authoritative. It suggested a writer with a lifetime of trauma, which, in a way, Duke actually was, specially since if he combined both of his age when he died and his age now it was almost.50 years old.
The silence that followed the release was the most profound thing Duke had ever experienced.
For two weeks, the world seemed to ignore him. Or at least, it felt that way from the confines of his living room.
The advertisements were out, though.
Doubleday were keeping their word, throwing their weight behind the "Blackwell" brand.
Duke would walk down Sunset Boulevard and see a full-page spread in the Los Angeles Times or a poster in a bookstore window.
The marketing was genius it didn't show the shark; it just showed the swimmer and that red font.
Every time he saw it, his heart did a weird little flip. But nobody knew it was him.
He found himself haunting local bookstores like a specter.
He'd lurk in the fiction aisle of Bookstores, pretending to browse the new releases, just watching people.
In 1967, the "literary" world was obsessed with dense, psychological prose and social realism.
He watched as an elderly woman picked up Jaws, glanced at the jagged red letters, shuddered, and put it back like it was a poisonous snake.
Then he saw a teenager, a kid with long hair, a denim jacket, and eyes, picked it up, read the flap, and carried it to the register.
That single sale felt better than Duke's first army paycheck.
The crack in the dam happened on a Friday afternoon.
His agent, Jeffrey a man at CMA who sounded like he lived on a diet of unfiltered Luckies and pure adrenaline called him, his voice vibrating through the receiver.
"Duke! The Times! The New York Times! They love it!"
The review were excellent.
It called the book "a masterpiece of sustained suspense" and "a chillingly plausible nightmare."
But the part that made Duke sit down was when they mentioned Quint's Indianapolis monologue.
They called it "one of the most harrowing passages in modern American literature."
A cold spike of guilt hit Duke's gut, knowing he'd essentially "covered" a song that hadn't been written yet. But he pushed it down.
Can't have a conscience on the pimp game.(anyone knows that reference)
Within days, Life magazine did a feature, wanting a photo of C.H. Blackwell.
He allowed them to take a photo of him from the back, a silhouette leaning on his cane, looking out over the Pacific at sunset.
The book hit the New York Times bestseller list at number seven.
The next week, it was number three.
The week after that, it was number one.
The money started hitting the bank account. It was staggering sums.
It was "buy a house in cash and never look at a price tag again" money.
Combined with his Coca-Cola stock which was quietly climbing, Duke was suddenly, terrifyingly wealthy.
He moved out of the Echo Park apartment.
He rented a small, clean, mid-century modern house in the Hollywood Hills.
It had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the sprawl of LA.
The first thing he set up in that sparse living room was his old, rickety table and the Royal typewriter.
The success was a rush, but he knew the "C.H. Blackwell" mystique would only last if he stayed ahead of the curve.
The world thought he was a one-hit wonder who got lucky with a fish story. They didn't know he had a library of future hits locked in his brain.
He loaded a fresh piece of paper. He closed his eyes and reached back into his memories of his favorite story from his previous life.
He didn't want dragons or space ships yet. He wanted something intimate. Something that felt like the heat of a July afternoon in a place where no one can hear you scream.
He began to type the title, Cujo.
Writing Cujo was a different kind of beast for Duke.
If Jaws was about the fear of the vast, unknowable deep, Cujo was about the terror of the familiar.
He gave the dog, the St. Bernard, a perspective that was heartbreaking. He didn't make him a monster; he made him a victim of a cruel, random world.
He wrote about the sickness in his brain, the way the light began to hurt his eyes, and how his love for his humans was slowly dissolved by the rabies until only the hunger and the agonizing pain remained.
This was the "High-Concept" play.
In the late 60s, a story about a woman and a child trapped in a car by a dog would be seen as "pulp," but Duke knew that in the decades to come, it would be the blueprint for the modern thriller.
He was training the audience to look for the simple, devastating premise that could be explained in a single sentence.
While he worked, the phone a sleek, new touch-tone model became his nemesis. It was always Jeffrey.
"Duke! Universal is going crazy! They've doubled their option offer for Jaws!"
"The head of production at Fox wants to know if you're a real person or a collective of writers from the East Coast!"
Duke's answer never changed: "The rights aren't for sale."
"You're killing me!" Jeffrey would scream, his voice cracking. "We're talking six figures! You can't just sit on a gold mine!"
"I'm not sitting on it, Jeffrey. Are there any jobs for a screenwriter?."
Duke started receiving invitations to parties he had no business being at. He decided to attend one, a poolside cocktail party at a producer's gargantuan estate in Bel Air.
He wore a simple, well-tailored blazer, leaning on his cane.
He was standing by the bar, sipping a Dr. Pepper, when a man with a shock of white hair and the energy of a controlled explosion approached him.
The man had a look of practiced appraisal.
"Connor Hauser," the man said, his hand laden with a heavy gold ring. "I'm Alan Ladd, Jr. I've heard whispers that you're the man behind the Blackwell curtain."
Duke shook his hand. It was firm, dry, and professional.
He didnt mind that his real identity would come out, it would be impossible to stop it from spreading since the moment he got an agent from a big Hollywood agency.
Instead he remembered this was a big shot. The future president of Fox.
The man who would eventually greenlight a weird space opera called Star Wars while everyone else laughed. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Ladd."
"Quite a stir you've caused," Ladd said, leaning against the mahogany bar. "I read Jaws. It's remarkable. It's a movie that sells itself in a single sentence. So, have you considered selling the option? I'm starting my own production company, and I'm looking for a flagship first movie to produce."
"I'm not selling the rights, Mr. Ladd," Duke said, meeting his gaze.
Ladd's smile didn't fade; it just got sharper, more curious. "What are you holding out for? Everyone in this town has a number. What's yours?"
"I'm not holding out for a number. I'm holding out for a partnership. When Jaws gets made, it's being made by my company. Ithaca Productions. I don't just want a check; I want a seat at the table. I want to choose the director. I want to approve the cast."
Ladd studied him for a long beat. "Ambitious. Most kids your age are just looking for a fast car and a girl who likes the credits. What are you working on now? Another fish story?"
"Something more grounded," Duke said. "A story about a dog. And a mother. And a car that won't start in the middle of a heatwave."
Ladd's brow furrowed. "A dog movie? Sounds... small."
"It's not a dog movie," Duke corrected. "It's a monster movie where the monster is the family pet. High concept, Mr. Ladd."
Ladd nodded slowly. "You've got a head for business, Hauser. Keep my card. When you're ready to start working with people, give me a call."
As Ladd moved away, a younger man took his place. He was sharp-eyed, and intense, he introduced himself as Gary Kurtz.
"I heard you talking to Ladd about story structure," Kurtz said. "I'm a producer. Well, I'm working for Roger Corman right now, but I'm looking for the next thing."
Duke looked at Kurtz.
His future memories started firing off signals. Gary Kurtz. The man who would help George Lucas make Star Wars and American Graffiti.
"You work for Corman?" Duke asked. "I've seen his stuff. Exploitation films. They make money because they're fast and they give the audience what they want. It's a good place."
Kurtz smiled, though it was a little weary. "Yeah, it's a school, but I want to graduate. I have this friend, he's a filmmaker. He loves pulps, Flash Gordon serials, the Kurosawa stuff. He's a fan of your book, too."
"Your friend has good taste," Duke said, trying to keep his voice casual. "What's his name?"
"George. George Lucas. He's a student at USC right now. We're trying to figure out how to make a big movie on a budget."
Duke took Kurtz's card.
The networking at least was working.
He was positioning himself to be the guy who gives Lucas his break, rather than the other way around.
"Tell George to keep an eye out for my next book," Duke said. "And tell him I'd be interested in seeing what he can do with a camera."
Ithaca Productions
The next day, Duke went to his lawyer's office to finalize the paperwork for his company.
He chose the name Ithaca Productions.
In the Odyssey, Ithaca was the home Odysseus spent ten years trying to get back to. It was the end of a long, painful journey through monsters and sirens and gods.
Its first asset was a stack of paper, the completed manuscript for Cujo.
Its second asset was the iron-clad, 100% film rights to Jaws.
Its third asset was a bank account that was growing faster than he could spend it.
Duke sat in the lawyer's office, a high-rise that looked out over the sprawling, sun-drenched chaos of Los Angeles and signed the documents that brought Ithaca to life.
He was now a producer.
He looked out at the city. He was finally home.
Duke picked up his cane, stood up, and walked out into the sun.
He had a meeting with Gary Kurtz next week. And he had a feeling he and George were going to have a lot to talk about.
---
I have change the story a lot