A Writer's Tale

On March 27, 1987, I made my initial notes for the book I was calling Zombie. They are written longhand in a spiral notebook, and fill five pages. I considered duplicating them here, as I did the notes for The Cellar. Upon reading them, however, I found that they very closely describe the story as it actually turned out. Apparently, I developed most of the major plot and character ideas while writing those five pages, and never went very far astray from them as I wrote the novel.

So I don’t think much would be gained by publishing them here.

I started writing Zombie the day after making the notes.

I’d been working on it for almost two months when I took a break to write my short story, “Mess Hall.” The tale had been requested by Skipp and Spector for their zombie anthology, Book of the Dead. So I interrupted the writing of my zombie novel to write a zombie short story.

But the interruption didn’t delay things much. I finished Zombie on September 9, less than six months after starting it. Then I changed its title to Hoodoo, made two copies and mailed them out.

I sent one copy to my new American agent, Ralph Vicinanza, and one to Bob Tanner in England. Ralph submitted it to Tor. As I recall, my editor there didn’t like Melvin’s way of resurrecting people. She thought it seemed too easy. But I’m sure there were other problems, too. For whatever reasons, she rejected the book. (This was in the same year that Tor published Flesh, which would be nominated for a Bram Stoker award. For the Stoker awards banquet, I was invited to sit at the Tor table. As we waited for the winners to be announced, the owner of Tor, Tom Doherty, found out for the first time that I was no longer being published by him. He seemed rather surprised.) Back to Resurrection Dreams Ralph phoned in December, 1987, to tell me that Onyx, an imprint of New American Library, was interested in buying the book. A month later, Bob Tanner called from England to inform me that W.H. Allen had made an offer.

And thereby hangs a tale.

The actual offer from Onyx came through near the end of March, 1988. They would purchase Resurrection Dreams as a paperback original for an advance of $9,000 and Funland for $11,000.

I was delighted.

However, I soon found out that the editor, John Silbersack, had a few suggestions. He thought the book needed some “fine tuning.” He phoned me on June 6, 1988, and I took notes.

Then, doing as he asked, I made a number of fairly significant changes in the novel.

For the U.S. edition.

But not for the British edition.

As a result, W.H. Allen published my original version of Resurrection Dreams in hardbound and Onyx published a paperback containing all the changes I’d made at the request of John Silbersack.

So two different versions of Resurrection Dreams got published.

And here’s another tale.

A true tale, as these all are.

A tale “told out of school,” as publishers like to say.

The American version of Resurrection Dreams was published without any endorsements (quotes from famous writers) at all. Not on the cover. Not inside.

But we had provided Onyx with a doozy composed by one of the biggest bestselling authors in the country.

Dean Koontz had written of Resurrection Dreams, “Fast-paced, weird, gruesome fun in the unique Laymon style. No one writes like him, and you’re going to have a good time with anything he writes.”

Dean had rushed to read the manuscript and write the quote and get it to the people at Onyx. We know that it got to them in time. But somehow they failed to use it.

The Onyx edition got no push whatsoever from the publisher (not even a cover blurb), and apparently sold about 18,000 copies. As a reminder, the Warner Books editions of The Woods Are Dark, which I blame for destroying my career in the United States, had sold 70,000 copies.

My, what a fall!

At present, non-English editions of Resurrection Dreams have been published in Turkey, Denmark, Russia and Spain. In England. Headline brought out a paperback edition based on the W.H. Allen text now in its 7th printing.

Resurrection Dreams is often named by fans as their favorite of my books. Apparently, the black humor appeals to them. They frequently mention Chapter 20, in which Melvin tries to re-kill Charlie. And has a rough time of it. A very rough time. How do you kill somebody who is already dead?