In Laymon's Terms

John Pelan

RITING A FEW words about Dick Laymon and what he meant to this genre is a fairly easy proposition. There’s a huge shelf of books, most of which have been perpetually in print in the United Kingdom and are now being issued in the US. There’s a whole shelf of Laymon novels and collections to look at. It’s a monument to being true to yourself and writing what you want to write.

Back in the late eighties as the bottom fell out of the horror market and a lot of folks either stopped writing horror or stopped writing altogether, Dick bucked the trend and kept turning out good books that weren’t hidden behind the labels of “suspense” or “thriller” or some other euphemism. The books were unabashedly horror novels and they pulled no punches. Dick proved that as a writer you could write what you want and be successful at it.

Writing about what Dick Laymon meant to HWA is still relatively easy to assess. Dick brought his experience from MWA and a strong set of principles to the table and set about moving the organization forward and trying to provide tangible benefits to all of our members. These efforts are already starting to pay dividends for all of us and will continue into the foreseeable future.

Writing about what Dick Laymon meant to me as a friend is a damn sight harder. I’m still having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that there won’t be any more two-hour phone calls chatting about Gold Medal novels, classic horror fiction, politics, travel, the business of writing, or any of the other things we used to chat about so frequently. Kathy and I have only known Dick, Ann, and Kelly for a few years, but they had become good friends that we didn’t see nearly often enough. We met at a World Horror Convention and hit it off immediately. Some months later Alan Beatts had a reading scheduled before the World Fantasy Convention in Monterey and had scheduled Norm Partridge, Dick, and myself to read. Kathy and I, with our abysmal knowledge of California geography, had assumed Monterey was just outside of the San Francisco city limits and that it would be easy to rent a car and drive down for the convention. As it developed, we didn’t need to drive as the Laymons graciously offered to let us ride to the convention with them. I learned an awful lot from Dick on that drive, a lot about writing, a lot about how to go about this business of the writing life, and I got to see him demonstrate in a quiet, unassuming way how to give back to the field some of what you’ve been given. Since then we got to spend a few other conventions hanging out, and as I’ve said, a lot of hours on the phone. And I got to watch Dick show by example how we’re supposed to do this life thing, by constantly and consistently taking time to be kind to our fellows.

The dividends of Dick’s encouragement to other writers will be showing up for years to come. There are a lot of published authors that he helped, and there are a lot of people yet to be published who received constructive encouragement from Richard Laymon that you’ll be reading in the years to come. Someone who’s done that much for so many could be excused for having a sense of self-importance, but Dick Laymon wasn’t that sort of guy...One of my favorite recollections of Dick is tied into a photograph taken by James Futch at the World Horror Convention in Denver. After the Stoker Awards, the Gothic.net crew and Bereshith Publishing threw one hell of a party, and at some point the regulars from the old Horrornet Chat Room gathered for a group photograph. There were a few of the regulars who didn’t make the convention, but the group gathered together was certainly the majority of the gang, a fairly impressive representation of a group of young writers who are individually and collectively starting to make a splash in the sea of publishing. Before the picture was snapped, Dick Laymon came up and asked if he might be included in the shot...

I have to smile when I think about the collective jaw-dropping as those words registered. Richard Laymon, one of the legends in the field, wanted to be included in the group photo of the Horrornet gang...I look at this photo today, at the two dozen or so of us standing with the man who inspired and encouraged so many of us, and I realize that Dick’s legacy extends far beyond his published books and well into the future of our genre. Of course the Horrornet gang was delighted to have Dick in the group photo. After all, he was one of the main reasons that most of us were there...

I’ll remember the stuff I learned about the writing business from Dick; and we’re all fortunate that he recorded a good bit of sound professional advice in A Writer’s Tale, a book that anyone who takes this profession seriously can profit by. What I’ll remember even more fondly are his many acts of kindness...I’ve always been a believer in the karmic equation of giving back something to the field that you’ve been successful in; in the case of Richard Laymon, I think the balance is tipped far in the other direction. It will be a long, long time before the field of horror pays back the debt it owes Dick Laymon...Thanks for everything, my friend.