A Writer's Tale

The story of his pursuit, written almost as an afterthought, contains some of the most shocking material in the book. When I was done writing Roy’s scenes, I slipped them in among the novel’s previously written chapters.

By September 6, 1977, I had a novel with sufficient length to make it saleable. I then went back to work at the John Adams library. In my spare time, I worked on revisions. I finished them on March 3, 1978, and mailed the manuscript to my agent, Jay Garon.

On January 26, 1979, Warner Books bought Beast House for an advance of $3,500. On October 30, 1979, New English Library bought it for approximately $24,000.

Because of the movie Animal House, Warner Books changed the title of my book to The Cellar.

They also decided to make it their lead title, meaning that they would put a lot of publicity behind it. They did a great job of advertising The Cellar (“The Fear Trip of 1980”) and put a terrific cover on it. When it was published in December, 1980, it appeared in large quantities in just about every paperback outlet in the country.

It sold like hotcakes. I could see it vanishing from the paperback racks and shelves of nearby stores.

It appeared on the B. Dalton bestseller list for four weeks, and sold a total in the Warner edition of at least 250,000 copies.

Eventually, the rights reverted to me and The Cellar was reprinted by Paperjacks in 1987.

In the United Kingdom, New English Library published The Cellar in 1980. W.H. Allen (Star) published it in 1989, and Headline brought it out in 1991. The Headline edition is still available, and is in its eleventh printing at the time of this writing. Through Headline, The Cellar is available in most of the English-speaking world, including such areas as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Bahamas, etc.

Foreign language editions of The Cellar have been published in Italy, Spain (including Mexico and much of Latin America), Turkey, Japan, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania (in Russian) and France.

By the time this book is published, The Cellar will have seen its first hardbound edition.

Richard Chizmar has arranged with me to do a signed, limited edition of the book.

Bentley Little wrote an introduction for it, and I wrote an “afterward” in which I tell quite a few things that aren’t mentioned here.

YOUR SECRET ADMIRER

On February 21, 1979, I sent my young adult suspense novel Your Secret Admirer, to Jay Garon. He found it “to be especially good for a young adult novel.” On May 18, 1979 we received a contract from Scholastic Books. They paid a $3,000 advance for the novel. It was published in 1980, sold 174,700 copies and earned royalties of $8,559.00. Though the first edition sold out, Scholastic never reprinted Your Secret Admirer.

Because my editor at Scholastic was aware of The Cellar, she insisted that I use a pseudonym. I chose Carl Laymon. Carl is my middle name, and was the first name of my mother’s father, Carl Hall.

To me, it seemed that Your Secret Admirer did pretty well for Scholastic Books. It not only made triple my advance, but resulted in piles of fan mail from teenagers who thought it was wonderful. However, I would never be able to sell another book to Scholastic.

Could it be that, pseudonym or not, they didn’t want to be associated with the author of The Cellar? I think so.

Anyway, Your Secret Admirer is a suspense novel about a teen-aged girl who is getting mysterious letters from a secret admirer. She and her friend go through some adventures trying to find out who is writing the letters. Maybe it’s a really cool guy. Maybe a pervert.

Who knows? Some spooky things happen before the novel reaches its tricky conclusion.

The conclusion was so tricky, in fact, that quite a few readers didn’t get it.

THE KEEPERS, DEAD CORSE and SECRET NIGHTS

Warner Books had bought Beast House (The Cellar) on January 26, 1979. On May 7, Jay Garon sent my novel The Keepers to them. On June 21, Warner books gave me a three-book contract that amounted to an advance of $15,000 per book. On July 21, I sent my novel, Dead Corse, to Garon. On September 7, I sent my novel, Secret Nights to Garon.

The Keepers, Dead Corse and Secret Nights might have fulfilled the three-book contract and made me $45,000, but the folks at Warner didn’t like them. Eventually, all three novels would be rejected.

As I recall, The Keepers was a partial about a school teacher with a classroom full of bad kids they had driven his predecesssor to suicide.

Secret Nights was a finished novel. You may read of its fate in the July 30, 1981 entity of my Autobiographical Chronology.