A Writer's Tale

My Books

HITCHCOCK DIDN’T GET AROUND TO MAKING A FILM BASED ON THE Cellar. In spite of that, I used to suspect that, no matter what else I might write, I would be seen as “the guy who wrote The Cellar!”

Robert Bloch wrote Psycho.

Richard Laymon wrote The Cellar.

There are worse fates. It is exciting to know that The Cellar had a major impact on so many readers and writers. Still, it wasn’t exactly thrilling to think that, no matter how many other books I might write, I would always be best known for the first.

At least I’d be in good company. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Margaret Mitchell and J.D. Salinger, for instance.

At this point, nearly two decades after I wrote The Cellar, I still have people tell me that it’s their favorite book of mine. But it has been followed by nearly thirty other novels.

It is no longer the work most often mentioned by my fans. In fact, nearly every book is mentioned, now and then, as a favorite. At this point, some titles competing with The Cellar for favorite status seem to be The Stake, Funland, and Savage.

In the pages that follow, I will tell you a little about all my books.

THE CELLAR

Having recently written in exhaustive detail about the creation of The Cellar for a limited edition, I won’t rehash the same material here. Instead, perhaps readers of this book would find it interesting to see my first notes for The Cellar. I found them recently. They were typed on my old IBM Executive, single-spaced on six pages of old blue paper. These notes were written for the sole purpose of working out ideas for my new novel, and were never intended for publication.

Except for fixing a few spelling errors and typos, I have changed nothing, omitted nothing. These are my complete notes for the day I started working on The Cellar.

Novel idea May 29, 1977 HOUSE OF THE BEAST

There is an old house either in a small rural town, or maybe in a city like L.A. Better a small town. On a dare, a boy enters it in dead of night. It’s deserted. Nobody had lived there for years. Boy goes in, doesn’t come out. People go looking. Find remains. Kid has been eaten. House searched.

Nobody, nothing alive found. They figure an animal from the hills had been inside house.

What kind of animal? Mountain lion? This happened, perhaps, in distant past.

Maybe story is told by guy who ‘was there originally, one who dared the kid to go inside.

Returns, as adult, to solve the mystery. Finds that the house is still there. Nobody had lived in it since the bit with the kid.

It has been converted into the town historical museum. The Historical society has it open during the day. Nobody there at night. Maybe guard on grounds. Could have scene in which something happens to guard hears something inside, goes to investigate, never seen again.

So whatever is in house, only bothers people at night. (Maybe use Winchester house as loose model for it.) Climax, main character(s) enter at night to find out secret.

Best if there is real person inside. But is the person the beast? Make it real, not a spirit.

What has it been doing during the twenty years since it killed the kid? Maybe it’s something that sleeps in the house, only kills people when they enter at night and wake it up.

Most logical, it’s a real person. Hey! It is an entrepreneur, who wanted house to be legendary, wanted tourists.

Could be a family tradition. It is responsibility of current generation to keep the legend alive by occasionally eating someone in the house at night. Maybe only needs to do one per generation, to keep legend going.

Place is actually called HOUSE OF THE BEAST. Has been an attraction in the town for as long as anyone can remember.

Owners of HOUSE must arrange for someone to enter it at night, once in a while. As kid, main guy was unwitting partner in the plot. He was curious, talked to owner (at ticket window). So owner knew he was thinking about entering. Maybe he enters with another kid. They get separated. He finds body, runs in fright.

Must be very careful not to let this stuff get too much like Salem’s Lot. Which also has guy returning. What was his motive for returning?

Maybe go goes back for different reason. A friend is getting married, maybe, and he’s to be best-man. Maybe it’s his brother. Somebody else shows up for wedding, a friend of the bride. They start seeing each other. For fun on an afternoon, they enter HOUSE OF BEASTS.

People come from all over country to see the famous house, and tour it. Tickets about five bucks apiece. A real goldmine.

Souvenir shop, etc. Maybe even restaurant.

He is reluctant to enter, but goes ahead. This is point at which reader finds out his involvement with house. His name is in there, at an exhibit. “This is spot where body of young ____ was found. He and his friend, (our hero) entered on Halloween night 1961… ”

New owner, about his age, is a friend. Not friend, acquaintance. Always a weird kid. His father still runs the place. Maybe has a large family, and they’re all in it together. When hero starts snooping, they take steps to eliminate him.

Chapter One: Main character enters town, sees House of the Beast.

Has been expanded since he saw it last. Now has restaurant and gift shop. Makes him sick to see people capitalizing on tragedy but also makes him sick because he had special situation with house. Don’t tell yet. Is in town for his brother’s wedding.

Meets girl.

Possible Scenes

Boys enter house, when hero is kid. Make this prologue, maybe.

One kid comes out alive. He turns out to be guy who is returning to town.

Tour of the place. Guy takes his new girl friend, at her insistence, into house. A guided tour led by a charming young gal. Very professional. Like Winchester tour. I’ll need to create an entire history of the house, so we can have a good tour. At one point of tour, guide brings up his name in connection with the boy’s death.

Girl asks him how it all came out. He tells her. Tell story like flashback, not in dialogue.

Maybe have a few chapters, while he’s telling her in detail. This takes away need for prologue. Maybe get it 20 pages or so.

IDEA! Interest in tour maybe dropping off, so owners decide to stage a “night in the house.” This could be first, or maybe it’s an annual event. People come from all over country for the night in the house. Cost is very high, like $1,000 per person. Say, only five allowed. Maybe they have auction! Five or ten available tickets, they auction them off on a certain day each year. Maybe this is the first and only time. Or first annual. Owner gets idea for it after the night watchman is killed.

Prologue Night watchman hears sound from inside the house.

Goes in, for first time at night. Fright! Is killed.

Night Hero and girl friend allowed as part of the tour free because of his intimate knowledge of the place. He decides to go, hoping to learn something about his friend’s death, and maybe expiate his guilt.

Climax of book could take place during the night.

Have auction scene.

Maybe get viewpoints of several characters, all who will be staying the night. They could all be pov characters.

Characters

Hero who was part of house’s history. He’s invited to enter free, as part of the attraction.

He goes out of curiosity, and also hoping to breech secret of the house. Though he doesn’t really hope for much.

Hero’s girlfriend She thinks he should go in house to help rid himself of the guilt. She insists on entering with him.

Possible idea he won’t let her, but she makes special arrangement with owner to go in.

Her appearance at The Night is a surprise to him.

Old Owner Guy who ran the place when hero was young. He still runs it, with help of his family.

Owner’s Son Contemporary of our hero. Always a bit weird. He is main business man of organization. Maybe he is participant in the Night.

Night participants What type of people would pay large sums to spend night in the House of the Beast?

1. Adventurer maybe a hunter, tracker, wants glory of spending night there, and the excitement.

2. Bored rich woman who has seen everything or so she thinks.

3. Rich woman’s friend, younger male perhaps, gigolo type.

4. Writer figures he can get (or she can get) a good story out of the thing. Considers payment an investment. Perhaps has already sold the story book length.

5. Prospective buyer. Is thinking of buying the house, taking over tours, turning it into a bigger enterprise.

Wants to see what he’ll be buying. Could have big plot repercussions.

6. Psychic To give everyone a thrill. Senses presence of evil. No, this too much like other stories.

7. Town cop who knows entire story of house. He and hunter both armed. Cop rather old.

Perhaps he pays because he is suspicious. Wants, like hero, to know secret of the house.

In house that night:

1. Hero

2. his girlfriend

3. young owner

4. town cop

5. adventurer

6. rich lady

7. her lover

8. writer

9. prospective buyer

10. THE BEAST

Each (except hero, owner) paid $10,000 dollars for privilege of spending the night.

THE BEAST wants to kill hero, his girlfriend, cop, adventurer, rich lady, her lover. Six dead. This will give surviving writer plenty to write about, make it Crime of the Century.

Will really boost asking price for sale. Or maybe they have no intention of selling. What they really want is to make the place more famous, bring up flagging tourism, expand operation in much the same way the buyer had in mind. So buyer is supposed to die, too.

That makes seven dead, if all works out.

THE BEAST the owner family. The old guy, his wife, his children, maybe even grandchildren. They have a part of the house sealed off. They are secreted all over the place. Kill people one by one.

That’s it.

I made those notes about nine months after making the trip up the California coast during which Ann and I visited Hearst Castle and the Winchester House. And I made them less than three weeks before starting to write The Cellar. (I was calling it Beast House at the time.) I waited the three weeks because I was employed as the librarian (or media specialist) at John Adams Junior High School in Santa Monica. I put off beginning work on the new novel until after the start of summer vacation.

The notes reveal quite a lot about the way I work. Basically, after coming up with a vague concept for a novel, I sit in front of the typewriter (now computer) and “play” with the idea. I try to flesh out the basic premise. I figure out generally where the story might go, what sort of scenes it might have, what sort of characters I might want to throw in, sometimes even noting what I need to avoid.

Readers of The Cellar will find that the book turned out to be very. different from the way I’d imagined it in my original notes. It is almost unrecognizable.

The main plotline (Donna and Sandy fleeing Roy) just isn’t there at all. Strangely enough, I noticed (in typing up the notes) that what was supposed to be the main plotline the “hero’s” return to Beast House ended up mutating into the Larry Usher situation.

The writer” is one of many characters from my original notes who never showed up at all in The Cellar. The writer, however, finally appeared six years later when I wrote the sequel, Beast House. In Beast House, the main plot involves a writer who comes to Malcasa Point in hopes of writing a book about Beast House.

Neither The Cellar nor Beast House dealt in any way with the idea of an “overnight tour” of the house which was a main focus of my original notes. However, I have finally returned to Malcasa Point for a novel that will be published in 1998. It is the third book of the Beast House series, greater in scope and size than both the previous books combined, and it is called, The Midnight Tour.

As things have turned out, the Midnight Tour doesn’t cost $10,000 or even $1,000 as suggested in my old notes. Instead, it is an affordable $100 per person. As my guide Patty explains, “It’s quite an event. Saturday nights only. A trip through Beast House starting at midnight, with our best guide leading the way. It’s a hundred dollars per person, but the price includes a picnic dinner on the grounds of Beast House with a no host bar for the drinkers among you followed by a special showing of The Horror at the town movie theater, and finally the special, unexpurgated tour in which you learn all the stuff that’s too nasty for our regular tours.”

On June 18, 1977, I started writing The Cellar longhand in a spiral notebook. The initial draft filled 266 pages, and I finished it almost exactly two months later, on August 17.

After listening to a talk by agent Richard Curtis at a Mystery Writers of America meeting, I decided the novel was too short. So I spent two weeks writing seventy new pages about Roy.

The story of his pursuit, written almost as an afterthought, contains some of the most shocking material in the book. When I was done writing Roy’s scenes, I slipped them in among the novel’s previously written chapters.

By September 6, 1977, I had a novel with sufficient length to make it saleable. I then went back to work at the John Adams library. In my spare time, I worked on revisions. I finished them on March 3, 1978, and mailed the manuscript to my agent, Jay Garon.

On January 26, 1979, Warner Books bought Beast House for an advance of $3,500. On October 30, 1979, New English Library bought it for approximately $24,000.

Because of the movie Animal House, Warner Books changed the title of my book to The Cellar.

They also decided to make it their lead title, meaning that they would put a lot of publicity behind it. They did a great job of advertising The Cellar (“The Fear Trip of 1980”) and put a terrific cover on it. When it was published in December, 1980, it appeared in large quantities in just about every paperback outlet in the country.

It sold like hotcakes. I could see it vanishing from the paperback racks and shelves of nearby stores.

It appeared on the B. Dalton bestseller list for four weeks, and sold a total in the Warner edition of at least 250,000 copies.

Eventually, the rights reverted to me and The Cellar was reprinted by Paperjacks in 1987.

In the United Kingdom, New English Library published The Cellar in 1980. W.H. Allen (Star) published it in 1989, and Headline brought it out in 1991. The Headline edition is still available, and is in its eleventh printing at the time of this writing. Through Headline, The Cellar is available in most of the English-speaking world, including such areas as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Bahamas, etc.

Foreign language editions of The Cellar have been published in Italy, Spain (including Mexico and much of Latin America), Turkey, Japan, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania (in Russian) and France.

By the time this book is published, The Cellar will have seen its first hardbound edition.

Richard Chizmar has arranged with me to do a signed, limited edition of the book.

Bentley Little wrote an introduction for it, and I wrote an “afterward” in which I tell quite a few things that aren’t mentioned here.

YOUR SECRET ADMIRER

On February 21, 1979, I sent my young adult suspense novel Your Secret Admirer, to Jay Garon. He found it “to be especially good for a young adult novel.” On May 18, 1979 we received a contract from Scholastic Books. They paid a $3,000 advance for the novel. It was published in 1980, sold 174,700 copies and earned royalties of $8,559.00. Though the first edition sold out, Scholastic never reprinted Your Secret Admirer.

Because my editor at Scholastic was aware of The Cellar, she insisted that I use a pseudonym. I chose Carl Laymon. Carl is my middle name, and was the first name of my mother’s father, Carl Hall.

To me, it seemed that Your Secret Admirer did pretty well for Scholastic Books. It not only made triple my advance, but resulted in piles of fan mail from teenagers who thought it was wonderful. However, I would never be able to sell another book to Scholastic.

Could it be that, pseudonym or not, they didn’t want to be associated with the author of The Cellar? I think so.

Anyway, Your Secret Admirer is a suspense novel about a teen-aged girl who is getting mysterious letters from a secret admirer. She and her friend go through some adventures trying to find out who is writing the letters. Maybe it’s a really cool guy. Maybe a pervert.

Who knows? Some spooky things happen before the novel reaches its tricky conclusion.

The conclusion was so tricky, in fact, that quite a few readers didn’t get it.

THE KEEPERS, DEAD CORSE and SECRET NIGHTS

Warner Books had bought Beast House (The Cellar) on January 26, 1979. On May 7, Jay Garon sent my novel The Keepers to them. On June 21, Warner books gave me a three-book contract that amounted to an advance of $15,000 per book. On July 21, I sent my novel, Dead Corse, to Garon. On September 7, I sent my novel, Secret Nights to Garon.

The Keepers, Dead Corse and Secret Nights might have fulfilled the three-book contract and made me $45,000, but the folks at Warner didn’t like them. Eventually, all three novels would be rejected.

As I recall, The Keepers was a partial about a school teacher with a classroom full of bad kids they had driven his predecesssor to suicide.

Secret Nights was a finished novel. You may read of its fate in the July 30, 1981 entity of my Autobiographical Chronology.

Dead Corse (corse being an archaic term for corpse) was a contemporary tale about a female Egyptian mummy named Amara.

She comes to life and goes on a rampage. I thought the book had some very nifty stuff in it.

My editor wrote that Dead Corse wasn’t “the right book to follow The Cellar.”

Though Dead Corse has never been published, the mummified remains of a beautiful female did turn up in one of my later books. In the later novel, she had a stake in her chest.

Odd how things work out. If Warner Books had accepted and published Dead Corse, I would’ve “used up” the alluring female mummy idea. The Stake, if written at all, would have been a very different book.

I’d rather have The Stake than Dead Corse, so thank God for rejections!

THE WOODS ARE DARK

This is the bomb that blew up my writing career.

When Warner Books gave me the three-book contract, I considered myself to be well on the way to becoming a major player in the field of horror fiction.

But matters quickly went south.

Even before The Cellar was actually published, the folks at Warner had either rejected or remained silent about three manuscripts I’d sent to them. (They had also turned down some of my books submitted to them before they bought The Cellar) So they’d established a long and glorious record of dumping my stuff.

The fourth book sent to them after their acceptance of The Cellar was The Woods Are Dark. I mailed it to Jay Garon on December 4 1979 approximately the same time that The Cellar was finally starting to appear in bookstores.

Hoping for blurbs, I sent my manuscript to a couple of writers. IT. response to it, my friend Dean Koontz wrote, “The Woods Are Dark plunges forward like a Tobe Hooper film based on a scenerio by Charles Manson. Gruesome, frenetic, blood-curdling.” (An odd tic-bit: though I didn’t know it until recently, Dean had written a book. Dark of the Woods, which was published in 1970.)

My old buddy Gary Brandner wrote, ” The Woods Are Dark is a roller-coaster ride through hell. More disgusting than The Cellar: (Gary has always had a fine sense of humor.)

When the good folks at Warner Books read the same novel as Dean and Gary, however, they didn’t think it was very good.

My editor told me what he thought was wrong with it. He also offered a bunch of suggestions on ways to improve it.

Well…

The Woods Are Dark, as originally read and praised by Dean Koontz and Gary Brander, never got published.

It came as quite a surprise and not an altogether pleasant one for Dean when he found out that his blurb had appeared on a version of Woods that he’d never read.

The version that Dean and Gary read is gone.

Gone with the wind of editorial tampering.

I was young and scared and I caved in.

In a letter dated January 25, 1980, I wrote to my editor:

As for The Woods Are Dark, I’m glad you like the concept. I haven’t had enough time, yet, to figure out a new direction for the book, but I’ll go along with revisions based on your suggestions:

a.) Dump the castle-MacQuiddy story line

b.) More on the village people

c.) More on the Krulls

I’ll write the book on a ‘broader canvas.’

Man, did I cave! Pathetic. All I really cared about, at the time, was getting those people at Warner Books to accept the novel. I had almost no self-confidence at all. If they said the book had problems, I figured it must have problems. I was more than willing to do just about anything they asked of me.

After discussions with my editor, I did major revisions that involved the abandonment of entire story-lines.

The Woods Are Dark became a very different book.

I certainly liked the new version, but I still feel a little sorry about some of the nifty stuff that got aborted.

Anyway, the good people at Warner Books eventually accepted my revised version.

Then some sorry illiterate excuse for a line editor really revised it, but nobody bothered to send me a copy of the editorial revisions. All of a sudden, I received the proof sheets. The Woods Are Dark set in print. I was given a week or two to read it and fix what were supposed to be nothing more than the typesetter’s errors.

But I found, to my horror, that someone had rewritten the book.

Apparently, an editor hadn’t appreciated my terse style, so he or she had “fixed” it for me.

Fixed it, all right.

Sentences strung together by this imbecile no longer made sense. Entire paragraphs were removed. Time sequences were distorted. Changes in punctuation created grammatical errors. In several places, the pronoun “she” was replaced by a character’s name the wrong character. The same once-thrown knife got picked up twice. A fight got moved by accident to a different and impossible location. I can’t begin to describe how badly the novel had been decimated.

I was so overwhelmed and frustrated that, at one point, I actually broke down in tears.

But I corrected every single mistake and returned the proofs to Warner Books.

In a letter to my editor, dated November 16, 1980, I wrote, “Obviously, I was shocked by all this. Somebody spent an enormous amount of time on my manuscript, creating the very problems that a line editor is hired to correct. It caused great problems for me, and I’m sure the printer will have to do an enormous amount of extra work. The book, in its final form, will undoubtedly reflect the mess.”

Soon afterward, an executive from Warner’s finance department phoned me. He explained that it would cost Warner Books a fortune to make all the corrections. To save the company money, couldn’t I possibly remove any corrections that weren’t absolutely necessary?

I told him they were all necessary.

Eventually, my prediction that the final product would reflect the mess came true. The Woods Are Dark was published containing nearly forty of the mistakes that I’d corrected on the proofs. As a result, several passages in that edition make almost no sense at all.

The problems were eventually corrected in British editions of The Woods Are Dark.

But the fun wasn’t over yet.

Several months before the publication date, I was sent a sample of the cover. And it was brilliant! If you have a copy of the old 1981 Warner Books edition of The Woods Are Dark.. .you know, the one with the horrible green foil cover… turn it over. On the back is a beautiful, terrified young woman wearing a red parka and a handcuff. Now turn the book upside down and you’ll see how the cover was supposed to look.

To this day, I believe in my heart that The Woods Are Dark would’ve outsold The Cellar if they had used their original cover idea… which ended up on the back of the book, upside down, out of sight and rarely seen.

The revised version of the cover won some sort of prize for its creators.

But it killed the sales of The Woods Are Dark.

Warner Books did an excellent job of getting the book distributed. I saw it on the racks everywhere. Unfortunately, it was staying on the racks. Whereas I’d been able to see copies of The Cellar disappearing as if by magic, I saw The Woods Are Dark sitting on the store racks, untouched, unbought, unread.

Nobody seemed to be buying it.

Well, I may be prejudiced about the situation. But I have always suspected that people didn’t refuse to buy The Woods Are Dark because they thought it was a lousy book. It is, after all, a pretty good trick to read a book (thereby discovering its lousiness) until after you’ve bought it.

They weren’t reading it first, then deciding they didn’t want it.

They weren’t even lifting it off the book racks.

As a result, The Woods Are Dark was a disaster.

It stayed in the stores (selling only about 70,000 copies) and it blasted away my writing career in the United States. My career in the U.S. has never recovered from the damage done by the Warner edition of The Woods Are Dark.

Probably the question I most often hear is, “Why are you so big in England, but not in your own country?”

You’ve just read the answer.

After the publication of The Woods Are Dark in the U.S., it was published in the U.K. by New English Library, later by W.H. Allen, then by Headline. Foreign language editions have been published in Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, and France.

As of August, 1997, the Headline paperback edition is in its eleventh printing.

OUT ARE THE LIGHTS

I started writing Out Are the Lights immediately after mailing the manuscript of The Woods Are Dark to Jay Garon in December of 1979, and finished Lights on July 30, 1980. It was meant to be book number two of my $45,000 three-book contract with Warner Books.

They accepted it in January, 1981. Later, before getting around to publishing Out Are the Lights, they would receive and reject two candidates for book number three of the contract, Allhallow’s Eve (Feb. 1981) and Beware! (June, 1981).

Over in England, where my career hadn’t been blown out of the water by The Woods Are Dark, New English Library published Out Are the Lights in 1982 before the U.S. edition came out.

The N.E.L. edition of Lights has a great cover with gold lettering, a bald executioner, a bloody headsman’s axe, and the severed noggin of a good-looking young woman. My British editor at the time, Nick Webb, called Out Are the Lights “a spectacular piece of horror writing if I may say so.”

Already, England had pulled ahead of the U.S. in publishing my works.

When the American version came out…

Have you ever seen a copy of the 1982 Warner Books edition of Out Are the Lights?

The cover shows three teenagers looking oddly startled. Two of the three appear to be Potsie and Joanie from Happy Days.

What I want to know is, Where the hell is Richie Cunningham?

Where’s the Fonz?

Oh, well, can’t have everything.

On the back of the cover, readers are provided with a rare opportunity to find out every major plot trick in the book. Out Are the Lights is built around a couple of major gimmicks, which are supposed to remain secret until discovered by the reader. Anyone who reads the back cover, however, learns every secret including the final one, which is revealed about six pages from the end of the book.

This was a case of being stabbed in the back cover.

It would be rather as if the producers of The Usual Suspects had revealed the identity of Keyser Soze in the posters and prevues of the film.

How could a publisher be so stupid?

Or did they give away my plot because they were too stupid to know any better? I always thought so. Looking back on it now, however, I have to wonder. Do I detect the stench of malicious intent?

I was so upset by the situation that I taped an index card over the back cover of every copy of the Warner edition of Out Are the Lights that I gave away, so that my family and friends wouldn’t have the story ruined.

Anyway…

For better or worse, hardly anyone had an opportunity to see this remarkable cover. Out Are The Lights was the second book of my three-book contract with Warner. (The Cellar preceded that contract.) Since Lights followed the fiasco of The Woods Are Dark, it barely got published at all.

I do know it was published, however. I once saw a few copies in a drug store.

Actually, records indicate that the Warner edition sold about 28,000 copies. I think that’s very good for an invisible book.

But it was the end of the line for me and Warner Books.

We mutually agreed that my three-book contract would become a two-book contract, and that Out Are the Lights would finish off my relationship with them.

In summary, my encounters with Warner Books resulted in a highly successful edition of The Cellar, a mutilated version of The Woods Are Dark, the walking wounded Out Are the Lights, the carcasses of Take ‘em, The Keepers, Dead Corse, Allhallow’s Eve, Secret Nights, and Beware!, and the destruction of my writing career in the United States of America.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, .the New English Library edition of Out Are the Lights did fine. Foreign language editions have subsequently been published in Spain, France, Russia and Hungary. In 1987, Out Are the Lights was optioned by a film company in Spain. The film, however, was never made.

In 1993, Headline published a hardbound edition of Out Are the Lights. To give the book a little more heft, the novel itself was followed by my stories, “Mess Hall,” “Dinker’s Pond,” “Madman Stan,” “Bad News,” and “The Tub.” Book Club Associates bought 15,000 copies of the hardbound. A paperback version of the same book, including the stories, was published by Headline later in 1993.

NIGHTMARE LAKE

I wrote Nightmare Lake in 1980, finishing it immediately after Out Are the Lights. It wouldn’t be published, however, until 1983.

By the time I wrote Nightmare Lake, I was pretty sure that Scholastic wouldn’t want it.

But I figured someone might. Though the novel was intended for young adults, I wrote it pretty much like any other novel. Obviously, I kept it “clean.”

No sex, no bad language. I tried not to go overboard with the violence, but the story did end up more violent than most novels written for young adults.

It would be my first published vampire novel.

After the “success” of Your Secret Admirer, I thought I might work on parallel careers writing adult horror and young adult thrillers. I wrote it “on spec” without a contract and with no specific publisher in mind. In other words, I just wrote it because I loved the idea.

Nightmare Lake is the father of The Stake.

A couple of teenagers, a brother and sister, are on a family vacation in Wisconsin. Out exploring a lake one day, they visit a small, deserted island with their dog. Fooling around, the brother tosses a stick for the dog to fetch.

It comes back with a stick, all right. But not the same stick the kid had thrown.

This stick is actually a stake plucked by the dog from the ribs of a skeleton.

The skeleton of a vampire?

And so begins a pretty creepy story.

Too creepy for juvenile editors, in fact. My agent, Jay Garon, couldn’t sell it. Then I noticed a mention (I believe in Publishers: Weekly) that Dell was starting the Twilight series scary books for young adults. So I told Garon about it. He submitted my book to them, and they bought it in 1982.

There were problems, though. (Aren’t there always?)

Here are bits from a letter sent to me by the editor:

We must remove or replace any religious references, i.e. the Devil, the monk’s robes and the crosses. Of these, the cross seems to pose the hardest problem.

Manuscript must be shortened to fit specs.

Burt and Sammi come across as the same age. Burt must be made “older.”

The characters are a little flat. Work on atmospheric logistics. Heighten the visual perception of their situations and descriptive reactions; i.e., instead of “I don’t want to think about it,” said Sammi. -try- “I don’t want to think about it,” said Sammi, backing into the corner of the room and sinking into the old battered armchair, -or- “This place gives me the creeps!” she said, as the wet grass lapped against her legs sending chilling drops down into her shoes.

… (and so on)

Don’t let any of that throw you. We like the book very much. We like it so much that we are putting it in the front position in our scheduling.

There were actually two full pages of comments, criticisms and suggestions. Some made sense, but many didn’t. I wrote a three page response, then knuckled down and wrote a major revision of Nightmare Lake.

At some point in all this (possibly when I first wrote the novel, or maybe in response to the criticisms), I wrote an “alternate ending.” In the alternate, the whole story turns out to be nightmare the boy had while taking a nap on the island.

I made it clear that editors could feel free to use the alternate ending as a way to mollify people who might find the book too scary or violent. With the dream ending, we give the illusion that none of the bad stuff actually happened; there’re no such things as vampires; nobody got killed; everything’s fine and dandy, kids it was just a bad old nightmare.

I feel that I redeemed the cop-out factor in my own eyes by throwing a curve (a trite curve, but the best I could do under the circumstances). When the kid wakes up from his nightmare, along comes his dog with a strange stick in its mouth…So is the bad stuff about to start for real?

I am especially fond of Nightmare Lake because it is based so closely on my experiences as a kid when my family went on vacations to Wisconsin. It’s sort of a Nick Adams story as done by Richard Laymon.

Unfortunately, an editor messed with my language. This is my only published book in which significant parts of the writing don’t reflect my own style.

I was paid an advance of $5,500 for Nightmare Lake. The book was published as Twilight #11 in 1983 and sold (so far as the royalty statements indicate) a total of 53,505 copies.

It has never been reprinted anywhere and is very hard for readers to find.

As a result of doing this piece on Nightmare Lake, I’ve taken steps to get the rights reverted to me. Maybe “my version” of the book will be published one of these days.

ALLHALLOWS EVE

Though Allhallow’s Eve was first published in 1985, after both Night Show and Beware!, I actually wrote it before either of those novels. I wrote Allhallow’s Eve in 1980 after finishing Out Are the Lights and Nightmare Lake.

As of 1980, I’d been working for several years as a library clerk, then as the librarian (or media specialist) at John Adams Junior High School in Santa Monica.

And it shows.

I have just reread Allhallow’s Eve, and found myself amazed by the details of school life that fill the book. Back in those days, it was all fresh in my mind I was living it daily. I knew first-hand about hall passes, the dangers of the school restrooms, the petty tyranny of the “popular” kids like Aleshia. I saw the viciousness of the bullies like Nate and the vice principal, Mr. Doons. I knew their victims, who spent their school days in terror of being hurt and/or humiliated. And I knew great, caring teachers like Miss Bennett.

Reading the book after so many years, I was surprised to run into Mr. Carlson, who was obviously based on myself. When I ran the library, it was a sanctuary for kids like Eric who were being chased by kids like Nate. I remember them bursting through the library doors during the lunch period. And I remember throwing the bullies out, sometimes with a bit more roughness than was necessary or legal.

Quite possibly, the best thing about Allhallow’s Eve is its accurate portrayal of secondary school the institution and the variety of kids, teachers and administrators who inhabit it.

Structurally, it seems to be a mystery novel. A crime is committed at the beginning of the book and much of the action involves the police trying to figure out who did the dirty deed. The structure also, however, brands it as a horror novel. Almost from the very start, we are being led toward a climactic Halloween party at an old, creepy, abandoned house.

Someone has been fixing it up. Someone has put bars on the windows on the inside.

Inevitably, all hell is going to break loose when everyone is gathered there for the big party.

Re-reading the book yesterday, I actually got the creeps, myself, when I encountered a scene near the end of the book.

A scene involving monkey suits suspended from the window bars.

My overall reaction was a mixture of delight and regret.

Allhallows Eve has a lot going on in it. And that is an understatement. I found myself fascinated by many of the characters and scenes. And by several twists in the plot. I particularly like the ironies. My favorite irony has to do with who “saves the day” to the extent that the day does get saved.

My main regret is that the story is too fast-paced. Every scene shoots by so fast that, if your mind strays for a moment, you might miss something vital. I was an equal opportunity writer; I wrote every scene as if it were just as important as every other scene.

They all seem to have about the same weight.

Why did I write that way? For one thing, I believed (and perhaps still do) in a “deadpan”

approach. I’m just a writer telling what happened. Let the readers decide where the emphasis should go.

Also, however, I was dead-set against boring my readers. I hated to read books in which the writer lingered on detailed descriptions. I wanted them to get on with it.

So I got on with it.

Excessively.

Part of it was the result of self-doubt. I felt that I would lose the interest of my readers if I devoted a little time to character development or if I used more than about one sentence to describe anything.

Dean Koontz pointed this out to me several times during my early years. He told me that I needed more confidence in myself, that I was a good enough writer that I didn’t need to have constant breakneck action, that I should slow down and linger and broaden the scope of my stories.

He was, of course, right.

In Allhallow’s Eve, I plunged forward like a sprinter. But I should’ve strolled. I should’ve lingered with so many of the characters and scenes. Dean always talks about “ringing all the bells.” In this book, I left far too many of the bells unrung.

If I’d written it ten years later, it would’ve been two or three times as long, and possibly twice as good.

But I didn’t.

Allhallow’s Eve is what it is, for better or for worse.

In an interview, I once stated that I would like to do a major revision of Allhallow’s Eve and develop it into the novel it should be.

But I’ve changed my mind about that.

It almost seems as if novels are living creatures. A major revision of an old novel often kills it. Like the critters in Pet Sematary, the resurrected, changed novel doesn’t come back quite right. It comes back without its soul.

If I should ever have an opportunity to rewrite Allhallow’s Eve, I would make very few changes. I might add an extra page here or there to clarify a couple of matters. I would want to get rid of half a dozen printing errors, if possible. (Sam’s name turns into Sun at one point, and years become gears.)

I would definitely omit about a thousand commas. Apparently, in those days, I was comma crazy.

But I wouldn’t tamper with the big stuff.

Allhallow’s Eve has its faults, but it also has its charms. I’d hate to risk killing those.

Whatever charms it might possess, they weren’t apparent to my editors at Warner Books. I shipped the book off to Jay Garon on January 24, 1981. It was supposed to be the third book of my three-book contract, but my editor at Warner rejected it.

It would be published by New English Library in 1991. A year later, a British small press named Kennel would publish a limited edition hardbound without my knowledge or consent but apparently with the blessings of NEL. An oddity of the Kennel edition is that its dust jacket illustration depicts the “Cadillac Desert.” My book has nothing to do with the Cadillac Desert, but I believe that Kennel was also involved with publishing Joe Lansdale, author of the short story, “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks.” Maybe a dust jacket designed for Joe ended up on my novel.

Allhallow’s Eve would be reissued by NEL with a new cover in 1992, and bought by Headline in 1993.

BEWARE!

I started working on Beware! on March 13, 1981 less than two months after finishing Allhallow’s Eve. I finished the first draft approximately three months later, on June 19.

Warner Books rejected it.

Somewhere along the line, Dean Koontz read a copy of the manuscript. At that time, it contained some sort of involved subplot full of international intrigue, or something. Dean gave me a very good piece of advice. He said it’s not a good idea to overload readers with too much stuff that’s far out. My main character was invisible. That’s enough weirdness for one book.

Lose the oddball subplot. (Dean didn’t actually use those words, but that was the jist of his suggestion.) I not only wrote a major revision based on Dean’s advice, but I’ve been keeping it in mind ever since. And I think the revised version of Beware! was a major improvement over the original.

It was bought by New English Library in 1982 (at the same time as Night Show). Because NEL had a backlog of my books, however, Beware! wouldn’t be published until 1985.

I’ve always been a bit surprised that anyone dared to publish it at all.

At book signings, I usually get into conversations with the people who’ve shown up for autographs. To break the ice, and because it interests me a lot, I usually ask fans what they do for a living. They’re normally glad to tell me. But they’re even more eager to tell me which of my books they like the best.

Every so often, the favorite book is Beware!

I usually laugh and say something like, “Uh-oh. Gotta watch out for you! If Beware! your favorite, you must be a pretty weird guy.”

Nowadays, I usually advise the Beware! enthusiast to run out and find a copy of Endless Night.

I haven’t actually studied my books. But my impression is that Beware! and Endless Night are probably my most vicious, nasty excursions into bad behavior.

While Endless Night is about a gang of horrible thrill-killers, Beware! is about just one fellow. He’s a sadistic homicidal maniac hitman rapist who is also invisible.

Though there have been several “invisible man” books and movies, they generally avoid the sort of activities that my guy, Sammy Hoffman, engages in.

Visits to shower rooms, for instance.

And much, much worse.

Sammy Hoffman has no conscience, figures he is invincible, and goes on his merry way doing whatever pops into his sick little mind.

A very unsavory character.

But loads of fun, if you like that sort of thing.

THE LAWMEN

Almost immediately after mailing off Beware!, I started writing The Lawmen. I’d been all set to embark on The Cellar II (Beast House) at the time the contract for The Lawmen arrived on July 14, 1981. The completed manuscript was due on November 15, 1981.

That gave me only four months. I dropped everything else, wrote the book, and sent it Express Mail on November 16, 1981.

The Lawmen, a western novel to be published under the pseudonym Lee Davis Willoughby, was a big detour for me. It would be my first novel to take place entirely in an earlier historical period. It would be, by far, my biggest novel so far. And it would be my first “ghostwriting” job. That is, I would be paid to write under a pseudonym and tell a story conceived by someone else.

My agent, Jay Garon, had arranged the deal. He told me I could earn $10,000 by writing a book for The Making of America series. The series was being packaged by a friend of his, James Bryans (who had once worked with Jim Thompson, I recently learned) and published by Dell. Garon was asking several of his clients to do books for the series.

At that time, my “real” stuff was getting rejected by Warner Books a little too often and I needed the money. Also, it seemed wise to branch out and try some non-horror material.

Plus, I’d always been a fan of the western genre and was eager for the challenge of making my own contribution to it. So I agreed to write the book.

I was sent a fairly involved plot outline about a real-life Pinkerton man named Charles Siringo who spent many years on the trail of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. My book was supposed to be based on the outline. However, I was encouraged to veer off on my own if I felt the urge.

As a result, I pretty much wrote The Lawmen my way.

I began by doing a lot research. I studied the old west and especially Butch Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall gang. To my chagrin, I discovered that Butch was generally considered to be a very nice, friendly guy.

But I couldn’t let that get in the way of my story.

I turned him into a horrible, murdering sadist.

Though the book is full of real historical characters including most of the well-known members of the Hole in the Wall Gang I threw in a lot of fictional extras. Including a one-eyed psycho named Snake who would’ve been more at home in a horror novel.

I threw in a few plot twists that I think were pretty nifty, too.

I’m especially happy with the book’s ending, which I’ve always thought should include a footnote such as: “With my thanks and apologies to William Goldman.”

The finale of The Lawmen is based on a historical fact.

The fact is this: a couple of outlaws from North America were gunned down in a Shootout with the Bolivian military, but nobody knows for sure who they were. Many people assume they were Butch and Sundance.

But who knows?

While my finale stands on its own, it achieves its real potential by playing off the reader’s familiarity with Goldman’s movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I’ve just finished re-reading The Lawmen.

Though several scenes had remained vivid in my memory over the past fifteen years, I found that I’d forgotten much of the story. I read the book with nearly fresh eyes. And liked what I read.

It’s full of colorful characters, some horrific violence, a bit of humor here and there, romance and love and sex, unexpected plot twists, accurate historical and geographical details, and a birth scene and some infant behavior that had obviously been based on my own experiences.

(My daughter was two years old when I wrote The Lawmen) And then there’s Thirty-Three, the book’s penultimate chapter. Unable to recall exactly how I’d pulled off certain tricks, I entered it with some trepidation.

And grinned as I read it.

Amazed that I’d been able to pull off such a stunt.

The Lawmen laid much of the groundwork for my next western” novel, Savage: From Whitechapel to the Wild West on the Track of Jack the Ripper, which would be published ten years later. Aside from the knowledge I gained by researching and writing The Lawmen, it gave me an additional boost of confidence. The idea of writing Savage didn’t seem quite so overwhelming because I’d already written one western novel, and it had been published.

The Lawmen, a paperback original selling for $3.25, came out in July, 1983. As the cover proclaims, it was the “fortieth book in the bestselling series, The Making of America.”

And the only one ‘written by me. According to the first royalty statement after its publication, it apparently sold about 20,000 copies.

The 1982 paperback, so far, is the only edition of The Lawmen.

NIGHT SHOW

On December 18, 1981, a month after finishing The Lawmen, I started writing a novel called Chill Master. While working on it, I was also busy with revisions of Beware! and struggling with my secret project, Hollywood Goons. Two months into the writing of Chill Master, my three-book contract with Warner Books came to an untimely end, one book short. I finished the book on April 30, 1982. Before sending it to Garon, I changed the title to Night Show.

By then, my career in the U.S. was down the toilet. But things were still popping along in the U.K. In November, 1982, New English Library purchased Beware! and Night Show. They published- Night Show in 1984 a year before they would publish Beware!, which I’d written earlier.

Night Show didn’t get published in the U.S. for two more years. That’s because word had gotten around in the New York publishing circles…

There was at least one editor who intended to buy Night Show until the sales department of her company got in touch with Warner Books. The offer (for a two-book deal) was withdrawn.

Because of the disaster at Warner, most publishers in the U.S. would not touch a Richard Laymon book. The situation caused a four year gap between the publication of Out Are the Lights and my next book to be published here, Night Show.

Thomas Doherty Associates Tor eventually came along and took a chance on me. Tor offered me a contract for Night Show in April, 1985 and published the book a year later.

Night Show is sort of a companion piece to Out Are the Lights. Both were largely inspired by my regular visits to the Culver Theater.

During the heyday of the “slasher movie era,” the Culver showed a new horror movie almost every week. And I went to most of them. Kelly was a baby then, so Ann stayed home and took care of her while I drove off, one night every week, to see whatever scary movie happened to be playing at the Culver.

Though I felt guilty about leaving Ann and Kelly behind, I felt that it was my professional obligation to see the movies.

After all, I considered myself to be a horror writer. I needed to see what was being done in the field. So I went anyway. By myself.

The Culver Theater was an old place across Washington Boulvevard from the Culver City studios of MGM (now Sony). Once a “movie palace,” it had been split up into a crazy patchwork of small theaters with stairways leading in strange directions. The seating for one of the screens actually seemed to be the former balcony.

The place had real atmosphere.

And it had colorful patrons. Some were certainly devoted film and horror fans, like myself. Others seemed a bit shady.

I sat by myself, never spoke to anyone, and usually felt creepy about the whole experience.

Which added to the flavor of the films, no doubt.

After watching movies like Halloween or Prom Night or any of a hundred others, I always had to leave the theater alone and walk through the empty streets to reach my car.

If the movie’d been good enough, the walk back to my car could be harrowing.

I not only had to worry about real thugs, but about the likes of Mrs. Vorhees or Michael Meyers coming after me.

I know, I know. They don’t really exist.

I knew they couldn’t get me, but the power of certain movies set me on edge. I’d hurry down empty sidewalks (and an especially creepy passageway alongside the theater), glancing over my shoulder, goosebumps often skittering up my spine. At the car, I’d always be careful to check the back seat before climbing in. Then I’d lock the doors. And on the short drive home, I always worried that I might arrive home and find that someone had butchered Ann and Kelly in my absence.

A grown man.

Hey, I was in my early thirties at the time.

But frequently spooked.

Though I always felt guilty about going to those movies, my Culver Theater experiences not only kept me current with what was going on in the world of horror cinema, but gave me loads of firsthand material.

Though many of my novels and stories contain references to horror films and movie theaters, such matters are at the veiy heart of Out Are the Lights and Night Show.

“The Haunted Palace” in Out are The Lights was inspired by the Culver Theater.

And so was the movie theater in Night Show.

Night Show is about a creepy fellow named Tony who loves to frighten people with cruel and frightening tricks. He drives a hearse. His ambition in life is to become a special effects makeup artist for slasher movies, and he wants to study under the best in the field, Dani Larson. (She is something of a young, attractive female version of Tom Savini.) Now, Dani doesn’t want an apprentice. But Tony won’t take no for an answer.

It is very much a book for horror movie buffs. I never could have written it if I hadn’t spent those years making my weekly pilgrimages to the old and creepy Culver Theater.

The Culver still stands, and I see it on the other side of Washington Boulevard now when I make my weekly visits with Ann and Kelly to the Culver Mann theaters.

For years now, it has been closed.

Abandoned, it seems spookier than ever before. I wonder if the rows of torn seats are still there, shrouded in dust and darkness. And I wonder who might be sitting in them now.

TREAD SOFTLY

On June 15, 1982, less than a month after finishing Night Show, I started to write my novel, Curse. During the time I spent working on it, I also wrote several short stories, spent time collaborating with Robert Colby on The Dump (never finished) and working on the first draft of my secret project, Hollywood Goons. Because of so many other activities and because Curse was significantly longer than my previous horror novels, I didn’t finish it until January 27, 1983.

On February 1, I changed the title to Tread Softly With Care. It would eventually be published as Tread Softly, and later as Dark Mountain.

The writing of this book marked a new stage in my career.

Largely due to the influences of Dean Koontz, I’d decided to “mainstream” my horror novels. He’d not only advised such a step personally, but he’d given detailed advice on how to go about it in his book, How to Write Best-Selling Fiction. Taking his suggestions to heart, I was determined to enlarge the scope of my material so that my next book would be more than simply a “horror genre” novel.

Before Tread Softly, my horror novels were short and to the point. They never lingered.

They never elaborated. The scenes shot by rapid-fire, with a breathless pace that never paused for a description, rarely for an explanation. The stories raced along non-stop from start to finish.

In Dean’s opinion, I insisted on the slam-bang pace because I lacked confidence in my ability to hold the readers’ interest.

I was afraid I might bore them if I didn’t plunge from one wild, over-the-top scene to the next.

He was right, of course.

On my way toward getting a high school diploma, a B.A. in English and an M.A. in English literature, I’d been forced to read huge amounts of fiction. Much of it was great, exciting stuff. But much of it had bored me.

From a very early age, I was a rebel against boring fiction.

I equated “boring” with lengthy descriptive passages and with scenes in which nothing much seemed to happen. I always wanted the writer to “get on with it.”

Therefore I was determined, in my own fiction, to avoid any writing that didn’t move the story forward at a good, quick clip.

I’m still a great believer in lots of fast action, but my early novels show a commitment to almost nothing else. Dean told me that I wouldn’t lose anything by slowing down a bit. I didn’t need to worry about boring my readers, because even if I slowed wayyyy down, I would still have more happening at a quicker pace than most other writers. And I might pick up new readers by “painting on a broader canvas” that is, by writing bigger books with more scope, more descriptive passages, more elaborate plots, more fully developed characters and themes. And it couldn’t hurt to play down any supernatural aspects of the plot.

With Tread Softly, I put Dean’s advice into action for the first time. If you compare it to any of my previous horror novels, you won’t be able to miss the difference.

And the difference made a difference.

A huge difference.

While Tor eventually bought Tread Softly for the same amount as Night Show ($7,500), it was on the strength of the new book with the “broader canvas” that Dean’s British agent, Bob Tanner, agreed to take me on as a client. Bob immediately sold Tread Softly to W.H. Allen, where it would be published as my very first hardcover.

(It would carry the Richard Kelly pseudonym in order to avoid interference with New English Library, which was continuing to publish my books as paperback originals. They had refused to do Tread Softly as a hardcover, so Bob Tanner had taken it elsewhere.) Gaining not only my first hardcover sale but a great new agent thanks to the new approach, I was won over.

Tread Softly marked a major change in the course of my career. It truly was a “mainstream” novel, not “genre horror.”

From then on, all my novels would be published as hardbounds in the United Kingdom.

The numbers of my readers and fans would increase dramatically. And so would my advances.

Tread Softly is about a group that goes backpacking into a wilderness area of California’s High Sierras. They run into some nasty trouble including an old hag who fancies herself a witch. She puts a curse them.

When they get back to their normal lives in Los Angeles, things begin to go wrong. Badly wrong. Maybe they’re just having a spell of bad luck. Or maybe it’s the curse. If it is the old woman’s curse, what can they do to save themselves?

That’s it, in a nutshell.

Writing Tread Softly, I wanted a plot that would be somewhat ambiguous in its treatment of the supernatural. Is there really a curse, or not?

Also, because it was to be a much longer book than usual, I wanted an “infinitely expandable” plot. (I’m always looking for infinitely expandable plots.) Such a plot is one with a loose structure, one that permits the writer to add episode after episode after episode until he gets to the size or scope he’s looking for. In Tread Softly, for instance, the plot needed to include examples of incidents going terribly wrong due to “the curse.” I needed several such incidents, but there was no limit to how many I could use. This gave me the freedom to make the book pretty much as long as I wished.

Though I made the book long enough to break new ground for myself, I’m fairly sure it doesn’t get boring.

In fact, I know it has made some of its readers a little bit edgy about taking trips into the wilderness. In some small way, it has accomplished for tents what Psycho did for showers.

In writing Tread Softly, I used up vast amounts of my own firsthand experiences. As a youth, I was an active Boy Scout and spent lots of time on camping trips in forested areas of Illinois and Wisconsin. After moving to California in 1963, my brother and I joined an Explorer post and took our first, harrowing backpacking trip into the high Sierras. During the next several years, I did a lot of hiking and camping (illegal, mostly) around Marin County: Mount Tamalpias, the Dipsey Trail, Stinson Beach. And I made numerous excursions into the Sierras. I trekked the back country in and around Yosemite, Mineral King, Lake Tahoe, and places I couldn’t even name. I’ve climbed mountain trails, trudging up endless switchbacks. I’ve roamed and camped in areas so desolate that we saw no other human beings day after day. I’ve slept in forests and pastures, on peaks, by alpine lakes and by roaring streams. And doing so, I got the holy crap scared out of me on several occasions.

Tread Softly makes use of my experiences during those years.

So it is not only a scary novel, but one that is sure to have a special impact on any reader who has spent much time in the wilderness.

It is probably my main wilderness novel. But there are several others that also deal with experiences in desolate areas:

The Woods Are Dark; Darkness, Tell Us; Savage; Island; After Midnight, and many of my shorter works especially my novella, “The Wilds” which has not yet come out.

The first hardbound edition of Tread Softly was published by W.H. Allen, using the Richard Kelly pseudonym, in 1987. The same year, a paperback original was published in the U.S. by Tor using my own name. If the name difference didn’t cause enough confusion, more was added in 1992 when Headline published a new hardbound edition of the book. This not only used the Richard Laymon name, but changed the title to Dark Mountain. Seems that Headline had already published a romance novel by the title, Tread Softly.

THE BEAST HOUSE

As both an avid reader and a movie fan, I am wary of sequels. They are nearly always inferior to the original. Because of The Cellar’s reputation, I felt a special responsibility and reluctance about writing a sequel.

Also, since The Cellar was my first published novel, I didn’t want to create the impression that my scope was limited to books about Beast House.

So I didn’t rush into it. Instead, I waited more than six years and wrote quite a few novels before making a return trip to Malcasa Point.

Waiting was a good idea. It gave me a chance to grow, to learn more about writing and about myself, so that I was not the same guy by the time I sat down to face The Beast House.

That’s probably what saved it from being “one of those sequels.”

A sequel, by its very nature, has some built-in problems.

The most obvious difficulty is that, as a writer, you’re competing against yourself. In my case, the new book would be going up against The Cellar. Considering the reputation of The Cellar, which is often called a horror classic, the sequel stood a great chance of disappointing my readers. In fact, it would’ve been unrealistic of me to think that I could take on The Cellar and win.

So my strategy was to avoid a head-on clash.

I would write a book so different from the original that direct comparisons would be difficult to make. And since nothing stood a chance of surpassing The Cellar in the minds of some readers, I figured not to let it worry me.

Aside from the fact that you’re being challenged to out-perform one of your best performances, writing a sequel has another inherent drawback. As a writer, you’re forced to address two different groups of readers: those who had read the first book, and those who hadn’t.

For those who’d already read The Cellar, I was returning to familiar territory. They had already been to Malcasa Point, taken the Beast House tour, seen the “beast” in action, etc.

They already knew what to expect, so they weren’t likely to be surprised or shocked a repeat of the same situations that may have grabbed them the first time around. Yet, certain situations had to be repeated for the sake of those who hadn’t read The Cellar.

The trick was to give an exciting ride to both sets of readers. Not an easy task, but it’s one that every writer of a sequel must confront.

I set myself a different goal for each set of readers.

For those who hadn’t read The Cellar, I wanted The Beast House to stand completely on its own. Just as if there had never been an earlier book on the subject.

For those who had read The Cellar, however, I wanted Beast House to be a really unusual, special experience. I saw the sequel not as a chance to revisit or continue the experiences created in The Cellar, but as a chance to expand and “play off” them.

While The Beast House has an entirely different plot from The Cellar, the stories have numerous connections. Being unaware of the connections won’t hurt those who haven’t read The Cellar, but catching them adds a fairly major diminsion to the enjoyment of reading Beast House.

And vice versa.

Not only does The Beast House play off The Cellar, but the reverse is also true.

Information obtained by reading The Beast House actually reflects back on The Cellar and changes the reader’s understanding of what was really going on in that book.

A sequel doesn’t have to be a merely a rehash or continuation of the previous story. The second book can and should be a fully developed entity that stands on its own. And there’s no reason it can’t be better than the original.

Here is the real potential In writing a sequel, there is an opportunity to create a mirror effect in which each book reflects the other, distorts and expands the other, leading to effects that no single book would be able to achieve by itself.

I started writing The Beast House on January 31, 1983. Its working title was The Cellar II.

During the months that followed, I also wrote numerous stories for young adults, a nonfiction book about driving (Driving Me Nuts, never published), and began working as an office temporary. With so many other situations getting in the way, I didn’t finish the first draft of The Cellar II until October 13, 1983. I didn’t get around to completing the final version and sending it to my agent until January 13, 1985, more than a year after finishing the initial draft.

Tor, which would later buy and publish my previously written books, Night Show and Tread Softly, was offered The Beast House but rejected it. Reading between the lines of the rejection letter, I figured out that the editor had misgivings about the propriety of certain events that take place in the book.

“In all good conscience,” she couldn’t publish such a book.

(I’m sure she would’ve rejected The Cellar on the same grounds, given the chance. And who knows, maybe she did.)

Overseas, The Beast House was purchased by New English Library in April, 1985, at the same time as Allhallow’s Eve. It was published in 1986. It saw U.S. publication in 1987 when brought out in a very limited fashion by a shortlived Canadian house, Paperbacks.

Back in England, it was re-issued a couple of times by New English Library, then taken over by Headline, who published it in 1993. In 1995. Book Club Associates brought out a hardbound “double book” containing The Beast House and Allhallow’s Eve.

Oddly enough, publishers and reviewers have rarely linked The Beast House to The Cellar. So far, the connection between the two books is pretty much a secret to everyone except my real fans.

Before leaving The Beast House, I want to throw in a disclaimer. A major plot line of the book belongs to a writer who comes to Malcasa Point in hopes of doing a non-fiction book about Beast House. The writer is the scum of the earth. His name is Gorman Hardy.

At the time, I didn’t know that Gorman could even be a name. I thought I had invented it.

Subsequently, however, I became very good friends with the writer, Ed Gorman. Far from being the scum of the earth, Ed Gorman is the salt. If I’d known Ed at the time I wrote The Beast House, I would have given my dispicable writer a very different name.

Ed has never brought my attention to the matter. But it is something that has bothered me over the years, so I thought this would be a good time to mention it.

A STRANGER’S ARMS and PASSION STORM

Immediately after finishing the first draft of The Beast House (and part of the reason that more than a year went by before I could actually finish whipping it into its final shape), I received a contract to write two contemporary romantic suspense novels. The deal, arranged by Jay Garon, was with James Bryans, the same packager who’d been behind The Making of America series.

I’d gotten $10,000 for writing The Lawmen.

I would be getting $500 each for these.

At that point, $500 sounded pretty good. Lousy pay for writing an entire book, but more than my monthly income. I could use it. In a bad way. So I accepted the contract.

I was sent general guidelines for each book. I recall doing some research on the logging industry and paper mills.

And I actually had fun writing them.

I stayed home from my temporary office work and churned out about twenty pages per day. This was at least four times my usual output. And it suffered no revisions. My first draft was my only draft.

As each page came out of my typewriter, so it was sent to the publisher.

Oddly enough, I’ve always looked back on the “fast writing” of those two books as a significant learning experience. I was forced to plunge ahead, commit to paper pretty much the first thing that occurred to me, leap into the flow of the story and let it carry me along in its currents, write by instinct and the seat of my pants.

It taught me something about how to move along with the currents…

And it taught me that I’m capable of writing twenty pages a day if I have to.

I finished the two books ahead of the deadline and got paid my handsome sum. A Stranger’s Arms by Carla Laymon was published by Blue Heron Press in 1984, and also published in Germany. To the best of my knowledge, Passion Storm has never been published.

I was told that Blue Heron had gone out of business before they could get to my second book. If Passion Storm ever did get published, nobody told me about it.

ALARUMS or ALARMS

I wrote the original version of Alarums in 1985 and it didn’t get published for eight years.

It was part of my plan to open a second front as a suspense author. The 1985 version of the novel (unpublished) bears the Richard Kelly pseudonym.

The plan didn’t work.

Alarums went unsold until 1990, when Mark Ziesing expressed interest in doing a special limited edition of one of my works. He wanted a book that had never been published.

Alarums seemed to fit the bill, so I did a major revision of the 1985 manuscript.

Since Mark’s plan was to publish a Laymon book, we dumped the Richard Kelly pseudonym.

We also changed the title to Alarms because Mark figured that the more archaic spelling, with that weird “u”, would confuse readers.

Though Mark bought the book in 1990, it didn’t actually get published until either the end of 1992 or the beginning of 1993.

In the meantime, it had been bought by Headline, which would publish it in 1993 using the original title, Alarums.

I had chosen to call it Alarums instead of Alarms because I wanted the Shakespearean aspects of “alarums,” which are outcries of warning.

My book is about warnings, alarms, and false alarms.

It is about Melanie, who experiences (or maybe doesn’t) premonitions about such things as her father falling victim to a hit-and-run accident.

Because of her psychic abilities, she knows it was no accident.

And she knows who did it.

All she needs is proof.

Alarums might seem a little similar to Hamlet. It is more than a little similar, but more than a little different, too.

I intended it to be a contemporary, distorted version of the Shakespeare play. If you aren’t familiar with Hamlet, no harm is done. Alarums stands on its own. But if you do know Hamlet, you’ll find connections, parallels and detours that might add to your enjoyment of Alarums.

While my book was intended to be “suspense” instead of “horror,” it contains all the elements usually found in my horror novels. And it has a very special ending.

FLESH

I started writing Flesh on January 25, 1986. Along the way, it went through two different working titles, Parasite and later Snatchers.

By the time I began writing Flesh, Tor had already bought Night Show and Tread Softly for its new horror line and I figured my career in the U.S. was on the road to recovery. It took me four months to write Flesh. I finished the first draft on May 20, and sent it off to my agents (Bob Tanner in the U.K., Ray Peuchner in the U.S.) in July.

The origin of Flesh was unusual for me, in that it was inspired by a short story. About a year before starting Flesh, I wrote a “Fastback” short story called “Night Games.” It is a haunted house story. To win a bet, a teenaged girl intends to spend the night in a haunted house. If she leaves it before morning, she loses. Well, she intends to win. Inside the house, she handcuffs herself to a radiator so she can’t leave, no matter what.

The gimmick really intrigued me.

It provided the starting point of Flesh. All the rest of the plot was developed to set up the wager about the overnight stay in a creepy place (which becomes a deserted restaurant), and to follow it up.

In “Night Games,” the spooky house wasn’t haunted by a ghost. The threat came from “a slobbering, deadwhite beast from the pit of a nightmare.” (I think it actually came from Malcasa Point.) I didn’t want to use such a beast in Flesh, so I came up with a snake-like creature that burrows under a person’s skin, latches onto the brain stem, and takes control.

It likes to eat people. So it turns its host into a raving cannibal. If you kill the host, the creature pops out and comes after you.

For many readers, however, the star of the book isn’t the creature, it’s Roland.

Roland is not a very nice guy.

As for me, the star of the book is Kimmy, the four-year-old daughter of the police officer, Jake. Kimmy comes pretty close to being non-fiction. Her appearance, mannerisms, dialogue, and even her buddy “Klew” represent my attempt to create a portrait of my daughter, Kelly, at that age.

Flesh was my third novel (after Tread Softly and Beast House) using the new “mainstream” approach. Though it has a genre-type beast doing mayhem, it is written with a large scope.

A lot goes on. There are several characters who are “fleshed out” in much more depth than you’ll find in my early books. With Flesh, I was beginning to get comfortable with the “larger canvas.” I took my time and played with the material, trying out different styles, lingering over portraits, in absolutely no hurry at all to get on with the story.

The important thing is not the destination, it’s the trip.

Again, the “mainstream” approach brought great results.

Flesh, published by Tor with a magnificent cover, was named “Best Horror Novel of 1988” in Science Fiction Chronicle, and was nominated (short-listed) for the Bram Stoker award of the Horror Writers of America in the novel category.

My fans often mention it as a favorite, and the Headline paperback is presently in its 14th printing.

MIDNIGHTS LAIR

In the summer of 1986, shortly after I’d mailed off Flesh, Ann and Kelly and I took a trip to Ann’s home town in upstate New York. Our threeweek visit included a side trip in which we drove through various areas of New York and Vermont. Along the way, we stopped at such places as the Baseball Hall of Fame and Howe Caverns.

We always stop at caverns. And mines.

They’re creepy. And the guides often tell strange tales about things that have happened in them. At Howe Caverns, we joined a small group of tourists in the gift shop. Then we were led into an elevator that took us down to the cave.

The elevator shafts had been sunk into the rear end of the main cave because its natural opening, a couple of miles away, was no: very accessible.

At the bottom, we exited the elevator and were led through a well-lighted area of cave. A walkway, bordered by a railing, followed a stream for some distance. Eventually, the stream widened into a small, underground lake. At the lake, we boarded a boat. The guide, standing, propelled the boat along by pulling at iron spikes that were embedded in the walls of the cavern.

When we reached the far end of the lake, we were shown an opening like the mouth of a tunnel. Behind it was total darkness. Hanging across it was a thick, heavy chain.

We had seen only half of Howe Caverns. On the other side of the chained opening, the water from the lake ran through the “undeveloped” section of the cave for about a mile to the natural opening. In that section, there were no walkways, no railings, no lights.

The guide explained that, if anything should go wrong with the elevators, that would be our only way out. “And I’ve got the only flashlight,” she joked.

Well…

Imagine the impact of such a possibility on a horror writer sitting in the boat.

A group of tourists gets trapped in the cave. The only way out is through the “undeveloped” section. Instead of a chain across the opening, there’s a stone wall. And on the other side of the wall something horrible.

We were walking through the cavern on our way back to the elevator when I said to Ann and Kelly, “I’ve got to write a book about this place.”

I was terribly excited by the idea. And also fearful.

Could I pull it off?

The entire story would have to take place in a very restricted setting, and certain scenes would have to take place in absolute darkness. It seemed like a huge challenge. But the story seemed to have such potential that I couldn’t resist giving it a try.

I didn’t get to it right away, though. After returning home, I resumed work on a novel called Intruder, which I’d started in May and hadn’t been able to finish before our trip. I was also still working at the law office. While finishing Intruder, I also wrote a short novel called Spooky Skater, intended for young adults. (Neither Intruder nor Spooky Skater has ever been published.)

I began to work on Cavern or Cave on October 28, before I was finished with Intruder. I didn’t finish Intruder until January, 1987. And I probably didn’t get into the serious writing of the cave novel until after that. I finished writing it on March 14, 1987.

Wanting a better title than Cavern or Cave, I decided to go literary. I searched for a nifty quotation to use, and chose “The Explorer,” by Allan Edward DePrey. The verse included the very appropriate lines, “Remember me, before you dare/To journey into midnight’s lair.” And thus, my title.

I had a lot of fun with the book.

One of the main characters, a horror writer, is based somewhat on myself. And his family is similar to my own.

In fact, bits of dialogue that appear in the book are based on things that were really said by us while we were in Howe Caverns.

Another of the characters, a crusty old varmint named Calvin Fargo, is my rather exaggerated and fictionalized portrait of the writer, Clayton Matthews. (You may have read more about him in my piece about the Pink Tea.)

Fans are always curious about bits that might have been deleted or added at the suggestion or insistence of an editor.

In the case of Midnight’s Lair, both Bob Tanner and Mike Bailey felt that it ended too abruptly. Figuring they were probably right, I added a few pages to the ending (several months after sending out the “finished” manuscript).

My original version stopped after the sentence, “Chris heard the soft impact, and tears blurred her vision as she saw Hank spin, crushing the girl against him.” Everything after that (about three pages) was added to please my agent and editor.

The extra pages please me, too. These particular gentlemen are almost always right.

Between finishing the first draft of Midnight’s Lair and receiving my contract for the finished manuscript, I split with Tor over contract problems, wrote all of Resurrection Dreams, started writing Funland, and experienced the major earthquake that provided the inspiration for Quake.

I received the contract from W.H. Allen on December 9, 1987.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., Midnight’s Lair was getting rejected by every publisher who saw it. My U.S. agent explained the book’s problem to me: “It’s too linear.” After he gave up on it, I tried Dark Harvest. They didn’t get back to me, but I was having lunch with the publishers at Dean Koontz’s house one day, so I asked them about Midnight’s Lair. I was told, “Oh, I see it as a really hot paperback for beach-goers. But it’s not the sort of thing we’re looking for.”

Apparently, my cave book wasn’t deep enough to suit his taste. Or too linear.

In England, however, things went along in the usual, wonderful way. Midnight’s Lair was published hardbound by W.H. Allen in 1988 with the Richard Kelly pseudonym. It was picked up by the Smiths/Doubleday Book. In 1992, Headline published the paperback version, dispensing with the pseudonym. It was picked up by Book Club Associates.

Also, a large print edition was published.

The attention given to Midnight’s Lair in England, combined with the efforts of my great British agent, Bob Tanner, led to Thomas Dunne’s purchase the book for St. Martin’s Press. They gave me an advance of $5,000. (Back in 1992, that was real money.) The book was published hardbound in 1993. The Publisher’s Weekly review (November 9, 1992) called it “fast-paced and tightly constructed,” a book that “combines the best elements of psycho-slasher thrillers, disaster epics and classic supernatural horror tales,” a book that “horror fans will relish.” It was picked up by the Doubleday Book Club.

But the St. Martin’s edition was not promoted at all, and only two or three copies ever seemed to show up in any major bookstore. So it didn’t exactly sell like hotcakes.

Later, without asking, St. Martin’s sold paperback rights to Zebra for $2,000, of which I would get half. In other words, I got a thousand smackeroos for the paperback edition.

Zebra did a pretty good job of publishing Midnight’s Lair.

They were nice enough to consult me about cover ideas, and they sent me a large number of free copies. They brought out the book in September, 1994, and it appeared to get very good distribution.

In the U.K., of course, Midnight’s Lair’ is still in print.

The original W.H. Allen version had a very small printing. It is extremely rare, and one of my most collectable books.

Here is my most recent experience in connection with Midnight’s Lair.

At a book signing at Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank earlier this year, a young woman came up to me and said, “You know your book, Midnight’s Lair? Was it inspired by Howe Caverns in New York?” I told her that it certainly was. “Thought so,” she said, and went on to explain that she’d been to Howe Caverns more than once, and had recognized them as the basis of Mordock Cave. Then she astonished me be saying that she had reread Midnight’s Lair in preparation for a return visit to Howe Caverns so that she could tour the cave as if she were visiting scenes from the novel. Made my day. Made my week.