The Official

Fan Club
2nd Issue June 1996

Included in this issue: Book Review of Savage,

Richard Laymons Top Ten, Did You Know, New Book

Announcement, Short Fiction Bibliography, and

more

The Official Richard Laymon Fan Club

ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

Hello again, and welcome to the second edition of the

Official Richard Laymon Fan Club. Our membership
numbers are gradually increasing. So far this fan club has
still to reach foreign soil, bat two members in America
(hello Roy and Richard). But, soon we should have
members from all corners of the world. I would like to
take this opportunity to thank those of you who wrote
back with your thoughts and ideas, they are greatly
appreciated. Please keep them coming.

We will be looking for a response to some of the

following topics:

Your
Richard Laymon Books

Favourite

Your Best Gory Bits

Letters
Richard
Laymon

to

Ideas

for

Future

Publications

Character

Your

Anything to do
with Richard
Laymon and
his books

Favourite

Drawings
Sketches for our front covers

or

A souvenir from
Midnights Lair
cave

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, Ill let you read on and hopefully enjoy:

THE OFFICIAL RICHARD LAYMON FAN CLUB ISSUE

#2

THE RICHARD LAYMON TOP 10

We asked Richard to send us a current top ten of his books, here is his
response in full:
I spent a while trying to make up a list of my own top ten. And gave up. Its
partly because I like them all. But in a way, I think such a list might be of no
service to my readers. Ive received a fair amount of fan mail and talked to
many of my fans during autograph parties, and it seems very obvious that a
persons favourite book of mine depends a lot on his or her own personal
tastes and interests.
I could talk about each of my books, but that would be excessive. For now,
Ill relate a few things that Ive heard from fans.
For a long time, fans generally told me that THE CELLAR was their
favourite. I enjoyed hearing people talk about how great they thought it was.
But it started to bother me a little, making me feel that I might never out-do
my own first book. The Cellar continues to be mentioned as a favourite, but
not so often anymore.
A great many people like THE STAKE best. While writing it, I jokingly
referred to it as My book in which nothing happens, because it has a lot of
stuff that isnt action. One thing that a lot of people like is the material about
Larry Dunbars writing experiences. Much of that is closely based on me.
Again and again, people tell me how much they like RESURRECTION
DREAMS. They like its black humour. When questioned, they always bring
up the scene in which the nut tries to kill one of his resurrected subjects, the
doctor. There is also frequent mention of what happens at the science fair
the headless girl and the car battery.
Readers who really like the outdoors often mention DARK MOUNTAIN (also
known as TREAD SOFTLY) as their favourite of my books. It has a camping
background as does DARKNESS, TELL US.
Quite a few fans raved about BEWARE! These people scare me. (Just
kidding.) In a way, I feel very close to them because I figure theyre as
demented as me. BEWARE! is my nastiest book, I think. Or it was, until I
wrote ENDLESS NIGHT.
SAVAGE is the favourite of many of my fans, and it would certainly be on
my own list of favourites. Some writers have told me they think it is my best,
most important book. It is, however, one that I wouldnt recommend to
people who arent very experienced readers. If someone doesnt know his
way around words fairly well, s/he might have a little trouble with the

language. On the other hand, it is the book I would recommend if I were

trying to impress a well-read person.
At one time or another, I think that everyone of my books has been
mentioned by someone as his or her favourite. I think it has little to do with
one book being better than another. Its mostly about how a book happens
to match up with the background, taste and fantasies of a reader.
I have decided to prove Richard right by publishing two top fives of
members who have wrote to me:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

In The Dark
Blood Games
Endless Night
The Cellar
Midnights Lair

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Blood Games
The Cellar
Resurrection Dreams
Quake
Island

Thanks to Lisa Markham and Gill Herbert for their top five books, and for
proving Richard right in the theory that no one person has the same
favourite books.

Did you
Know..
Richard once used HIMSELF as a character in his
book BLOOD GAMES. One of the main characters of
the books phones him up to ask permission to use
the story for a video for her college project. He kindly
gave permission. What a nice guy!
While writing his book QUAKE, Los Angeles was hit by
its biggest ever earthquake The Big One. His
house was in disarray as lamps, TVs and cupboards
fell, the fireplace collapsed and his wife was struck
on the head by a falling lamp. Fortunately no one
was seriously hurt, and the manuscript for Quake
was strangely undisturbed!

RICHARD LAYMON HAS RECENTLY

COMPLETED HIS NEW BOOK, TITLED:

BITE
WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE INFO

BOOK REVIEW SAVAGE

Main Character (and Narrator): Trevor Bentley

This book starts out in the dark streets of the West End of London, with the
main character looking for his uncle, a policeman, to come to the aid of his
mother. While out on the streets he meets with Jack the Ripper, and is also
mistaken for Jack the Ripper himself by an angry mob. The following chain of
events lead Trevor and Jack the Ripper to the Wild West of the USA (sounds
strange, but makes sense when you read the book). When he reaches the
shores of America, Trevor lodges with a retired General and his granddaughter. He works around the house for them to raise enough money for a
boat ticket back to London. But during this, he learns of several brutal killings
which resemble the work of The Ripper. Feeling guilty about leading The
Ripper to America, Trevor vows to rid the world of Jack the Ripper once and
for all.
His journey to the Wild West is never dull!
This is one of Richard Laymons best books. It is, as he explained himself in
the Top Ten section earlier, for a well read person who can get around larger
words fairly easy. It is not in the style of any of his previous books, but since
the release of Savage, similar styles of writing have been used in Endless
Night and Island. This book is a must for his fans.

SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY PART 1

RICHARD LAYMON
THE FOLLOWING INCLUDES ONLY SHORT FICTION PUBLISHED IN A
PROFESSIONAL, PAYING MARKET.
TITLE:

PUBLISHED IN:

Desert Pickup

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Stockholm Periodical (Swedish)
Broadcast on German Radio
Cemetery Dance
A Good, Secret Place

DATE OF
RELEASE:
November,
1970
1970
1981
Spring 1994
1993

Fiends
Roadside Pickup

Oscar's Audition
(Pseudonym Dick
Kelly)

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Dutch Periodical
A Good, Secret Place
100 Tiny Little Terror Tales
The Executioner Mystery Magazine

Paying Joe Back

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Masters of Suspense
A Good, Secret Place

Out of the Woods

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

A Good, Secret Place
Fiends

1993
September,
1975
1992
1993
December,
1975
1993
1997

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

A Good, Secret Place

February, 1976
1993

A Good Cigar is a
Smoke
The Direct
Approach
The Champion

Stiff Intruders
Barney's Bigfoot
Museum
Blarney
Spooked
The Grab

A Good, Secret Place

January, 1997
December,
1974
1976
1993
1996
June, 1975

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

A Good, Secret Place
Cavalier
Modern Masters of Horror
Paperback reprints by Ace
Paperback reprints by Berkeley
A Good, Secret Place
Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine
A Good, Secret Place
Fiends

January, 1977
1993
October, 1978
1981
1982
1988
1993
March, 1980
1993
1997

Creature
A Good, Secret Place
Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine
A Good, Secret Place
Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine
A Good, Secret Place
Gallery
The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XI
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories
A Good, Secret Place

1981
1993
1981
1993
October, 1981
1993
January, 1982
1983
1993
1933

A QUESTION FOR LAYMON (Questions by Lisa Markham)

Q: Do you ever give yourself the jitters when youre writing?
A: Sometimes, I give myself the jitters when Im writing. Its fairly
uncommon, though. For one thing, I do all my writing during daylight hours
(It might be fun to write a book at night, sometime, and see what happens. I

easily get the creeps late at night, if Im awake when my wife and daughter
are asleep.)
Though I get deeply into whatever Im writing about strongly feeling what
the characters feel there is also a separation. While part of my mind is in
the situation, another part is observing, watching from a distance, judging,
making decisions about which words to use, what to have happen next, etc.
The observer in me doesnt get the jitters. More often than not, when
something really BAD is happening, hes giggling with delight and thinking
Oh, wow! Thisll get em!
So, while I am living my stories, I am also partly standing back and pulling
the strings the Master of Games.
Q: Are any of your characters based on people youve met?
A: Some of my characters are based on people I know. The character most
closely based on a real person is Pete in THE STAKE. Though the events of
the books are mostly fictional, Pete looks and acts very much like my friend
Frank De Laratta. Also, Larry Dunbar is based fairly closely on me. This
caused me some embarrassment because the wives of Pete and Larry in THE
STAKE are not at all like our real-life wives. I had to keep blurting out to
Franks wife, Its fiction! Its fiction!
A character in BEAST HOUSE, Gorman Hardy, was a very sleazy operator, a
real jerk. I modelled him after my first literary agent, who is now deceased.
Oddly enough, Id never heard of the name Gorman at the time I created
Gorman Hardy. I later got to know Ed Gorman, a fine fellow and terrific writer,
and we have become very good friends.
I modelled Jody Fargos father, in ENDLESS NIGHT, after Los Angeles police
Sgt. Stacey Koon, who was imprisoned for using force to subdue a felon who
was resisting arrest.
For the most part, however, my characters arent based closely on any real
people. Theyre mixtures of this and that from various people.
I do sometimes use the name of a real person. In some of my books, I have
given sneaky nasty characters the names of actual people Id had problems
with. Its a sneaky, secret way of getting revenge in my own mind. On other
occasions, Ive named characters as a tribute to people I admire. An example
of that is Neal Darden, the protagonist of BODY RIDES. I gave him the Darden
name as my private tribute to Christopher Darden, who was a prosecutor
in the O.J. Simpson case. I was greatly moved by Chris Dardens courage and
honesty.
THE FUTURE IS HERE NOW

YOU CAN SEND YOUR SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RICHARD LAYMON FAN CLUB
VIA THE INTERNET. EMAIL MESSAGES CAN BE SENT/RECEIVED BY OURSELVES
THE NUMBER FOR THIS SERVICE CAN BE OBTAINED ON THE LAST PAGE OF
YOUR FAN CLUB MAGAZINE.
ALSO: COMING SOON THE RICHARD LAYMON WORLD WIDE WEB
PAGE

PEN PAL
CORNER
WELCOME TO PENPAL CORNER. IF YOU WOULD LIKE A PENPAL, PLEASE SEND
YOUR DETAILS TO THE ADDRESS ON THE LAST PAGE OF THIS FANZINE. THIS
MONTH WE FEATURE AN AUSTRIAN MAN LOOKING FOR AN ENGLISH
SPEAKING PEN PAL. IF YOU WISH TO MAKE CONTACT PLEASE WRITE TO:
ANDREAS GRUBER,
ANTON KRENN STR. 23,
2540 BAD VOSLAU,
GROBAU,
AUSTRIA.

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: 106022.3106@compuserve.com
ramoybc@aol.com
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 dont have nightmares.

See you next

issue.

Special Thanks to:

Richard Laymon, Bob Tanner, International Scripts.

Produced by:
Edited by:

Martin White, Paul Vakharia.

Martin White, Paul Vakharia.