A Writer's Tale

Foes and Fans

AS A MASTER OF STATING THE OBVIOUS, I WILL START THIS PIECE BY saying that every reader isn’t a fan.

In my own case, some readers hate my books. They see my material as puerile, voyeuristic, distasteful, and dumb. “Blood and guts churned out for numbskulls,” as one critic put it. They seem to find my material not only simple-minded but deeply offensive.

If everybody felt that way, I’d be in deep trouble.

As things stand, however, I can afford to laugh about it.

Laugh as I wonder how in heck such people came to read a book by Richard Laymon in the first place. Did they wander into it by mistake? What were they expecting, Winnie the Pooh? The covers of my novels are not misleading. The artwork and the written material should make it fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain that naughty things happen in my stories. So why do these people read them, anyway?

Don’t they believe the covers?

They must not.

Often, book covers do tend to exaggerate. Though a cover might lead us to believe that a book will be thrilling, lurid, shocking, bloody, erotic, violent, etc., the story inside often turns out to be tame, predictable, trite and boring.

Apparently, some people not only expect the cover to exaggerate (lie) about the book, but they prefer it that way. When these people get what they’re told they’ll get, they whine and scream, sometimes write nasty letters to me or my publisher, sometimes write vicious reviews.

I still don’t get it.

Say these people stumble into a book of mine because they don’t believe the cover or they’re simply curious or whatever… and suddenly they encounter a situation that deeply shocks and offends them.

Perhaps, at that point, they should stop reading the book.

Put it away and take out a Tom Clancy, for instance.

Or a Mary Higgens Clark.

Or a Franklin W. Dixon.

If they don’t stop reading my book, then they deserve whatever they get.

What sort of stupes are they?

You don’t like spinach, don’t eat spinach. Most especially, however, don’t go ahead and eat it, then whine about it afterwards. “Man, I hated that spinach! God, it sucked! It’s GREEN!”

So eat corn, moron.

And leave me alone.

As you might detect, I don’t find such people entirely amusing. I also find them stupid and annoying.

And, oddly enough, flattering.

Though they don’t realize it (I doubt that they realize very much of anything), their condemnation of me and my fiction is a high compliment. For one thing, I obviously didn’t bore them. More significantly, however, I managed to shock them.

What could they possibly find so shocking in my books?

I’m not sure.

I write about nothing that is, in itself, any more horrible than what is found in the fiction of many other authors. Incident by incident, my stories are less violent and explicit and gory than much of what is being published. Even the sex is less graphic and extreme than you’ll find in other people’s stories. My use of “foul” language is minimal.

This being true and it is why are some people so shocked by what I write?

Apparently, it has to do with the way I handle the material.

It gets under their skin.

Which is why I am flattered by the vehemence of those who hate me and my work.

Still, I would find my detractors extremely distressing except for a simple truth: what they despise, my fans apparently love.

My fans are every bit as vehement as my detractors. And there are more of them.

How do people become Laymon fans?

Some stumble onto one of my stories in an anthology. Others may hear about me from a friend. Or I’m recommended by a book dealer when a “horror reader” asks for advice.

(One Canadian book dealer recommends The Woods Are Dark and offers a money-back guarantee for any reader who is disappointed in it. So far, nobody has returned a copy.) I have fans who buy extra copies of my books and give them to friends who haven’t read me yet.

If the new reader’s first encounter with my fiction creates a sudden urge to read everything I’ve ever written, then that person has become a fan.

It happens a lot.

I am not a well known writer, especially here in the United States. Quite a few people in the publishing industry are aware of me. (They all seem to know that I’m big in the U.K. but that my books “just don’t sell” in the U.S.) Most “horror” readers are also aware that I exist the few, at any rate, who’ve gone past the stage of reading only bestsellers. For the most part, however, I’m unknown in America.

In 1994, when I phoned Forbidden Planet bookstore in Manhattan about possibly having a signing, the person in charge of author appearances had never heard of me.

Even a New York company that had just published four of my books told an inquiring publisher that they’d never heard of me.

However…

When Don Cannon arranged my first book signing back in 1989, I suddenly discovered that I had ardent fans. Sure, I’d received fan mail now and then over the years. But the letters had not prepared me for this.

Customers were lined up to the back of the store. Many of them showed up with boxes or paper bags full of my books. They brought copies of old Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock magazines containing my early stories. They brought anthologies. They brought books that had been published in England. A few of these fans even showed up with bound galleys that I’d never seen before. Many had ten to twenty items for me to sign.

It was an overwhelming experience.

And only a few of them appeared to be drooling maniacs.

True, there was a guy who bore a startling resemblance to Charles Manson. He seemed perfectly nice, however. Mostly, my fans appeared to be very clean-cut, normal people.

There were men, women, teenagers, and even a few senior citizens (which really surprised me).

Over the years, I’ve often asked my fans what they do for a living. Some are teachers and students, some are in the construction business. Others are in computer and aerospace industries. There are accountants, postal workers, newspaper reporters, film makers, special effects artists, animal trainers, musicians, and authors. One fan, Daniel, works in a morgue. Another, Roy Robbins, became a book dealer. Others, Del and Sue, opened Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank.

Not exactly a bunch of retards and perverts, as my detractors might expect.

Over the years, several of them have become good friends.

In addition to the fans I actually get to meet at book signings, there are those I know only from letters.

I receive a moderate amount of fan mail.

A word about fan mail…

Headline sends it to me very promptly. Most other publishers, however, take their time.

Fans need to be aware of this. If they mail a letter to an author in care of his publisher, it probably won’t reach him for at least two or three months. God only knows what takes the publishers so long. (I guess they’re busy screwing up the lives of mid-list authors.) I enjoy getting fan mail. Most of it, anyway. It’s exciting to find out that there are so many strangers all over the world who can’t wait for my next book to come out.

Of those who send letters, most became fans according to the pattern I described above; they read one of my short stories or books, then went out and grabbed every Laymon book they could lay their hands on. Most of them have read all my novels. Those who’ve only read fifteen or twenty complain because there are certain titles they haven’t been able to find.

After telling me how they became my fans, some tell me a little about themselves and ask me a few questions.

Some ask me a lot of questions. These are usually aspiring writers, and I often take the time to respond in some detail.

Most other letters, I answer with a few sentences on a picture post card. (On my travels, I spend lots of time in search of nifty cards for that purpose.) I almost always, eventually, send responses to my fans. Eventually.

Back to the letters they send.

A couple of questions pop up in nearly every one of them.

1. What am I working on now, and when will it be coming out?

2. Why haven’t there been any movies based on my books or stories? They would love to see a movie of… then they name a couple of their favorite novels.

Fairly often, the author of the letter claims to be my “Number One Fan,” then tries to reassure me by denying any resemblance to Annie Wilkes or Kathy Bates.

And, oh yes. While we’re on the subject…

Hardly a letter arrives in which the fan doesn’t claim to prefer me over Stephen King.

Some fans even maintain that I’m better than anyone.

What can I say? They’re my fans.

Bless ‘em.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they’re the minority opinion.

It does a lot for my ego, anyway.

Especially considering the position of my career in this country not a few rungs down from King, but off the ladder completely.

Every now and then, fans tell me wonderful things about my effect on their lives. They’re personal stories, and I don’t feel like telling about them.

Nor do I feel like complaining about my fans. If you want to read about fans who are nuisances, try reading Harlan Ellison or Stephen King.

I find it amazing, wonderful and delightful that, for whatever reasons, there are so many people in this world who value my fiction.

Who can’t get enough of it.

Who crave it.

Before leaving the subject of fans, I must mention three of them: Martin White in Scotland, founder of the “Richard Laymon Fan Club”; Steve Gerlach in Australia, creator of the “Richard Laymon Kills” website on the Internet; and Vince Fahey of Arizona, creator of “The Official U.S. Richard Laymon Page” on the Internet.

Terrific chaps.

I thank them.