A Writer's Tale

The cover shows three teenagers looking oddly startled. Two of the three appear to be Potsie and Joanie from Happy Days.

What I want to know is, Where the hell is Richie Cunningham?

Where’s the Fonz?

Oh, well, can’t have everything.

On the back of the cover, readers are provided with a rare opportunity to find out every major plot trick in the book. Out Are the Lights is built around a couple of major gimmicks, which are supposed to remain secret until discovered by the reader. Anyone who reads the back cover, however, learns every secret including the final one, which is revealed about six pages from the end of the book.

This was a case of being stabbed in the back cover.

It would be rather as if the producers of The Usual Suspects had revealed the identity of Keyser Soze in the posters and prevues of the film.

How could a publisher be so stupid?

Or did they give away my plot because they were too stupid to know any better? I always thought so. Looking back on it now, however, I have to wonder. Do I detect the stench of malicious intent?

I was so upset by the situation that I taped an index card over the back cover of every copy of the Warner edition of Out Are the Lights that I gave away, so that my family and friends wouldn’t have the story ruined.

Anyway…

For better or worse, hardly anyone had an opportunity to see this remarkable cover. Out Are The Lights was the second book of my three-book contract with Warner. (The Cellar preceded that contract.) Since Lights followed the fiasco of The Woods Are Dark, it barely got published at all.

I do know it was published, however. I once saw a few copies in a drug store.

Actually, records indicate that the Warner edition sold about 28,000 copies. I think that’s very good for an invisible book.

But it was the end of the line for me and Warner Books.

We mutually agreed that my three-book contract would become a two-book contract, and that Out Are the Lights would finish off my relationship with them.

In summary, my encounters with Warner Books resulted in a highly successful edition of The Cellar, a mutilated version of The Woods Are Dark, the walking wounded Out Are the Lights, the carcasses of Take ‘em, The Keepers, Dead Corse, Allhallow’s Eve, Secret Nights, and Beware!, and the destruction of my writing career in the United States of America.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, .the New English Library edition of Out Are the Lights did fine. Foreign language editions have subsequently been published in Spain, France, Russia and Hungary. In 1987, Out Are the Lights was optioned by a film company in Spain. The film, however, was never made.

In 1993, Headline published a hardbound edition of Out Are the Lights. To give the book a little more heft, the novel itself was followed by my stories, “Mess Hall,” “Dinker’s Pond,” “Madman Stan,” “Bad News,” and “The Tub.” Book Club Associates bought 15,000 copies of the hardbound. A paperback version of the same book, including the stories, was published by Headline later in 1993.

NIGHTMARE LAKE

I wrote Nightmare Lake in 1980, finishing it immediately after Out Are the Lights. It wouldn’t be published, however, until 1983.

By the time I wrote Nightmare Lake, I was pretty sure that Scholastic wouldn’t want it.

But I figured someone might. Though the novel was intended for young adults, I wrote it pretty much like any other novel. Obviously, I kept it “clean.”

No sex, no bad language. I tried not to go overboard with the violence, but the story did end up more violent than most novels written for young adults.

It would be my first published vampire novel.

After the “success” of Your Secret Admirer, I thought I might work on parallel careers writing adult horror and young adult thrillers. I wrote it “on spec” without a contract and with no specific publisher in mind. In other words, I just wrote it because I loved the idea.

Nightmare Lake is the father of The Stake.

A couple of teenagers, a brother and sister, are on a family vacation in Wisconsin. Out exploring a lake one day, they visit a small, deserted island with their dog. Fooling around, the brother tosses a stick for the dog to fetch.

It comes back with a stick, all right. But not the same stick the kid had thrown.

This stick is actually a stake plucked by the dog from the ribs of a skeleton.

The skeleton of a vampire?

And so begins a pretty creepy story.