A Writer's Tale

The finale of The Lawmen is based on a historical fact.

The fact is this: a couple of outlaws from North America were gunned down in a Shootout with the Bolivian military, but nobody knows for sure who they were. Many people assume they were Butch and Sundance.

But who knows?

While my finale stands on its own, it achieves its real potential by playing off the reader’s familiarity with Goldman’s movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I’ve just finished re-reading The Lawmen.

Though several scenes had remained vivid in my memory over the past fifteen years, I found that I’d forgotten much of the story. I read the book with nearly fresh eyes. And liked what I read.

It’s full of colorful characters, some horrific violence, a bit of humor here and there, romance and love and sex, unexpected plot twists, accurate historical and geographical details, and a birth scene and some infant behavior that had obviously been based on my own experiences.

(My daughter was two years old when I wrote The Lawmen) And then there’s Thirty-Three, the book’s penultimate chapter. Unable to recall exactly how I’d pulled off certain tricks, I entered it with some trepidation.

And grinned as I read it.

Amazed that I’d been able to pull off such a stunt.

The Lawmen laid much of the groundwork for my next western” novel, Savage: From Whitechapel to the Wild West on the Track of Jack the Ripper, which would be published ten years later. Aside from the knowledge I gained by researching and writing The Lawmen, it gave me an additional boost of confidence. The idea of writing Savage didn’t seem quite so overwhelming because I’d already written one western novel, and it had been published.

The Lawmen, a paperback original selling for $3.25, came out in July, 1983. As the cover proclaims, it was the “fortieth book in the bestselling series, The Making of America.”

And the only one ‘written by me. According to the first royalty statement after its publication, it apparently sold about 20,000 copies.

The 1982 paperback, so far, is the only edition of The Lawmen.

NIGHT SHOW

On December 18, 1981, a month after finishing The Lawmen, I started writing a novel called Chill Master. While working on it, I was also busy with revisions of Beware! and struggling with my secret project, Hollywood Goons. Two months into the writing of Chill Master, my three-book contract with Warner Books came to an untimely end, one book short. I finished the book on April 30, 1982. Before sending it to Garon, I changed the title to Night Show.

By then, my career in the U.S. was down the toilet. But things were still popping along in the U.K. In November, 1982, New English Library purchased Beware! and Night Show. They published- Night Show in 1984 a year before they would publish Beware!, which I’d written earlier.

Night Show didn’t get published in the U.S. for two more years. That’s because word had gotten around in the New York publishing circles…

There was at least one editor who intended to buy Night Show until the sales department of her company got in touch with Warner Books. The offer (for a two-book deal) was withdrawn.

Because of the disaster at Warner, most publishers in the U.S. would not touch a Richard Laymon book. The situation caused a four year gap between the publication of Out Are the Lights and my next book to be published here, Night Show.

Thomas Doherty Associates Tor eventually came along and took a chance on me. Tor offered me a contract for Night Show in April, 1985 and published the book a year later.

Night Show is sort of a companion piece to Out Are the Lights. Both were largely inspired by my regular visits to the Culver Theater.

During the heyday of the “slasher movie era,” the Culver showed a new horror movie almost every week. And I went to most of them. Kelly was a baby then, so Ann stayed home and took care of her while I drove off, one night every week, to see whatever scary movie happened to be playing at the Culver.

Though I felt guilty about leaving Ann and Kelly behind, I felt that it was my professional obligation to see the movies.

After all, I considered myself to be a horror writer. I needed to see what was being done in the field. So I went anyway. By myself.

The Culver Theater was an old place across Washington Boulvevard from the Culver City studios of MGM (now Sony). Once a “movie palace,” it had been split up into a crazy patchwork of small theaters with stairways leading in strange directions. The seating for one of the screens actually seemed to be the former balcony.

The place had real atmosphere.