A Writer's Tale

It seemed as if we had an intruder. While one personality (Timmy) seemed childish and sad, the intruder seemed sly and malicious.

I spent a lot of time muttering things like, “Holy shit!” and “I don’t believe this,” and “This can’t be happening.”

But it was.

We had a great, spooky time that night. And I’ve been very nervous about Ouija boards ever since.

When I wrote Darkness, Tell Us, I tried to recreate some of the realities of what I experienced that long-ago night with Ann, Chris and Dick in the dark kitchen.

I also called upon my rather vast experiences as a university student to create the “end of semester” party that gets everyone into such trouble. Over the years, several of my teachers held night classes at their own homes. These were usually the very best of teachers, confident and relaxed. We had memorable times, but nobody ever dragged out any Ouija boards.

Darkness, Tell Us is also another of my camping books.

As with Tread Softly, much of its action takes place in high mountain wilderness areas.

Where you’re on your own.

I tried to make Darkness, Tell Us a book with many different facets. It’s a Ouija board story. It’s an adventure story about a treasure hunt in the mountains. It’s a love story. It’s a rescue story. A survival story.

And it contains what is, in my opinion, the most shocking material I’ve ever written.

I’m referring to what happens near the end of the book.

At the bus.

The writing of that scene made me feel physically ill.

And then as if a malevolent spirit (Butler, perhaps) had decided to have some sport with me the entire chapter got dumped out of my computer due to a loose electrical plug.

I lost it all.

And had to write it again.

I finished Darkness, Tell Us on February 6, 1990.

It led to a new, three-book contract from Headline at about $45,000 per book. Though the paperback is currently in its 8th printing, there was never a foreign language sale.

Never a sale to the United States.

Never a book club sale.

Never a movie or TV option.

Nothing.

Maybe it’s a lousy book (though I personally think it’s one of my best).

Or maybe, in writing a novel about Ouija boards, I wandered into territory where I wasn’t wanted. And somebody decided to teach me a lesson.

P.S. Perhaps writing about the “curse of the Ouija Board” somehow put a jinx on it. I no sooner described my suspicions, above, than my agent sold Darkness, Tell Us to Russia.

Strange, after seven years of nothing.

Seven years?

Wooooo.

BLOOD GAMES

On March 6, 1990, I started working on a novel that I called Daring Young Maids.

This was to be my most mainstream novel up to that point.

I’d learned my lessons. Starting with Tread Softly, I’d seen my success increase dramatically each time I intentionally enlarged the scope of my novels.

So I gave this story my largest scope ever.

Along with the main story a rather creepy tale about five young women having an adventure at an abandoned lodge I included chapters called “Belmore Girls.” (Belmore is the name of their university.)

Each of the “Belmore Girls” chapters is about an incident that is complete in itself. One tells how the five young women met during their first year of college. Another shows how they wrought terrible vengeance on a fraternity. Another tells about a memorable Halloween escapade. In one of the tales, they even make a student film based on my short story, “Mess Hall.”

There are quite a few chapters dealing with the early adventures of these five friends. All of them are not scary. They pretty much cover the gamut of emotions.

And they are interspersed throughout the main story stopping it dead in its tracks.

Of course, once again I worried.

A lot of very nasty stuff happens in the book but so do a great many other things. I worried that people might think I’d gone too mainstream. I worried that the “Belmore Girls” passages might bore some of my readers.

Naturally, I didn’t let any of those concerns stop me. I wrote the book the way I wanted to write it.

Always do.

But why did I want to write it that way?

Several reasons.

1. Without the Belmore Girls chapters, I would’ve had nothing but a standard, fairly shallow, genre horror tale. It would’ve been little more than a “slasher film” in print.

2. Without them, I would’ve had to find a way of doubling the length of the main plot.

My contract with Headline called for a book of at least 140,000 words. That’s a lot of words.

Rather than trying to find ways of stretching the main story line, I chose to expand the size of the book by writing the “back story” of the five friends. Their back story was what I call “infinitely expandable.” It could be 100 pages, 300 pages, 600 pages however many I needed. (I’m always on the lookout for “infinitely expandable” plots and subplots. It’s a necessity when each novel has to be at least 600 manuscript pages in length.)