A Writer's Tale (28 page)

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.