A Writer's Tale (30 page)

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 The 1985 version of the novel (unpublished) bears the Richard Kelly pseudonym.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.