A Writer's Tale

I considered it an opportunity to write novellas as well as short stories, so the five tales added up to a fair chunk of material. “The Good Deed” was 39 pages long, “Joyce” was 29 pages, “Stickman” was 27, “The Mask” was 34, and “A Good, Secret Place,” the title story, was 42 pages in length.

They represent, in my opinion, some of the best short fiction I have ever written.

We asked my friend, fellow writer Ed Gorman, to provide an introduction for the collection. He came through with a wonderful piece.

We asked my friend, Larry Mori, to prepare artwork for the book. I’d been introduced to Larry by Joan Parsons when we visited the Dark Carnival book store during our trip to the Bay Area for the Night Visions VII signing arranged by John Scoleri. (It all ties together.) Larry specializes in creating very bizarre and mysterious collages. He did several terrific pieces for A Good, Secret Place. He also provided suggestions about the design of the book.

In 1993, it was published by Deadline Press (John, Peter and Bob). It consisted of 574 individually signed and numbered copies and 26 individually signed and lettered copies.

Every copy was signed by me, Ed Gorman and Larry Mori.

Thanks to the imagination and persistence of Bob Morrish, each of the 26 lettered copies was bound in leather and came with a built-in lock. They looked like diaries. I thought this was extremely cool, since the title of the book was A Good, Secret Place. Both editions sold out, and copies are now rare.

A Good, Secret Place was nominated (short-listed) for a Bram Stoker award for excellence in the “collection” category for 1993. The awards banquet took place in Las Vegas during the first weekend in June, 1994. While I was at the banquet not winning the award (it went to Ramsey Campbell), Peter Enfantino sat beside me and his wife Margaret was downstairs winning a ton of money at the slot machines.

Because of my great experiences in connection with A Good, Secret Place, I was eager to work again with John, Peter and Bob.

And the book you now hold is the result.

ENDLESS NIGHT

Apparently, I was “at loose ends” after finishing Savage.

I wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. So instead of embarking on a new novel, I wrote all the original material for my short story collection, A Good, Secret Place. I wrote several other short stories, had a false start on a novel entitled, The Caller, then started work on Quake. After spending about four months on Quake, I gave it up. I felt overwhelmed by it. So I wrote my novella, Wilds. Then, on May 6, 1992, instead of returning to Quake, I started writing a novel called Sleep Over.

I wanted needed? to write a fast-paced, straightforward book with non-stop action. I wanted to write another Midnight’s Lair, another One Rainy Night.

But I had trouble coming up with a suitable plot.

Then one afternoon, Ann and I were watching a rental video on our VCR. It was called, Tower of Evil, and had something to do with murders at a lighthouse.

While I am watching television shows and movies (or doing most anything else, for that matter), my mind often wanders. It did so during Tower of Evil. A scene in the movie set me to thinking how neat it would be to take the big finale of a horror story (after all, that’s when most of the cool really stuff happens) and start a story with it.

Instead of building up to the awful, bloody climax, why not begin with it.

And keep on going from there.

The climax just goes on and on…for the whole book!

To me, it seemed like a brilliant idea.

(Naturally, I do understand that a climax is not actually a climax if it happens at the start. I use the term simply to get across the idea that the effect I wanted to create would be like the climax of a book or movie in its intensity.)

It is the concept that led to Endless Night.

After coming up with the general idea of what I hoped to achieve, I needed the particulars. In particular, what would happen during the big opening scene?

I wanted it to be really scary.

So I sat down and asked myself, “What’s the scariest situation I can possibly imagine?”

A babysitter being interrupted on the job by a madman is about the most creepy situation I can imagine. She’s a teenaged girl in a strange house late at night, has nobody to depend upon for help, and someone is coming for her. Yikes!… But there are great, classic movies covering that territory.

I wondered what other set of circumstances might lead to feelings of vulnerability similar to those created by the babysitter scenerio.

And I came up with an alternative that seemed perfect.