Journalism's Fast Lane   

Writing a book is an experience. Writing an instant book is insanity — especially when you've got less than a week to do it.

That's the challenge I faced with "Heaven's Gate: Cult Suicide in San Diego," the first tome on the mass suicide of 39 cult members who poisoned and suffocated themselves in order to rendezvous with a UFO.

There's nothing like a dynamite story, and as a veteran reporter for the New York Post, I jumped when my editors dumped this one in my lap. It had everything a reporter dreams of: computer nerds, flying saucers, suicides, decomposing bodies — even castration!

When I was suddenly interrupted from writing my page one story and hauled into the boss' office to receive this assignment, my nerves twitched. When he shut the door, I figured the jig was up. I had visions of pink slips and the unemployment line.

Instead came the offer: "HarperCollins wants to do a quickie book on the cult. Are you interested?" Metro Editor Stu Marques asked. I instantly said yes, then instantly learned why I should have thought about it longer.

"There's one catch," Marques said. "It's a very tight deadline. You'll have six days."

Six days! What about sleep, what about food, what about life?

I'll do it, I roared, and we shook hands. Within five minutes three editors had approached me to say I was headed for a whopping embarrassment.

But I didn't care. My cowriter, Post scribe Cathy Burke, and I were soon meeting with the suits from HarperCollins to bang out a deal. It was simple: At first we were hired guns to be paid a flat fee, but the deal changed. Now, I'm looking forward to royalties and movie rights.

My head was spinning. My first book, "Palm Beach Babylon," involved an agent, a bidding war, rewrites and a nine-month deadline. This project was seat-of-the-pants lunacy! Kamikaze authors at your service!

At 6 a.m. the next day we arrived to write and began churning out the bizarre story of the Heaven's Gate weirdos. We hit the phones, interviewing cops, witnesses, shrinks and cult experts. We spoke with our correspondents at the scene. We watched a wall of TVs near us. We read dozens of newspapers flown in from all over the country. We pored over the Associated Press and Reuters wires. We did all of these things simultaneously.

We were split-screen specialists, swapping information, drinking Perrier, eating fat-free pretzels and keeping our fingers crossed. We quit at midnight, delirious and exhausted.

We went home, woke up five hours later, returned to the newsroom and did it all over again. As details of the story changed and expanded, we massaged our words and spun a colorful narrative of the bizarre event. The details were gruesome, but we didn't even have time to be disgusted. Speedy, slam-bang prose was all that mattered.

We ran roughshod for five days. I didn't shave, I hardly slept, and, to my family and friends, I didn't exist. This went on until we had whipped out 10 chapters, about 333 pages. When we handed in the final chapter, we realized it was Tuesday — one full day ahead of our six-day deadline! Our representative at HarperCollins informed us that we had set a record for the fastest instant book written for a major publishing house. Our work was done. All we had to do was wait four days, and we could see our efforts on the stands.

"You're the Mario Andretti of journalism," one colleague told me, and I guess I don't mind that title. It isn't quite the same as "Pulitzer Prize winner," but I guess it means I'm living my journalism life in the fast lane, and that ain't bad.