Soon after her divorce, Olivia Goldsmith decided that what she really wanted to do was write.

She wrote 100 pages of a novel about three divorced women and sent them to an agent. He told her everything she wanted to hear. "Oh, you're going to make a million dollars," he said. "You're going to be rich." The agent went on and on. His contacts, he said, his good friends in publishing, would love it. But he told Goldsmith she must finish the book first. "I can't. I don't have any money," answered Goldsmith, who had quit her job as a marketing consultant to work on her novel.

But she really wanted to write, so she borrowed money from friends, cashed in her IRAs and went into debt. After two years, she completed the manuscript. Her agent sent it to all his good friends in publishing, and Goldsmith eagerly awaited the good news. They hated it. She received one rejection letter after another.

"They weren't the nice rejection letters telling me to change this or that," says Goldsmith. "They were mean, don't-waste-my-time-again rejection letters." Nearly penniless and depressed, Goldsmith went on a crying jag. One night she was home crying and cursing out her agent when the phone rang.

It was someone from Hollywood. All the major studios --

"They weren't the nice rejection letters telling me to change this or that. They were mean, don't-waste-my-time-again rejection letters." — Olivia Goldsmith on the lean years

Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros. -- were bidding on her book. Goldsmith thought someone was playing a trick on her. The guy from Hollywood assured her it was no joke. "But my book hasn't been published," she told him. He said someone in the copy room at one of the publishing houses liked it and somehow it made its way to Hollywood. Goldsmith was shocked. The Hollywood dealer wanted to talk business. "Which studio do you want to go with? Who most closely shares your vision of the book?" he asked her. Without thinking, Goldsmith answered: "Whose check will clear first?"

Soon all the publishing houses heard about the Hollywood deal, and there was a bidding war to publish Goldsmith's book. Top editors wrote her saying they weren't the ones who rejected her manuscript before. "I wasn't in the office that day," wrote several editors. Goldsmith saved all their letters but refused to let anyone publish the book who had rejected it before. In the end, Simon & Schuster landed the deal. Goldsmith threw a party, and all the top people in publishing were there.

Goldsmith, who has a wicked sense of humor, says she decorated the room with all her rejection letters. "People laughed, but they were stunned and embarrassed," she remembers. "Everyone was looking at the letters."

That book, Goldsmith's first novel, "The First Wives Club," sold more than a million copies. The movie, starring Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton, earned more than $150 million and struck a chord with women. Time magazine put the movie on its cover.

Since then, Goldsmith has published four other novels, including last year's "The Bestseller," a book she describes "as my valentine to the publishing industry."

Some valentine. The book is a juicy behind-the-scenes look at the publishing world. Goldsmith says her story of getting published is mild compared to many she's heard. "The people who work in publishing are crazier than the people who work in Hollywood."

"The Bestseller" revolves around Davis & Dash, a prestigious family publishing firm, and the ups and downs of five authors: a romance novelist who needs a hit; a working-class girl who writes her first novel; a ruthless professor; a talented writer who can't get published; and the publisher who writes bad novels.

"The Bestseller," recently released in paperback, is this month's Sacramento Bee Book Club selection. Goldsmith will speak at The Bee Book Club meeting on Monday, Sept. 8. The next day, she will be the keynote speaker at A Woman's Day Conference, sponsored by The Sacramento Bee.

"This is the only book I had fun writing," says Goldsmith, 43, on the phone from her home in upstate New York. "Because no matter how outrageous a story seemed, I knew it paled in comparison to what really goes on in publishing." She laughs. "I got in trouble with a few people. But most people thought I was writing about someone else."

Goldsmith calls her work social satire. But if you called them that, "no one would read my books," she says. Sometimes, she'll walk into a bookstore and see "First Wives Club" or "Fashionably Late" in the romance section. "That's ridiculous. They're the two most unromantic books I can think of."

Why does she think her books are so popular, particularly with women? "I don't write novels about women named Sapphire who have beautiful manes and turquoise eyes... and if they work it's as an executive in an international cosmetics company," says Goldsmith.

She is not interested in that kind of fantasy. She writes about real women. "I write about women who worry about their careers, their lovers and their thighs. And in no particular order."

Goldsmith covers serious subjects -- divorce, self-esteem, cultural pressures -- but she writes in an easy-to-read, conversational style. One reviewer said of "The Bestseller," "You keep licking your fingers and reaching out for the next page as if it were a potato chip." Her work is also funny. "They wouldn't get read if I didn't coat the pill with humor."

That's how she gets through life too. "Humor. God, I love to laugh ... and my girlfriends. I couldn't get through life without my girlfriends."

Goldsmith talks and writes like a girlfriend; she's someone women feel comfortable approaching. "Oh, women tell me their secrets all the time. You wouldn't believe the things I hear," she says.

Some critics have called her books revenge novels, but Goldsmith doesn't think that's accurate.

"I think they're about justice. These are bad characters who get what they deserve in the end," says Goldsmith. She adds that several characters in her books, including the evil editor in "The Bestseller," are women.

"But somehow all the attention has focused on the men. ... It makes me a little resentful. Arnold Schwarzenegger can make a movie and kill all the bad guys and no one calls it a revenge movie."

Because of her success, Goldsmith often appears on afternoon talks shows and writes newspaper columns discussing marriage and divorce. But she says she will not remarry even though she's been in a relationship eight years.

"Why should I participate in this male-dominated court and legal system?" She says this matter-of-factly, without bitterness.

She has never heard from her ex-husband. She does not know what he thinks of her work. "I don't want to hear from him, either," she says. The couple was married six years, but the divorce took seven years. "Obviously, it was not a friendly divorce," she says.

She has not forgotten the pain of getting her first book published. Last year, when "The Bestseller" was released in hard cover, Goldsmith and the publisher (Harper) held a contest to publish a writer's first novel. They received more than 7,000 entries. The winner was "Flora's Suitcase," the story about a family that moves to South America to stay with relatives. Goldsmith calls the book "wonderful ... literary and moving."

There will be more Goldsmith films. She recently finished a screenplay called "Switcheroo," a story about a man who falls for a younger version of his wife. "I call it the John Derek syndrome. ... He keeps going for the exact model, just a younger version," says Goldsmith.

Her book, "Marrying Mom," the story of how three adult children try to marry off their mother to get her out of their lives, was recently published, and there are already plans to make it into a movie as well.

Seven years ago, she couldn't get published. Now she's published five books and has two more movies in the works. Payback?

"I just wanted to write books about real women's lives," says Goldsmith.

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