Authors: Richard Laymon
During that period, I made extensive notes about the plot and characters of my Ripper book. Bob Tanner found me some information about the Thames River. I also read book after book to get myself ready for the task of actually writing my novel.
After finally getting finished with
Daring Young Maids,
I sat down to write
Savage
on November 18, 1990. I finished writing it on September 6, 1991. My working title had been
Ripper.
But I chose to call my book,
Narrow Calls
which comes from the prologue: “Had some narrow calls. Run-ins with all manner of ruffians, with mobs and posses after my hide, with Jack the Ripper himself. But I’m still here to tell the tale. Which is what I aim to do right now.”
Headline liked the title,
Narrow Calls,
about as much as they’d liked
Daring Young Maids.
They preferred to call it something along the lines of
Blood Savage.
We compromised, got rid of the
Blood
and kept the
Savage.
I added the subtitle:
From Whitechapel to the Wild West on the Track of Jack the Ripper.
Unfortunately, the subtitle didn’t make it onto the cover.
Headline accepted
Savage
as part of my three-book contract.
Book Club Associates placed an initial order for 8,000 copies.
On March 5, 1993, it was bought by Thomas Dunne of St. Martin’s Press for an advance of $10,000.
It has been published in Germany and Hungary.
At the time of this writing, the Headline paperback of
Savage
is in its 8th printing.
I had extremely high hopes for
Savage.
It seemed to have so many things going for it. It was about Jack the Ripper. It was a boy’s adventure in the tradition of
Huckleberry Finn.
It was a sprawling western in the tradition of
Lonesome Dove.
It was a love story in the tradition of.
..Love Story? It
was exciting, poignant, nostalgic, violent, erotic, scary, gruesome and often extremely funny.
If that weren’t enough, it had Jesse Sue Langley!
With all that going for it, I thought it should be a bestseller.
And in the United Kingdom, it pretty much was.
But here in the U.S., it received no star treatment; it received the usual “let’s ignore it” treatment. The publisher gave it no publicity whatsoever. If a person looked real hard, he might find two copies, spine-out, in the back of some bookstores.
Business as usual.
But it annoyed me
more
than usual.
Savage
is a book that should’ve gotten noticed. It should’ve been published in a big way.
If a book like
Savage
gets ignored, what does it take? It takes a shrug, that’s what. And a turning of the back.
In spite of the book’s commercial failure in the United States, I know that it is successful as a work of art.
To my own way of thinking, I somehow managed to “pull it off.” It turned out to be everything I’d hoped it might be.
People have called it “a masterpiece.”
People have compared it to a novel by Dickens. People have said that it’s the book I’ll be remembered for.
A lot of people love it, and so do I.
A GOOD, SECRET PLACE
Near the end of June, 1991, the Horror Writers of America held its annual convention in Redondo Beach, California. One night during the weekend, I was approached by John Scoleri. I knew John from his activities at the B. Dalton bookstore in Santa Clara, where he’d been a real promoter of horror fiction and had even published a newsletter,
Scars,
in which he reviewed new horror releases and their covers. I’d first met John after he invited me to a book signing for
Night Visions VII.
At the 1991 HWA meeting, John came up to me and introduced his friend, Peter Enfantino. Along with Robert Morrish, they were involved in publishing the magazine,
The Scream Factory,
and their small press had already produced a couple of limited edition hardcovers. They asked if I would consider letting them publish a collection of my short fiction.
I liked these guys. Perhaps more important, Ann liked them.
She is my career-guard, warning me away from people and projects that rub her the wrong way. Instead of suggesting I should have nothing to do with John and Peter, she thought I ought to pursue the situation.
As we discussed the possibilities, the guys assured me that they would be very flexible about the terms of the contract and the content of the book.
We very quickly hit upon the idea of putting together an assortment of old and new stories. My “Author’s Note” explains it:
This book contains every adult short story of mine that was sold and published from the start of my career through “Bleeder” in 1989. Eleven of the fifteen early stories have never been anthologized, and until now were available only in old copies of the magazines in which they originally appeared…
They comprise about half of this volume. The other half is made up of previously unpublished stories. The new ones are not from “the trunk.” They were all written in the fall of 1991, especially for this collection.
At the time I was approached by John and Peter, I was in the midst of writing
Savage.
I continued with
Savage
and finished it on September 6, 1991. On September 10, I began to write original’ short fiction for the collection.
Between that date and October 20, I wrote five new stories.
It was a great experience. I felt completely free to write about whatever suited my fancy.
(Most often, stories are ‘written “to order,” and must fit into the theme of a magazine or anthology.) These could be about anything.
I considered it an opportunity to write novellas as well as short stories, so the five tales added up to a fair chunk of material. “The Good Deed” was 39 pages long, “Joyce” was 29 pages, “Stickman” was 27, “The Mask” was 34, and “A Good, Secret Place,” the title story, was 42 pages in length.
They represent, in my opinion, some of the best short fiction I have ever written.
We asked my friend, fellow writer Ed Gorman, to provide an introduction for the collection. He came through with a wonderful piece.
We asked my friend, Larry Mori, to prepare artwork for the book. I’d been introduced to Larry by Joan Parsons when we visited the Dark Carnival book store during our trip to the Bay Area for the
Night Visions VII
signing arranged by John Scoleri. (It all ties together.) Larry specializes in creating very bizarre and mysterious collages. He did several terrific pieces for
A Good, Secret Place.
He also provided suggestions about the design of the book.
In 1993, it was published by Deadline Press (John, Peter and Bob). It consisted of 574 individually signed and numbered copies and 26 individually signed and lettered copies.
Every copy was signed by me, Ed Gorman and Larry Mori.
Thanks to the imagination and persistence of Bob Morrish, each of the 26 lettered copies was bound in leather and came with a built-in lock. They looked like diaries. I thought this was extremely cool, since the title of the book was
A Good, Secret Place.
Both editions sold out, and copies are now rare.
A Good, Secret Place
was nominated (short-listed) for a Bram Stoker award for excellence in the “collection” category for 1993. The awards banquet took place in Las Vegas during the first weekend in June, 1994. While I was at the banquet not winning the award (it went to Ramsey Campbell), Peter Enfantino sat beside me and his wife Margaret was downstairs winning a ton of money at the slot machines.
Because of my great experiences in connection with
A Good, Secret Place,
I was eager to work again with John, Peter and Bob.
And the book you now hold is the result.
ENDLESS NIGHT
Apparently, I was “at loose ends” after finishing
Savage.
I wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. So instead of embarking on a new novel, I wrote all the original material for my short story collection,
A Good, Secret Place.
I wrote several other short stories, had a false start on a novel entitled,
The Caller,
then started work on
Quake.
After spending about four months on
Quake,
I gave it up. I felt overwhelmed by it. So I wrote my novella,
Wilds.
Then, on May 6, 1992, instead of returning to
Quake,
I started writing a novel called
Sleep Over.
I wanted needed? to write a fast-paced, straightforward book with non-stop action. I wanted to write another
Midnight’s Lair,
another
One Rainy Night.
But I had trouble coming up with a suitable plot.
Then one afternoon, Ann and I were watching a rental video on our VCR. It was called,
Tower of Evil,
and had something to do with murders at a lighthouse.
While I am watching television shows and movies (or doing most anything else, for that matter), my mind often wanders. It did so during
Tower of Evil.
A scene in the movie set me to thinking how neat it would be to take the big finale of a horror story (after all, that’s when most of the cool really stuff happens) and
start
a story with it.
Instead of
building up
to the awful, bloody climax, why not
begin with it.
And keep on going from there.
The climax just goes on and on…for the whole book!
To me, it seemed like a brilliant idea.
(Naturally, I do understand that a climax is not actually a climax if it happens at the start. I use the term simply to get across the idea that the effect I wanted to create would be
like
the climax of a book or movie in its intensity.)
It is the concept that led to
Endless Night.
After coming up with the general idea of what I hoped to achieve, I needed the particulars. In particular, what would happen during the big opening scene?
I wanted it to be
really scary.
So I sat down and asked myself, “What’s the scariest situation I can possibly imagine?”
A babysitter being interrupted on the job by a madman is about the most creepy situation I can imagine. She’s a teenaged girl in a strange house late at night, has nobody to depend upon for help, and
someone
is coming for her. Yikes!… But there are great, classic movies covering that territory.
I wondered what
other
set of circumstances might lead to feelings of vulnerability similar to those created by the babysitter scenerio.
And I came up with an alternative that seemed perfect.
Suppose a teenaged girl is having an “overnighter” at the house of her best friend? In the middle of the night, intruders break in. They butcher
everyone in the house.
Everyone except the girl, who hides, then risks her life to save her friend’s brother. The girl and boy run outside, the killers in hot pursuit.
Exactly what I was looking for.
When I wrote the book, I started with the girl being awakened late at night by the noise of breaking glass. I then kept the opening sequence going for 87 manuscript pages of frenzied, terrifying action.
I’d experimented with this technique somewhat in my novella,
Wilds,
which is told in the form of a journal. I wrote
Wilds
immediately before embarking on
Endless Night,
so the Simon tapes seem to be an extension of my experiments with the technique. I soon would take the “real time telling” all the way in
Island.
A couple of characters in
Endless Night
are fictional portraits based on real life.
Jody’s father was inspired by an L.A.P.D. officer I observed during the course of a televised trial. I came to admire his guts and integrity.
A little white dog that attacks Simon was inspired by Bogart Harb, who lives with us when its owners, Sally and Murray, leave town on trips. My Deadline Press short story collection,
A Good, Secret Place,
was dedicated to Sally, Murray, and Bogart.
I finished writing
Endless Night
on December 2, 1992 and sent a copy to Bob Tanner.
Headline published it in 1993, and Book Club Associates bought 12,000 copies. It was also bought for publication in Italy and Spain.
Endless Night
has not been published in the United States.
As of this writing, the Headline paperback edition is in its 7th printing.
While I would not recommend
any
of my books to squeamish or prudish readers, I have to say that
Endless Night
is more extreme than most. It contains some of the most vicious and disgusting material I’ve ever written.
But it also contains the story of a gutsy girl named Jody who risks her life to save her friend’s brother a boy she hardly knows.
And it tells of her smart, courageous father (an L.A.P.D. officer) who will do
anything
to keep his daughter from harm.
Jody and her father have a very sweet relationship something that you’ll rarely find in books and movies. For some reason, teenagers are most often portrayed as egocentric jerks and their parents are insensitive louts who never understand them. If a father does appear to be sensitive and understanding toward his daughter, it turns out that he’s molesting her in secret. Not so in
Endless Night.
Like so many people you find in real life, Jody and her father are simply good, caring people.
Going up against a perverted, sadistic killer.
IN THE DARK
Endless Night
took care of my urge to write a straight-forward, lightning-fast story. After finishing it, I was ready to settle down and develop something more complex.