In Laymon's Terms

And that was the most wonderful thing about Dick Laymon. Sure, you’ve probably all heard it before, but this is true. Dick Laymon was one of the kindest people on Earth. He took the time out to email me, sometimes pages-worth, information for the site. Never was a request denied. Never was a question left unanswered. That’s just the kind of guy he was. Always willing to help, always with a kind word and always with a joke or two.

RLK! continued to grow. Somewhere around 1998 we hit 100,000 visitors, a number I never dreamed of reaching. Dick and I were pretty damn proud of that. The address for RLK! was beginning to turn up in Hodder Headline versions of his novels, as well as Cemetery Dance editions in the US, and so more and more Laymonites were getting online and finding out all they ever needed to know about Richard Laymon. Truly, the website was like a small pebble, pushed off a mountainside, that just slowly got bigger and bigger as it continued to roll. And it still is rolling!

Our emails soon moved away from just the world of writing, and started to contain family news and views on world events. Soon, our relationship wasn’t just webmaster and writer, we became friends across the ocean. Even when there was a whisper of a Laymon UK Book Tour, I started scouting locations and ideas for a Laymon Down Under Tour. Sadly, it never happened. In fact, you could say that about a lot of plans and ideas we had. I just wish we’d acted on them sooner. But who was to know?

I built up enough courage in 1999 to ask Dick if he would like to read the novel I had just completed, The Nocturne. He said he’d be honored to, and I quickly shipped off a copy. A few weeks later, Dick emailed me a ten-page email with his comments and ideas. He knew the US better than I did and he suggested I move the location of the novel from Arizona to Washington State. So, I picked up all my characters and moved them north.

He also had a worry that the fire I had burning throughout the novel was just too large to be believed. Soon after, a fire swept through New Mexico that just couldn’t be stopped. It burnt for weeks. He wrote back to me, “Remember the concerns I had about the fire in The Nocturne? Well, forget them. Have you seen the news?”

I’m proud to say I agreed with every other suggestion Dick made and I rewrote a much stronger and sharper novel.

So strong and sharp, that Dick provided a quote for the cover:

“A really fast-paced, grim, exciting, sexy novel.

It’s very gripping, violent, and weird. I really enjoyed it.

The Nocturne is a book that any Laymon fan ought to enjoy.”

Another proud moment of my life thanks to Dick.

And so another year passed and we all survived Y2K, and the Laymon novels just kept coming. We couldn’t have asked for more. Suddenly, the US was starting to notice Richard Laymon, and Cemetery Dance and Leisure Books upped their publishing schedules for Laymon novels. All of a sudden, Dick was receiving the recognition he richly deserved. Of course, the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand had known about Laymon for years, and now the US was starting to catch up.

This turn of events brought with it Richard’s finest hours. Popularity in his own country was soaring, a film of In the Dark was in production and suddenly he was running for—and winning—the Presidency of the Horror Writers Association.

We were all set. It couldn’t get any better than this.

People were saying “Golden Age of Horror” for the first time in years.

RLK!’s news updates got longer and more detailed as Laymon news was flying in from everywhere. It was a busy time for both of us, but Dick still always found the time to sit down and let me know what was up and what was happening. Of course, by this time we had a Laymon Message Board, where fans could leave their thoughts and questions. Dick was always on the board too—always answering and giving writing (and sometimes personal) advice.

I began writing Love Lies Dying around this time. LLD was a book I was dedicating to Dick, and a book he said he was eager to read. I wanted to repay the favor of Dick’s dedication to my wife and I in Come Out Tonight. Who knew when I started my novel that Dick would never read it? That he would never see one word of it? Even as I placed a Laymon in-joke into the novel, and made it a vital part of the story, who knew that Dick would never get to chuckle as he read it? I was so looking forward to his email once he’d read it. But it was not to be.

Love Lies Dying now stands as a tribute to Richard Laymon, not just because of the dedication, but because he is—literally—in it. It’s my finest work, and I owe that to him.

February 15, 2001, is not a day I will forget. Yes, February 15, not 14. Remember, Australia is 15-18 hours AHEAD of the US. So, when I got to work on February 15, 2001, I found my inbox overflowing with emails, all with the same subject heading: Laymon dead?