Richard Laymon Fan Club 3

The Official

Fan Club 3rd Issue – September 1996

LAYMON HOLIDAYS: GET AWAY FROM IT ALL TO AN IDYLLIC TROPICAL ISLAND THIS WINTER… BUT, HOLIDAYS CAN BE MURDER – SO DON’T FORGET TO PACK A GOOD BOOK…

Included in this issue: Laymon on Island, Did You Know, Crossword Quiz, Short Fiction Bibliography Part 2, New Web Site, New Book Announcement, Your Letters and more……

The Official Richard Laymon Fan Club ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL……….

I START THIS FAN CLUB NEWSLETTER THINKING TO MYSELF, WHAT AM I GOING TO WRITE FOR AN INTRODUCTION THIS TIME? IT’S A RAINY DAY HERE IN PAISLEY. SCOTTISH SUMMERS WERE NEVER ANY GOOD FOR INSPIRATION! WELL I’VE DECIDED I WILL START WITH SOME GOOD NEWS.

I RECEIVED A PHONE CALL FROM RICHARD LAYMON’S PUBLISHER IN LONDON, TELLING ME THAT OUR FAN CLUB WILL BE ADVERTISED IN RICHARD’S NEW BOOK ‘BITE’ DUE OUT SOON. IT MIGHT NOT MAKE THE HARDBACK EDITION BUT WILL DEFINITELY BE IN THE PAPERBACK VERSION. SO BE PREPARED. THE REST OF THE ARMY IS COMING.

SO WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THIS MONTHS ISSUE? THE USUAL GUT CRUNCHIN’, BLOOD THIRSTY GORE, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS PLUS A QUIZ TO STRETCH YOUR GREY MATTER, AND ALL THE REST YOU HAVE COME TO EXPECT. AS ALWAYS, WE WILL BE LOOKING FOR A RESPONSE TO SOME OF THE FOLLOWING TOPICS:

YOUR FAVOURITE RICHARD LAYMON BOOKS

YOUR BEST GORY BITS

LETTERS TO RICHARD LAYMON

IDEAS FOR FUTURE PUBLICATIONS

YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTERS

DRAWINGS

OR

SKETCHES

FOR

OUR

FRONT

COVERS

ANYTHING TO DO WITH RICHARD LAYMON AND HIS BOOKS ALL RESPONSES WILL BE VERY HELPFUL IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS FAN CLUB MAGAZINE. AS YOU CAN GUESS, THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR, SO WE NEED TO SHARE OUR INFORMATION AND IDEAS TO HELP KEEP OUR CLUB GOING. ANYWAY, I’LL LET YOU READ ON AND HOPEFULLY ENJOY:

THE OFFICIAL RICHARD LAYMON FAN CLUB ISSUE #3…………………………

LAYMON ON ISLAND

Richard Laymon writes about his book ‘Island’…… I’ve always wanted to take a crack at writing a book about people marooned on a tropical island. There are many classics on that subject, such as ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ ‘Lord of the Flies.’ Here in the States, we have the legendary television comedy series ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ in which a group of loveable goofballs “set sail on a three-hour tour,” met a storm, and got stranded on an uninhabited island. And it seems that there have been countless motion pictures and television movies about marooned people. I like to take a subject that has been around a while and find a new way to handle it. THE STAKE was an offbeat angle of vampire stories. RESURRECTION DREAMS took zombies in a fresh direction. SAVAGE was a very unusual treatment of the Jack the Ripper story.

ISLAND is my attempt at giving a new angle to the age-old stories of castaways. Instead of being marooned when a storm destroys their ship, my group is already ashore, picnicking on an island when their yacht blows up. Within a few hours after that, one of the castaways is found hanged. I employed a fairly unusual technique in the writing of ISLAND. The whole story is actually told, as it occurs, by a young man, stranded with the others, who is keeping a journal. We see the entire adventure through his eyes, as he chooses to tell it. What makes this different from the usual first-person narrative is that the writing of the journal becomes part of the story, and the writer of the journal is not aware of events until they happen. Most first-person novels seem to have been written by a character at some indefinite point in the future, recounting his tale perhaps years after the events of the story occurred. We usually don’t know what has prompted him to tell his story. The telling seems unrelated to the actual events in the story. And it is generally obvious, from the start, that the narrator survived to tell his tale. Not so with ISLAND. We know why Rupert is keeping the journal. We know when. We know where it is at all times. But we never know what may happen next – or whether he will even be alive to finish the story. Because he writes the journal as he goes along, anything can happen. I had a great time exploring and experimenting with the possibilities of using the journal format. It opened up a lot of new ways to play with the story, new ways to surprise myself and my readers. The technique may have been triggered by my own novel, ENDLESS NIGHT. In that story, a character named Simon uses tape recordings to keep a running account of his horrid activities. I was delighted, creating Simon’s tapes, to discover how many strange and nifty things are possible when the story is being told as it happens (or shortly afterwards) by one of the characters. In ISLAND, I took that technique pretty much to the limit.

Your Letters Thanks to Bob Buckley of Australia for this article ‘Those Gals’

While I like the fantastic, gruesome and sometimes gross aspects of Richard Laymon’s books, what, to me, sets them apart from others in the same genre and makes them compulsively readable, are the female characters.

The girls (gals) embody aspects that make “Yanks” so admirable to those, like myself, outside the USA. They are strong, tough, independent and self confident, (no matter what their creator does to throw at them) but they are also quintessentially feminine, vulnerable and very sexy. Richard Laymon shows an ability to describe his girls in an intimate and personal way that makes them truly live. My favourite half dozen girls, and it is really hard to decide this as every tale has at least one or often more, are in order: ANGELA, from DARKNESS, TELL US. Attractive, appealing, long suffering and very sexy, her relationship with Howard is the main thread of the story which makes all of the horrors to which they are subjected worth wading through. SHINER (DEBBIE), FROM FUNLAND. Another top notch girl who develops as the story unwinds. I guessed who she was about half way through. Her beau, Jeremy (Duke) is a complete twerp and suffers accordingly for lusting after the unattainable and unwantable. His is a fate I noticed Richard Laymon dispenses on occasion to weak males. BARBARA, from QUAKE. Thank God she is there to lead Pete to salvation. Resourceful, inventive, intelligent and cute. I particularly loved her trick of playing ‘dead’ to escape ferals, who as it turned out didn’t come anyway. JANE, from IN THE DARK. What a dogged little battler this girl is. OK, she’s a bit avaricious, but you have to admire her pluck in following MOG’s leads. And the ending when she fights him to the death. Definitely a winner. JESSE SUE LONGLEY, from SAVAGE. Perhaps the most appealing of Richard’s heroines, she is the sort of girl a chap wouldn’t mind wandering the Old West with, although her method of introducing herself by chucking a rock on Trevor’s head before belting into him is perhaps a little extreme. Then again, wrestling with her mightn’t be all that bad. CONNIE, from ISLAND. This poor misunderstood girl is one of my true favourites. Rupert, whom I had tagged as a drip from the start really misses his chance with this girl. Even after she has been slugged out cold, brained with a rock and belts herself senseless on the bars of her cage, she comes up better each time. OK, she is a bit cranky from time to time, but any girl who is being constantly outdone by her mother in the sexuality stakes would develop a bit of a complex. Connie is, I suspect, a sex firecracker primed to erupt. Tough luck Rupert, you’ll never know what you missed. On a different subject, why do the monsters from ‘BEAST HOUSE’ have to come from some heathen place near Australia. Come, come Mr Laymon, let’s have them sourced from darkest Africa or deepest Asia in the future.

Did you Know…..?

THE CELLAR was inspired by a real tourist attraction. Winchester House in San Jose, California was a huge, creepy Victorian house built by a widow of a rifle maker. She’d been told by a spiritual advisor that the spirits of people slain by the Winchester rifle needed a rooming house. It was her job to build it and never to stop building it. She would supposedly not die as long as construction continued. So construction went on, day and night for years – until she died anyway. The result is a huge, sprawling, bizarre monument to the old gal’s lunacy.

FUNLAND was also inspired by actual events that took place in Santa Cruz, California. The area was fictionalised in the book as well as the ‘trolling problem.’ But it was as close to a true life story as possible.

BOOK REVIEW – “BEWARE” Main Characters: Lacey Allen & Matt Dukane Lacey Allen is a reporter in a small town called Oasis (You gotta roll with it, you got to…. Stop singing Martin). The local store in Oasis has been visited by an unknown, unwelcome visitor, eating supplies and making a mess. The owner of the store Elsie is so spooked, she closes the store up early and goes to the local pub for a drink and ends up telling the story to Lacey. Being a reporter, Lacey can’t pass up the chance of a good story and suggests they go and check it out. Upon arrival they find a meat cleaver stuck in the door which was thrown by the unknown visitor at a customer trying to gain entry to the closed store. Elsie is given a guard dog by a friend who guarantees the safety of her shop while the dog’s around. Next morning, the dog’s body is found mutilated. The dog’s owner promises revenge for his dog and decides to stay the night in the store himself……

This is a very enjoyable book, fast paced with plenty of action and blood to keep all Laymon fans ecstatic. The story moves from Oasis to Tucson, the nearest big city, which is when the real action starts. The book contains cults, conspiracies, black magic, plenty of fast paced action and, of course, murders a plenty! A must for all Richard Laymon fans.

RICHARD LAYMON HAS RECENTLY COMPLETED HIS NEW BOOK, TITLED:

‘FIENDS’ Hardback due out January 1997

SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY – PART 2 RICHARD LAYMON THE FOLLOWING INCLUDES ONLY SHORT FICTION PUBLISHED IN A PROFESSIONAL, PAYING MARKET. TITLE: Phil the Vampire The Fur Coat Dracuson's Driver Invitation to Murder I'm Not a Criminal Good Vibrations Eats

PUBLISHED IN: Vampire Detectives, Daw Books The Earth Strikes Back, Zeising Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Daw Invitation to Murder, Dark Harvest After the Dark, Maclay Stalkers #3 Night Screams Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine The 2nd Black Lizard Anthology of Crime

DATE OF RELEASE: 1995 1994 1992 1991 1993 1991 1996 1985 1988

The Bleeder

Mess Hall The Hunt Bad News Special

Slit

The Bank Street Book of Mystery A Good, Secret Place Fiends New Blood A Good, Secret Place Fiends Book of the Dead Out are the Lights Stalkers Fiends Best New Horror Out are the Lights Under the Fang System Shock Fiends Predators Fiends

1989 1993 1997 1989 1993 1996 1989 1993 1989 1997 1991 1993 1991 1993 1997 1993 1997

A QUESTION FOR LAYMON (Question by Lisa Markham) Q: Who are your favourite ‘Horror’ authors? I’ve been impressed and influenced by such early authors (aside from Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc.) as Poe, Hawthorne, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, M.R. James, Algeron Blackwood, and H.P. Lovecraft. A special favourite of mine is William Hope Hodgson, who wrote astonishingly creepy tales – mostly about the sea. Other guys who wrote neat, creepy stuff were Seabury Quinn (a WEIRD TALES contributor), and Davis Grubb (famous for his novel THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER). As a teenager, I read everything I could find by Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson. I was also a fan of Ray Russell and Roald Dahl. Ira Levin has written several excellent horror novels and thrillers. He can always be counted on for a story that’s unusual, creepy, well written and memorable. Stephen King? I thought SALEM’S LOT was just about the best, creepiest book I had ever read. And it was partly the inspiration for THE CELLAR. I’d been working on violent suspense thrillers before reading SALEM’S LOT. After being so impressed by King’s vampire book, however, I decided to write something spooky. And I’ve been doing that, pretty much, ever since. Of course, I am a big fan of Dean Koontz. He is also a very close friend. Since meeting him in about 1980, I have read everything he has written, and I always look forward to a new book of his coming out. (He has written the introduction for my story collection, FIENDS, which Headline will be publishing in January, 1997). Though I like all his books, a few of my real favourites are STRANGERS, ODDKINS, and TWILIGHT EYES.

Some of my other favourite current American writers are Jack Ketchum, F. Paul Wilson, Bentley Little, Ed Gorman, and Michael Cadnum. A big favourite of mine is the Canadian author, Michael Slade. He is actually a couple of guys, apparently. Slade’s books are violent, original, very well written, wonderful. I always grab the new one the moment I see it. Of current British horror writers, I am a great fan of James Herbert. His book, SURVIVOR, is one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. THE FOG is even spookier. I actually had to stop reading THE FOG one night because it was creeping me out too much. (Of course, I resumed reading it the next day) (coward, Martin). I don’t think anybody does it better than James Herbert. Other British favourites of mine are Simon Ian Childer and Harry Adam Knight. I understand that they are the same person, or writing team. Their stuff reminds me of monster movies from the 1950’s… but better. I’m also a fan of Shaun Hutson, Stephen Gallacher, and a fairly new writer named Simon Clark, whose stuff is very creepy. I am of course, leaving out a lot of writers whose work I really enjoy, but it’d take too much space to name them all. Those mentioned above are a fairly good sampling, though, of my favourites. Generally speaking, I read 50-60 books per year. They include bestsellers, mysteries, classics and horror. And a few non-fiction books, usually about crime or politics. RICHARD LAYMON CROSSWORD PUZZLE

ACROSS 1. 3.

A big hill with no light You need a boat to see this tourist attraction 5. Don’t let the black rain get you 6. Zombie book, Laymon style 9. One character drove a hearse in this book 11. An invisible enemy was in this book 12. Birthplace of Richard Laymon 14. Librarian adventures 15. Publishers 16. Richard’s pseudonym (woman’s name)

DOWN 1. 2. 4. 6. 7. 8. 10. 13.

Supernatural helped when finding treasure, or did it? Jodie Fargo was the main character of this book A night for the witches Author: ex-teacher A happy place to be, or is it? Sounds like meat Richard Laymon’s first book Trevor Wellington Bentley Vs Jack the Ripper

17. Main character kept a diary in this book 18. You wouldn’t want to be in Los Angeles when this happens

THE RICHARD LAYMON WORLD WIDE WEB PAGE

VISIT THE NEW RICHARD LAYMON WWW PAGE AS OF 30TH AUGUST 1996 ON HTTP://OURWORLD.COMPUSERVE.COM/HOMEPAGES/MARTIN_WHITE THE WWW PAGE WILL BE UPDATED EVERY QUARTER ON THE SAME DATE AS YOU RECEIVE YOUR FANZINE

THE END I hope you have enjoyed this issue of The Richard Laymon Fan Club. As mentioned before we need input from YOU. If you are interested in sending anything to contribute to this fanzine then write to: MARTIN WHITE, THE RAMOY BUSINESS CENTRE, 4 BROOMLANDS STREET, PAISLEY, PA1 2LR SCOTLAND, UK. RICHARD LAYMON

Or you can fax to: 0141 848 6669 (24 hours a day) Or email: [email protected] [email protected] Or visit WWW Page: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/martin_white Next issue will be three months from now, so get your pens, word processors, etc ready. Any questions will be passed on directly to Richard himself and published in the next issue. And remember, please don’t have nightmares.

SEE YOU NEXT ISSUE

Special Thanks to: Mike Bailey, Headline

Richard Laymon, Bob Tanner, International Scripts,

Produced by: Edited by:

Martin White, Paul Vakharia. Martin White, Paul Vakharia.

ORIGINALLY PRINTED BY: THE RAMOY CENTRE, 4 BROOMLANDS STREET, PAISLEY, SCOTLAND, UK.