A Writer's Tale

Sometimes they are nuisances. Other times, they come as welcome relief. After a few days of full time writing, I often start to feel a little stir-crazy. I need to get away from the computer, away from the house, and do something anything other than sit alone in the office and continue chugging ahead with my book.

I love writing.

I have to write.

If I’m away from it for very long, I start longing to get back into action.

But it is work. Even if everyone I know seems to think I’m on permanent vacation (and I encourage the image by making cracks about being on early retirement), there is a need for me to sit down almost every day and focus on a story and write pages.

Five pages a day.

Thirty to forty pages per week.

Probably about 1,500 pages per year.

Year in and year out.

When I’m not writing, I’m often thinking about it. Toying with plot ideas. Keeping my eyes open for unusual characters, places, and situations that I might use in a novel or short story.

Even when I’m on trips, I’m constantly on the lookout for fresh material.

The “permanent vacation” is no vacation at all. I’m a full-time writer. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m always on the job.

But I’m doing what I want to do.

In spite of all the drawbacks, the writer’s life is a great life. If you can manage to pull it off. And I believe that anyone can. All it takes is desire, persistence, guts, and a little bit of luck.

My 10 Favorite Vampire Novels Written By Others

1. Dracula - Bram Stoker

2. Fevre Dream - George R. R. Martin

3. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

4. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

5. The Keep - F. Paul Wilson

6. Live Girls - Ray Garton

7. Necroscope - Brian Lumley

8. Progengy of the Adder - Leslie H. Whitten

9. Salem’s Lot - Stephen King

10. They Thirst - Robert R. McCammon

My Books

HITCHCOCK DIDN’T GET AROUND TO MAKING A FILM BASED ON THE Cellar. In spite of that, I used to suspect that, no matter what else I might write, I would be seen as “the guy who wrote The Cellar!”

Robert Bloch wrote Psycho.

Richard Laymon wrote The Cellar.

There are worse fates. It is exciting to know that The Cellar had a major impact on so many readers and writers. Still, it wasn’t exactly thrilling to think that, no matter how many other books I might write, I would always be best known for the first.

At least I’d be in good company. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Margaret Mitchell and J.D. Salinger, for instance.

At this point, nearly two decades after I wrote The Cellar, I still have people tell me that it’s their favorite book of mine. But it has been followed by nearly thirty other novels.

It is no longer the work most often mentioned by my fans. In fact, nearly every book is mentioned, now and then, as a favorite. At this point, some titles competing with The Cellar for favorite status seem to be The Stake, Funland, and Savage.

In the pages that follow, I will tell you a little about all my books.

THE CELLAR

Having recently written in exhaustive detail about the creation of The Cellar for a limited edition, I won’t rehash the same material here. Instead, perhaps readers of this book would find it interesting to see my first notes for The Cellar. I found them recently. They were typed on my old IBM Executive, single-spaced on six pages of old blue paper. These notes were written for the sole purpose of working out ideas for my new novel, and were never intended for publication.

Except for fixing a few spelling errors and typos, I have changed nothing, omitted nothing. These are my complete notes for the day I started working on The Cellar.

Novel idea May 29, 1977 HOUSE OF THE BEAST

There is an old house either in a small rural town, or maybe in a city like L.A. Better a small town. On a dare, a boy enters it in dead of night. It’s deserted. Nobody had lived there for years. Boy goes in, doesn’t come out. People go looking. Find remains. Kid has been eaten. House searched.

Nobody, nothing alive found. They figure an animal from the hills had been inside house.

What kind of animal? Mountain lion? This happened, perhaps, in distant past.

Maybe story is told by guy who ‘was there originally, one who dared the kid to go inside.

Returns, as adult, to solve the mystery. Finds that the house is still there. Nobody had lived in it since the bit with the kid.

It has been converted into the town historical museum. The Historical society has it open during the day. Nobody there at night. Maybe guard on grounds. Could have scene in which something happens to guard hears something inside, goes to investigate, never seen again.