A Writer's Tale

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