A Writer's Tale

Apparently, some people not only expect the cover to exaggerate (lie) about the book, but they prefer it that way. When these people get what they’re told they’ll get, they whine and scream, sometimes write nasty letters to me or my publisher, sometimes write vicious reviews.

I still don’t get it.

Say these people stumble into a book of mine because they don’t believe the cover or they’re simply curious or whatever…  and suddenly they encounter a situation that deeply shocks and offends them.

Perhaps, at that point, they should stop reading the book.

Put it away and take out a Tom Clancy, for instance.

Or a Mary Higgens Clark.

Or a Franklin W. Dixon.

If they don’t stop reading my book, then they deserve whatever they get.

What sort of stupes are they?

You don’t like spinach, don’t eat spinach. Most especially, however, don’t go ahead and eat it, then whine about it afterwards. “Man, I hated that spinach! God, it sucked! It’s GREEN!”

So eat corn, moron.

And leave me alone.

As you might detect, I don’t find such people entirely amusing. I also find them stupid and annoying.

And, oddly enough, flattering.

Though they don’t realize it (I doubt that they realize very much of anything), their condemnation of me and my fiction is a high compliment. For one thing, I obviously didn’t bore them. More significantly, however, I managed to shock them.

What could they possibly find so shocking in my books?

I’m not sure.

I write about nothing that is, in itself, any more horrible than what is found in the fiction of many other authors. Incident by incident, my stories are less violent and explicit and gory than much of what is being published. Even the sex is less graphic and extreme than you’ll find in other people’s stories. My use of “foul” language is minimal.

This being true and it is why are some people so shocked by what I write?

Apparently, it has to do with the way I handle the material.

It gets under their skin.

Which is why I am flattered by the vehemence of those who hate me and my work.

Still, I would find my detractors extremely distressing except for a simple truth: what they despise, my fans apparently love.

My fans are every bit as vehement as my detractors. And there are more of them.

How do people become Laymon fans?

Some stumble onto one of my stories in an anthology. Others may hear about me from a friend. Or I’m recommended by a book dealer when a “horror reader” asks for advice.

(One Canadian book dealer recommends The Woods Are Dark and offers a money-back guarantee for any reader who is disappointed in it. So far, nobody has returned a copy.) I have fans who buy extra copies of my books and give them to friends who haven’t read me yet.

If the new reader’s first encounter with my fiction creates a sudden urge to read everything I’ve ever written, then that person has become a fan.

It happens a lot.

I am not a well known writer, especially here in the United States. Quite a few people in the publishing industry are aware of me. (They all seem to know that I’m big in the U.K. but that my books “just don’t sell” in the U.S.) Most “horror” readers are also aware that I exist the few, at any rate, who’ve gone past the stage of reading only bestsellers. For the most part, however, I’m unknown in America.

In 1994, when I phoned Forbidden Planet bookstore in Manhattan about possibly having a signing, the person in charge of author appearances had never heard of me.

Even a New York company that had just published four of my books told an inquiring publisher that they’d never heard of me.

However…

When Don Cannon arranged my first book signing back in 1989, I suddenly discovered that I had ardent fans. Sure, I’d received fan mail now and then over the years. But the letters had not prepared me for this.

Customers were lined up to the back of the store. Many of them showed up with boxes or paper bags full of my books. They brought copies of old Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock magazines containing my early stories. They brought anthologies. They brought books that had been published in England. A few of these fans even showed up with bound galleys that I’d never seen before. Many had ten to twenty items for me to sign.

It was an overwhelming experience.

And only a few of them appeared to be drooling maniacs.

True, there was a guy who bore a startling resemblance to Charles Manson. He seemed perfectly nice, however. Mostly, my fans appeared to be very clean-cut, normal people.

There were men, women, teenagers, and even a few senior citizens (which really surprised me).