A Writer's Tale

Headline liked the title, Narrow Calls, about as much as they’d liked Daring Young Maids. They preferred to call it something along the lines of Blood Savage. We compromised, got rid of the Blood and kept the Savage. I added the subtitle: From Whitechapel to the Wild West on the Track of Jack the Ripper. Unfortunately, the subtitle didn’t make it onto the cover.

Headline accepted Savage as part of my three-book contract.

Book Club Associates placed an initial order for 8,000 copies.

On March 5, 1993, it was bought by Thomas Dunne of St. Martin’s Press for an advance of $10,000.

It has been published in Germany and Hungary.

At the time of this writing, the Headline paperback of Savage is in its 8th printing.

I had extremely high hopes for Savage. It seemed to have so many things going for it. It was about Jack the Ripper. It was a boy’s adventure in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn.

It was a sprawling western in the tradition of Lonesome Dove. It was a love story in the tradition of. ..Love Story? It was exciting, poignant, nostalgic, violent, erotic, scary, gruesome and often extremely funny.

If that weren’t enough, it had Jesse Sue Langley!

With all that going for it, I thought it should be a bestseller.

And in the United Kingdom, it pretty much was.

But here in the U.S., it received no star treatment; it received the usual “let’s ignore it” treatment. The publisher gave it no publicity whatsoever. If a person looked real hard, he might find two copies, spine-out, in the back of some bookstores.

Business as usual.

But it annoyed me more than usual.

Savage is a book that should’ve gotten noticed. It should’ve been published in a big way.

If a book like Savage gets ignored, what does it take? It takes a shrug, that’s what. And a turning of the back.

In spite of the book’s commercial failure in the United States, I know that it is successful as a work of art.

To my own way of thinking, I somehow managed to “pull it off.” It turned out to be everything I’d hoped it might be.

People have called it “a masterpiece.”

People have compared it to a novel by Dickens. People have said that it’s the book I’ll be remembered for.

A lot of people love it, and so do I.

A GOOD, SECRET PLACE

Near the end of June, 1991, the Horror Writers of America held its annual convention in Redondo Beach, California. One night during the weekend, I was approached by John Scoleri. I knew John from his activities at the B. Dalton bookstore in Santa Clara, where he’d been a real promoter of horror fiction and had even published a newsletter, Scars, in which he reviewed new horror releases and their covers. I’d first met John after he invited me to a book signing for Night Visions VII.

At the 1991 HWA meeting, John came up to me and introduced his friend, Peter Enfantino. Along with Robert Morrish, they were involved in publishing the magazine, The Scream Factory, and their small press had already produced a couple of limited edition hardcovers. They asked if I would consider letting them publish a collection of my short fiction.

I liked these guys. Perhaps more important, Ann liked them.

She is my career-guard, warning me away from people and projects that rub her the wrong way. Instead of suggesting I should have nothing to do with John and Peter, she thought I ought to pursue the situation.

As we discussed the possibilities, the guys assured me that they would be very flexible about the terms of the contract and the content of the book.

We very quickly hit upon the idea of putting together an assortment of old and new stories. My “Author’s Note” explains it:

This book contains every adult short story of mine that was sold and published from the start of my career through “Bleeder” in 1989. Eleven of the fifteen early stories have never been anthologized, and until now were available only in old copies of the magazines in which they originally appeared…

They comprise about half of this volume. The other half is made up of previously unpublished stories. The new ones are not from “the trunk.” They were all written in the fall of 1991, especially for this collection.

At the time I was approached by John and Peter, I was in the midst of writing Savage. I continued with Savage and finished it on September 6, 1991. On September 10, I began to write original’ short fiction for the collection.

Between that date and October 20, I wrote five new stories.

It was a great experience. I felt completely free to write about whatever suited my fancy.

(Most often, stories are ‘written “to order,” and must fit into the theme of a magazine or anthology.) These could be about anything.