A Writer's Tale (27 page)

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.