HIS IS RICHARD LAYMON telling it how it is in A Writer’s Tale (Deadline Press, 1998), a limited edition of five hundred copies. What I want to howl from the rooftops is that this is one of the most honest books about writing ever produced. It’s certainly the most honest I’ve ever read.
This is no glitzy show biz tale of how to make a million bucks then go squander your days on a Caribbean beach. No, Richard Laymon takes you on a step-by-step guided tour of the underbelly of life as an author and the world of publishing. He glosses over nothing, describing his own sometimes painful climb to bestsellerdom. It’s a book that lists plenty of facts and figures. Richard’s first novel, The Cellar (Warner Books, 1980) sold at least 250,000 copies. You smile reading the autobiography, sensing the man’s delight at this hard won success. But his second for Warner, The Woods Are Dark, crashed and burned. He believed that his American writing career had been truly destroyed. Such is the man’s skill you find yourself living those highs and lows with him. How early success petered out into a welter of rejections. This succession of bloody noses might drive other writers to find an entirely new career but Richard Laymon merely gritted his teeth and carried on writing and writing and writing, like a bloodied and exhausted heavy-weight boxer, taking more and more blows but never quitting. Never beaten. And, of course, phenomenal success for him waited just around the corner.
Richard Laymon and I shared the same agent, the brilliant and amazingly shrewd Bob Tanner of International Scripts, so I heard a lot about Richard before I met him in the flesh at a World Horror Convention in 1999. You’ll read everywhere what a nice guy he was. That is the truth. Those who were fortunate to meet him still cherish him in our hearts. You’ll hear many an anecdote about him, about his good nature and his encouragement of new writers (me included), but if you can find A Writer’s Tale read about his life as he wrote it in that perfectly razor-sharp style of his. And to round off this piece I’ll close with Richard Laymon’s own words that appear in A Writer’s Tale. It’s good advice. Remember it.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
EVERYBODY WHO WANTS
TO BE A WRITER
PERSIST AND PREVAIL!
Simon Clark
1. YOUR PLACE. RIGHT ABOUT NOW. WHISPERS IN YOUR EAR.
Some people lose it as young as thirteen. Most lose it around fifteen, sixteen. Ham Masen was a late developer. He lost his visibility when he was eighteen.
The thing is, with Inherited Visibility Syndrome (IVS), there are no half measures. There’s no misty midway mark. Invisibility is one of those absolutes, like being pregnant. You can no more claim to being half-pregnant or a quarter-pregnant than to being partially visible.
You’re either HERE.
Or you AIN’T.
If you have IVS you could walk up to the guy reading this book and put your finger right here:
X
Right on the dirty big X. They’d never even know. In fact, you could put your hand on the page, even your filthy great manhood; they’d see through you...and I mean right through you. Come to that, I shouldn’t be surprised if someone is doing that right now. There’s a few of us around, you know. So we might be sitting next to you with our heads between your face and the book grinning up at you.
We might watch you shower.
We might watch you make love.
We might watch you do that funny thing you do when you think no one else is looking.
And sometimes, just for the hell of it, we might blow gently onto the back of your neck, so you get one of those goose-over-your-grave shivers.
Now you might be thinking (if you’re not one of us) what a great opportunity for mischief this is. You could pull your schoolteacher’s hair, pinch your boss’s nose, help yourself to cash from a bank vault, assassinate that irritating TV presenter who hogs the screen whatever the channel.
But no. With invisibility comes responsibility.
There’s a strict code of conduct.
We Invisibles don’t interfere with the lives of the Visibles.
That is, we didn’t until eighteen-year-old Ham Masen came along. Remember what I said? He was a late starter. So maybe he was making up for lost time.
Let me take you back to when I first met Ham.
2. ECHOES YARD. NIGHT. IT HAPPENED AT THE COUNTY MORGUE.
I saw him charging toward me. He was shouting, waving his arms, eyes staring. He didn’t look as if he’d seen a ghost. He looked like a dozen ghosts armed with machetes were hell-bent on juicing him.
He ran right across Echoes Yard, banging on windows of stores and yelling at the top of his voice. With it being close on midnight the only place open was Burger King. I watched customers looking round for the source of this hullabaloo, but when they saw nothing they shrugged and turned back to their burgers and fries.
The young guy making all the hoo-hah is Ham Masen. He realizes something has just gone totally weird in his life but he doesn’t know what.
“You’ve gotta help me! You’ve gotta help!” he screamed at a drunk staggering home from a bar.
The drunk looked round and couldn’t see a damn thing. Wobbling, he made a gesture like he was flicking away a bothersome fly, that’s all.
Ham Masen screeched, “You can’t see me, can you? I’m here! Look at me!”
The drunk peered round, seeing squat. Then Ham made his first mistake. He grabbed the drunk by the arm, still shouting that he needed help. The drunk was too pixilated to work out anything in a logical way. Instead he let fly at (to him) fresh air with his fists.
By chance one connected on Ham’s young, thin face. He jerked back to land in a bush, his legs kicking the air.
Time I intervened.
I ran across to where Ham sat in the bushes, shaking his head. If he’d been a cartoon character little blue birds would have been tweeting round his head.
He touched his jaw. “Ouch.”
At least the drunk’s punch had knocked the panic from him.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t bust your jaw?”
“Don’t think so. It’s sore though...and my neck.” He swiveled his head just to check that it didn’t drop from his shoulders. “Aches like hell.” Then he looked up at me with brown eyes that were so big and so full of sadness that my heart went out to him.
His eyes glistened. “I didn’t figure it would be so tough being a ghost...” He touched his jaw again. “I didn’t know ghosts could feel pain either.”
“You’re no ghost.”
“Of course I am. No one can see me...when I look in a mirror I can’t even see me.” He shrugged then lay back in the bushes. “I’m a ghost. I’m dead. Leave me.”
“Come on, give me your hand.”
“Leave me here to rot.” He frowned. “Maybe ghosts rot after all. I mean if I can feel pain—”
“Listen, give me your hand. I’ll help you.”
He gave me a funny look as if deciding whether or not I was teasing him. Then he held out his hand to be helped to his feet.
“I’m Kate Shayler.”
The help-up became a handshake.
“Ham Masen.”
“Ham?”
“Yeah, at school kids called me Bacon. My parents named me after my uncle so they’d inherit stuff when he died.”
“But Ham?”
“Ham Claytz...you know, Claytz Plates?”
“So they got the money.”
“And I the name.”
Now I know why he owned those big, sorrowful eyes that made him look like a saint.
He brushed leaves from his shirt and jeans. “And just when I didn’t think my life could get any worse, saddled with a name like Ham...this happens. I die and I’m left to haunt Echoes Yard. The place you only visit when it rains.”