What man hasn’t fantasized about finding a beautiful woman in his garage one rainy night — a woman he’s never seen before but with whom he feels an immediate emotional connection — who leads him into a deadly adventure that ends up turning his entire life upside down?
Well, okay ... maybe that’s just me.
I’ve always loved stories like that, though. Remember Hitchcock’s North by Northwest? Cary Grant plays Manhattan advertising executive Roger Thornhill who has lunch in a restaurant one day and happens to raise his hand at precisely the wrong moment. Unnoticed by him, some shady thugs are watching him, and because he raises his hand when he does, they mistake him for a government agent. They lead him out to a car and take him away. That begins a thrill ride that involves Roger being framed for murder and leads to a breathtaking climax on Mt. Rushmore — and lands Roger in bed with Eva Marie Saint.
There’s something extraordinarily appealing about that possibility. Let’s admit it, most of us have pretty ordinary lives that are fairly short on thrills and intrigue. The idea that our everyday routine could suddenly be disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious stranger who might lead us into an exciting, breathless adventure is a pretty seductive one, isn’t it?
Back in the mid-1980s, I visited a friend in Baltimore, Maryland. I had one day of sightseeing before I was hit by the worst flu bug I’d ever experienced. It knocked me to the floor and then kicked the crap out of me. I spent most of my time in Baltimore in bed. In addition to being sick, I was pretty miserable that my trip to Charm City had been ruined and embarrassed that my friend had to put up with a sick houseguest. But there was nothing I could do about it, so while I was stuck in bed, I did what I always do — I wrote. I had a notebook handy and, mostly to distract myself, I began a story with nothing particular in mind. In the opening, a man found a beautiful woman huddling in his garage on a rainy night. He didn’t know her, had never laid eyes on her before, but his first thought upon seeing her was, I’ve found you. I didn’t get very far, but it took my mind off of how sick I felt. Over the next few years, though, the idea returned now and then. I would look it over, consider it, then put it away again.
By the end of the 1980s, I’d written five books, a couple of novellas and several short stories, all in the horror genre. I was in the mood to write something outside of that genre. Horror gives you a certain amount of freedom. You deal with vampires, werewolves, demons and other supernatural creatures. Horror works best when it’s grounded in reality with real people who are in real situations. But because it deals with the supernatural, once you’ve established that familiar world, you are free to become untethered from reality. The framework may be rooted in reality, but within that framework, the dead walk and are thirsty for blood, people can turn into monstrous beasts and the denizens of hell roam the earth to make people miserable. Remove the supernatural element and suddenly things are very different.
The dead don’t walk. People don’t turn into anything. Hell is something the clergy uses to frighten money out of their congregations. In the real world, the supernatural isn’t an option. If you’ve grown accustomed to it, not having it to fall back on is a challenge. I wanted to be challenged. I returned to that idea that kept haunting me — the one about the guy who finds the beautiful stranger in his garage.
I did what I usually do — I wrote that initial scene and then followed it to see where it would lead me. I discovered, to my surprise, that I was writing a love story, although an unconventional one. When Gerard Brady discovers that woman hiding in his garage, there’s a reason he immediately thinks, I’ve found you. Of course, I didn’t know what it was when I started out, but I discovered it — just as I hope you will.
Trade Secrets was an exciting writing experience. No monsters, nothing supernatural. Everything took place in the confines of hard, cold reality. Of course, that’s not to say there are no monsters in the book. After all, reality holds plenty of monsters. They just aren’t supernatural. Somehow — for me, anyway — that makes them scarier. There are more than one in Trade Secrets, but I think the scariest is Edna Macomber. She’s my personal favorite of all my villains.
When I was in school, there was a woman named Mrs. Macomber who was a scary monster. She was the mother of a classmate. For reasons I never fully understood, she hated me on sight. She was angry all the time. She did not walk, she stalked. She stormed. She charged. In my memory, I always see her with her fists clenched at her sides. There was a rage constantly boiling inside her, and all too often it was directed at me. She was a “room mother” and spent a lot of time at the school, always involved in one capacity or another. Any achievement I had, anything I managed to accomplish at school that was known to everyone — winning a competition, or a class election, things like that — infuriated Mrs. Macomber because she had it in her head that somehow I had snatched it — whatever it might be — away from her son.
Her son was a nice guy but he was socially awkward and tried a little too hard to fit in and be funny. For that reason — and because nobody liked his mother — he was often picked on. He had some health problems that worsened as he got older, requiring a lot of treatment, including blood transfusions. Years later, he contracted AIDS from one of those transfusions and died. I’ve always regretted not getting to know him better because I’m sure he could have used a friend; with that woman for a mother — domineering, smothering, constantly present, and so very angry — it’s a wonder the kid wasn’t a complete wreck all the time. Anyway, Mrs. Macomber had it in for me and all my friends knew it. When she showed up on campus, one of them usually warned me with the chilling words, “Macomber’s coming.” Those words play a role in Trade Secrets.
Edna Macomber has a cruel job. She enjoys her work. What she does and who she does it for are among the book’s secrets, which you’ll have to read to learn. Even though Trade Secrets isn’t a horror novel, I succeeded in frightening myself when I created Edna Macomber.
Trade Secrets is available for Kindle at Amazon, for Nook at Barnes and Noble, in paperback and as an audiobook from Audible Audio.
If you enjoy Trade Secrets, I hope you'll post a review at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or on your blog or website. To stay updated on new releases, visit my website RayGartonOnline.
I live in far northern California near Mt. Shasta. In the shadow of the mountain is a quaint little town that looks like it belongs on a postcard. The colorful mythology surrounding Mt. Shasta has made the mountain a New Age mecca, which has benefited the town.
According to the folklore of local Native American tribes, Chief Skell descended long ago from the heavens to the mountain’s summit and his spirit resides there to this day. Mt. Shasta is also central to the creation myth of northern California tribes. According to legend, the Great Spirit cut a hole in the sky through which he pushed snow and ice to create the mountain, and then he used it as a kind of step ladder to descend to the earth.
In 1904, legend has it that a man named J.C. Brown, while prospecting for gold for the Lord Cowdray Mining Company of London, England, discovered a cave that sloped downward for 11 miles, leading him to a subterranean village filled with gold, ancient armor and shields, and the mummified remains of long-dead residents, some of whom stood up to ten feet tall. 30 years later, Brown told his story to John C. Root, who assembled an exploration team of 80 people. But on the day their expedition was to begin, Brown and Root disappeared and were never seen or heard from again. Some believe that those mummies were the remains of survivors of the lost continent of Lemuria and that the village allegedly found by Brown was part of their vast city under the mountain. Some even claim many Lemurians still live in that underground city. If you happen to see one of them, the Lemurians, it is said, will wipe your memory clean of the encounter — which leads one to wonder how anyone could possibly know that and be able to remember it.
The story of the Lemurians originated in a fantasy novel called A Dweller On Two Planets, written in the 1880s by 17-year-old Frederick Spencer Oliver. The novel gives an account of the Lemurians moving to Mt. Shasta after their continent sank into the ocean. According to the book, the Lemurians live under the mountain to this day. Frederick’s parents were astonished by this accomplishment; they believed their son to be a big slacker who was simply not very bright, so they figured there had to be some other explanation for his novel. They decided the book must have been channeled through Frederick by otherworldly forces. It was marketed as such and remains in print to this day. Now if someone tells you that refugees from the sunken continent of Lemuria built a city underneath Mt. Shasta and if that person presents this information as historical fact, as many do, you can smile and say it was all made up by an imaginative teenager.
While visiting Mt. Shasta in 1930, mining engineer Guy Ballard encountered a man who introduced himself as Comte de Saint-Germain, one of the so called “ascended masters” (which has always sounded to me like a degree in mountain climbing, as in, “Of course I’m qualified to climb that mountain, I have an ascended masters in mountain climbing!”) and ended up founding the religious movement known as the “I Am” Activity.
Some people think the mountain is a refueling spot for alien spacecraft, although I suspect the aliens have found other planets on which to gas up since prices have gone through the roof here. The spacecraft descend to the mountain under the cover of large saucer-shaped clouds that conceal them from onlookers. (For those who enjoy facts, these, of course, are lenticular clouds, which occur naturally at high altitudes.)
The rich mixture of beliefs about the mountain are reflected in the town of Mt. Shasta. At first glance, it looks like a pretty typical little mountain town. But on closer examination, you’ll find stores selling magical crystals and geodes, books on meditation and crystal power, ascended masters, how-to guides on being a shaman and other similar subjects, kitsch and chotchkies representing fairies, Hindu gods, space aliens, Jesus Christ, pagan deities and Native American folklore, and other evidence of the mystical phenomenon known as commercial exploitation.
In 1987, New Age guru Jose Arguelles came up with what would be the first worldwide synchronized meditation, which was correlated with an unusual astrological alignment signifying, to people who think astrological alignments signify things, a shift in the planet’s energy from one of war to peace. This global meditation was called the Harmonic Convergence, and the plan was to gather people at various “power centers” around the world. Arguelles believed that if 144,000 people were to meditate in each of these “power centers” at a scheduled time, this new age of peace and enlightenment would be launched. (In the years since 1987, we have discovered that simply wasn't the case.) One of those “power centers” was Mt. Shasta, less than an hour’s drive from me. Well, there was no way I was going to miss out on a day of people-watching like that. (Writer Mahesh Grossman does a short, funny one-man musical show on his experience at the Harmonic Convergence.)
Mt. Shasta was the most crowded I’ve ever seen it that day. People came from all over the world to ... to ... well, to do whatever the hell it was they planned to do — meditate, vibrate, massage each other’s chakras, whatever. A lot of these people were dressed like they’d just flown in from New Delhi. Other were dressed like they’d just flown in from 1970. The town’s main street was lined with vendors selling crystals, jewelry, mystical drums, all kinds of New Age literature about everything from meditation to past life regression to communicating with the inhabitants of other planets.
A guy who bore a strong resemblance to Tommy Chong was selling what looked like some kind of tribal drums. I didn’t know how they fit into the Harmonic Convergence milieu, so I asked. This was a mistake. Chong launched into an explanation of how one could draw energy from the universe down to the earth using his drums. He explained to me the healing power of drum circles. He demonstrated some of the drums. He did everything but write a ransom note, which would have been appropriate because I felt I was being held captive. He was such a nice guy that I didn’t want to cut him off abruptly and move on (back then, I was much more patient with nonsense than I am now), so I listened. But ultimately, I had to disappoint him by not buying any drums.
There were a lot of crystals for sale. One booth in particular, run by an attractive auburn-haired woman, had an especially beautiful selection of crystals and stones on display and I stopped to look them over. The woman greeted me and asked what I was looking for. I said I was just looking.
“What properties are you interested in?” she asked.
“Properties? I don’t understand.” Was she selling real estate, too?
“Well, different crystals and stones have different properties, different energies. Some heal, some bring abundance and prosperty, fidelity in love, clarity of mind and — “
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. I shrugged and said, “I’m just interested in what they do best — look pretty. I really don't believe in that other stuff."
Her face changed. She reminded me of Donald Sutherland at the very end of Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I was afraid she was going to alert the others that there was someone walking among them who did not belong. So I quickly moved on.
There were a lot of demonstrations planned that day, and I was eager to see one in particular. In fact, it was the main reason I had driven to Mt. Shasta for the Harmonic Convergence. It was a “channel” — a woman who claimed that an ancient entity spoke through her to impart the wisdom of the ages.
Channeling had become quite popular at that time, mostly due to a woman named JZ Knight, who originally used the word “channeling” to describe the process by which a 35,000-year-old entity named Ramtha spoke through her. Guess where Ramtha is from. Go on, take a guess. Lemuria! It's a small universe, isn't it? That’s right, while all the other Lemurians were taking up residence under Mt. Shasta, Ramtha set up shop inside the head of a Tacoma, Washington housewife and mother named Judy Hampton in 1977. Judy became JZ Knight — and she also became very rich with the help of her imaginary friend. She was everywhere in the 1980s, popping up on The Merv Griffin Show, Oprah, Larry King Live and a host of other shows. She got a lot of attention from celebrities like Linda Evans, who was famous for her catfights with Joan Collins on the wildly popular primetime soap Dynasty, and Shirley MacLaine, who, in addition to being an Academy Award-winning screen legend, is known for her views on ”star beings” and UFOs and reincarnation.
Ramtha (speaking through Knight, of course) claims to have been a Lemurian warrior who battled the Atlanteans more than 35,000 years ago with an army made up of 2.5 million soldiers. That would make Ramtha’s army more than twice the size of the estimated population of the entire planet at the time. This lends some credence to the theory that JZ Knight is full of shit. But shit sells, and this puppetless ventriloquist act certainly worked for Knight. A lot of people have bought into Knight’s message that each of us is a god and capable of creating our own reality. Have you ever been to a dinner party where each person inhabits his or her own reality? Trust me, the conversation sucks. Whenever I find myself in a situation like that, I quickly create a reality in which no one else is able to create their own reality, and it clears things right up.
I had seen Knight on TV several times, doing her shtick. Ramtha sounded like James Mason trying to do an impression of Yul Brynner, and while doing Ramtha, Knight became very animated, often pacing the stage, squatting and swaying and gesticulating with her arms and hands. Now 65, Knight is still around. She's been tucked, pulled, peeled and Botoxed to within an inch of her life — today her lips are twice the size they were in 1985, suggesting that Knight has enlisted a team of cosmetic surgeons to help create her reality. She doesn't seem to move around as much as she used to anymore and Ramtha’s accent is much less pronounced. He sounds a lot more like Knight now, perhaps after a couple too many cocktails and not enough sleep.
After seeing Knight on TV so often, I couldn’t resist the chance to see a channel perform in person at the Harmonic Convergence. She appeared in a rickety old theater in the town of Weed (yes, that’s right — Weed!) just up the road from Mt. Shasta. I don’t remember her name, and I never heard of her again after that weekend. There’s a good reason for that: She was terrible. Her message was similar to Knight’s — “Fuck reality!” — but in spite of the fact that her husband was on stage with her the whole time, seemingly coaching her, this woman’s performance was amateurish and completely unconvincing. Like Ramtha, the entity she channeled claimed to be an ancient, benevolent entity who was generously passing on his ancient wisdom and experience to the people of the modern age.
As I watched her dubious performance, I entertained myself by wondering what would happen if she really were channeling some being ... that wasn’t telling the truth. Just because a 30-thousand-year-old entity says he has our best interests at heart and wants to impart all kinds of cosmic wisdom to us doesn’t necessarily mean that’s true, does it? I mean, call me crazy, but is it really a good idea to believe everything we're told by every 35,000-year-old entity that comes along? What if he were lying? What if he had a hidden agenda? Sure, crackpots like JZ Knight want only one thing — money. Well, two if you include fame, but I think money is the driving force behind convincing people that some invisible, long-dead guy is talking through you. But what if the crackpot weren't a crackpot and the being speaking through her had other plans? What if it was just using the attractive, charismatic channel as a way of getting attention and amassing followers? And what if his plans for those followers were ... unpleasant?
The seed of Dark Channel was planted that day. Nearly a decade later, I dusted off the idea. By then, the novelty of the New Age movement of the 1980s had worn off, but it had been thoroughly absorbed by our culture. That day spent converging harmonically in Mt. Shasta gave birth to Hester Thorne, the charismatic founder and leader of the Mt. Shasta-based Universal Enlightened Alliance and the channel for a millennia-old entity named Orrin. Some people say that Thorne is an accomplished fraud. But they are wrong. Others — people who are troubled, damaged and dealing with serious problems in their lives — find hope in Orrin’s message of peace and unity. The only problem is ... Orrin is lying.
My New Age horror novel Dark Channel is available in paperback, and for Kindle at Amazon, Nook at Barnes & Noble, and as an audiobook from Audible. To keep up with new releases, interviews, appearances, and other information, visit my website at RayGartonOnline
Back in the mid-1980s, I lived for a while in a tiny studio apartment in North Hollywood. That’s in southern California’s San Fernando Valley, where all the towns melt together in one long blur of strip malls, fast food joints, gas stations, doughnut shops and traffic lights. There was always a lot of traffic and it took forever to get anywhere. A simple outing to get some groceries felt like a long road trip.
To get out of my depressing apartment, I went for a lot of walks and spent late hours writing in an all-night coffee shop in nearby Studio City called Tiny Naylor’s. Sometimes writing was difficult because the people-watching at Tiny’s, which unfortunately no longer exists, was so distracting. Every Wednesday evening, a group of familiar character actors—the kind of actors whose faces you recognize but whose names you don’t know—came in together. The group always included Mark Lenard, who played Spock’s father Sarek on Star Trek, and Dave Madden, who used to play Reuben Kincaid on The Partridge Family and whose distinctive voice carried throughout the restaurant whenever he was there. They were the only two whose names I immediately knew, but the group included other familiar faces from movies, TV shows and commercials. Tracey Ullman and Jodie Foster came in frequently and most trips to Tiny’s included at least one celebrity sighting. The San Fernando Valley is probably the capital of the porn industry—it was back then, anyway—and Tiny’s got a lot of business from people I often didn’t immediately recognize with their clothes on. Down the street from Tiny’s was the famous Queen Mary night club, and after it closed at 2:00 a.m., the drag queens came in for coffee and breakfast. They were among my favorite regulars because they were so friendly and funny and they always seemed to be performing, even while they ate. One of them was a wiry little old guy who had to be at least 75, who always entered Tiny’s dancing.
But I digress.
There was some pretty interesting people-watching on the streets, too. I don’t know what North Hollywood is like now, but back then, it was rather seedy. On my walks, I encountered a lot of winos and drug dealers and hookers—the kind of background color that showed up in a lot of my fiction from those years. But mostly, there were kids. Teenagers whose dress and hairstyles reflected those seen on MTV at the time seemed to be everywhere. They wandered the streets, sat around in small groups, haunted the video games and pinball machines in convenience stores. I suppose that doesn’t sound too unusual, but it seemed odd to me at the time because there were so many of them. They didn’t go to school and they were around day and night, almost as if they had no homes to go to. I saw the same teenagers over and over again, and the creepy thing was...they watched me. They’d follow me with their eyes as if they were suspicious of me. Maybe it’s because they knew I was watching them. I’m an inveterate people-watcher and I try to be unobtrusive about it, but I think they caught on fast that they’d captured my attention.
Those kids weren’t the only ones who haunted the video games and pinball machines in the convenience stores—so did I. My apartment was lonely and depressing and never felt like any kind of home, so I spent as little time there as possible. When I was there, all I did was drink, so by staying out as much as I could, I probably saved my already tormented liver from further damage. I tried talking to a few of those teenagers at the video games in the 7-Eleven, but they weren’t interested in a conversation with me.
They seemed to have nothing better to do, no place to go, and I suspected there was no one wondering where they were. There was something very sad about them. They almost seemed to be waiting for something. I had no idea what that might be, but they were awfully patient about it. I wondered what would happen if they just didn’t go home again. Were their parents involved in their lives at all? How long would they have to be gone before their parents would become concerned? What if the thing or event or person they were waiting for finally came along and took them away?
These were the thoughts that led to Crucifax. After Live Girls, I wanted to write something that did not involve vampires, or the squirming black manifestations of evil from Darklings, or the seductive and hungry monsters from Seductions. I wanted to do something completely different. Those aimless, wandering North Hollywood teenagers gave me Mace, a kind of modern-day rock-and-roll Pied Piper. But instead of leading rats out of the village, he leads the teenagers of the San Fernando Valley out of their homes and schools and into his basement lair where he offers them all the sex and drugs and rock and roll and freedom they want. But it comes, of course, at a terrible price.
My agent submitted the novel to Simon and Schuster under the title Crucifax Autumn. My editor didn’t like that title, though—and that wasn’t all she didn’t like. There’s a particularly gruesome scene in the book involving a cunnilingual abortion. It’s cunnilingual because a character performs it with the aid of his three-foot-long tongue. Then he eats the fetus. The scene was long and extremely graphic, and my editor’s response was, “There is no way this book will be published with this scene as written!” I strongly disagreed with her and went to my agent, Richard Curtis, certain that he would back me up. I was wrong. He thought the scene was unnecessarily explicit, too long, and made the story grind to a halt. I was young, stupid and drunk, and this made me angry. I lost the battle with my editor and ended up watering the scene down. Then I fired my agent. This was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.
Crucifax, my fourth novel, was published as a paperback original by Pocket Books in 1988. But the unexpurgated Crucifax Autumn was published as a limited edition hardcover with beautiful cover art by the great Bob Eggleton. The story of the “censored chapter” in the book became quite famous in the horror genre, and that chapter was reprinted several times in magazines and collections, including Paul Sammon's Splatterpunks.
Some years later, I stopped drinking, sobered up, grew up and came to see that Richard Curtis had been right. The cunnilingual abortion scene was unnecessarily explicit and too long. I was guilty of doing something that I had always criticized in other writers—holding up the momentum of the story so I could go for the gross-out and make my reader squirm with disgust. I returned to Richard Curtis with my tail between my legs, and he was good enough to take me back. I'm still with him today. The trimmed chapter in Crucifax is the superior of the two editions, I think, and it is the one I’ve decided to stick with for all future editions of the book. And speaking of future editions of the book...
Crucifax is available from Open Road Media for Kindle from Amazon, for Nook from Barnes and Noble, in paperback, and as an audiobook from Audible. Now you can take a trip back to the San Fernando Valley of the late 1980s and find out what those little creatures are that lurk in the shadowy corners of Mace’s subterranean lair. To keep up with new releases and other information about my work, please visit my website at RayGartonOnline.com.
There haven’t been many constants in my life that are still constants today. Things change, relationships change, people come and go, there are ups, downs and in-betweens. Life is always in flux. But there are a few things that remain. I’ve been with my wife Dawn since 1988. I have books on my shelves that I’ve had for 40 years and probably won’t get rid of until they fall apart my in my hands and can’t be repaired. And then there’s Rich Chizmar and Cemetery Dance Publications.Don’t ask me when my relationship began with Cemetery Dance. I couldn’t tell you without doing a lot of digging around in my office and, even worse, some math. I was still drinking when I hooked up with CD, and that probably has a lot to do with why I can’t remember. I haven’t been a drinker in a long time. The fact that Rich started dealing with me while I was a drinker makes it pretty amazing that we still have a relationship today. My stories have appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine and in some of their anthologies and Rich has published many of my novels, novellas and collections. There was a period in the 1990s when I would have disappeared completely had it not been for CD. Rich kept me writing. In some ways, he kept me alive.Cemetery Dance Publications has become a mainstay in the horror genre. As much as it has grown, it remains a small independent publisher. The horror community tends to take it for granted. There’s a joke about CD. Maybe you’ve heard it.“There’s Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Time and Cemetery Dance Time.”This joke refers to the fact that CD is not always punctual with its releases, does not always stick rigidly to its schedule. CD takes heat for this. Sometimes a check is late, and believe me, when that happens, we writers have the capacity to go completely monkeyfuck crazy in ways one does not often find in people of other professions. But like I said, we – all of us, fans and writers alike – tend to take the company for granted. Many are unaware of how the company is run.Nobody in the genre has more genuine affection and respect for writers than Rich Chizmar. Rich is a writer himself and he knows what we do, how we do it and why we do it. He knows that writers are usually dysfunctional in one way or another, quite often damaged. And he likes us, anyway. He also does what he can to take care of us, to show us support when it will do the most good, throw work our way when it’s needed. But what you hear about is tardiness, grumblings from the fans, the usual complaints from writers. When a check is late, we writers sometimes fly off the handle, make angry phone calls, shoot off outraged emails, and all of this lands in Rich’s lap. I’ve done this myself. I’ve done this recently. We don’t know what’s going on at Rich’s end. Sometimes life gets in the way of things for publishers, too – a family crisis can pop up, illnesses occur, loved ones die, financial problems arise,and we’re quick to forget that this is not Simon & Schuster we’re dealing with, here, it’s still a relatively small, independent publisher with limited staff and funds. Most are also unaware that sometimes a check is late because a Cemetery Dance writer is in crisis and Rich has made an effort to do some shuffling to help him or her out. That’s the kind of person he is. But instead of getting the credit he deserves for that, he gets yelled at for something else.Sometimes people in this business get credit they don’t deserve. Someone will come along and crow about his love of the genre and his great respect for writers when in fact he’s found a genre he knows nothing about filled with young, inexperienced writers so desperate to get published that they don’t care how hard a publisher fucks them and won’t complain either out of fear of reprisal or simply because they’re too dazzled by the sight of their book on a book store shelf. This is just a hypothetical example, of course. I’m not pointing fingers, just trying to make a point. The credit an undeserving person or company might get is often because most people are unaware of what’s really going on behind the scenes. Of course, the same can be said of criticism.Rich Chizmar and Cemetery Dance deserve more credit than they get. They really do know and love the genre. They really do have great respect for writers. If that weren’t the case, I’m sure Rich would’ve thrown in the towel long ago. He certainly takes enough crap from us writers when we’re up against a wall and desperate for a check we’ve got coming. It happens. If writers were good business people and financial planners, they wouldn’t be writers. But in that desperation, we sometimes forget that the only check we’ve got coming at the time is from Cemetery Dance, because it’s still there, still buying our work, still supporting us, still producing fiction in one of the most disrespected genres in all of publishing, and in beautiful editions of which we can be proud.I’m talking to myself here as much as anyone else because I’ve been guilty of this plenty of times. That’s why I’m writing this. I think it’s important for us to stop when those desperate times come, take a breath, and remember who we’re dealing with, who we’re about to shout at over the phone, who we’re about to send that angry, vitriolic email to in our blind desperation for money before we do it. This is Cemetery Dance we’re talking about. Rich has put up with us this long and he’s still around, still doing it. While CD has been successful, the guy could just as easily find the same success in some field where he’d have the luxury of dealing with more stable people. He doesn’t do that because, to paraphrase Sally Field’s old Oscar speech, he likes us, he really likes us.So the next time you want to complain about a late release, or if you’re a writer, a late check, take just a moment to stop and think about this. Times are tough for everyone right now, and at some point they’ll get better, and then later, they’ll get tough again. Let’s hope when that happens that Cemetery Dance is still around, that Rich is still doing what he does so well, what he does with such affection. If a little tardiness is the worst thing you can complain about, then for crying out loud, be thankful. You want to hear some real horror stories about publishers? You want to hear about writers deliberately being ripped off? You want to hear about genuine contempt for writers hidden behind smiling public words of praise? How much time have you got?On second thought ... nah. That’s not what I’m here for right now. But trust me, it happens. It hasn’t happened with Cemetery Dance. You don’t hear those stories about Rich Chizmar. Because they don’t exist. That’s one of the reasons he’s still around. He’s a good guy, a decent guy, and sometimes that alone gets in the way of efficiency.So, a book is late? A check is late? Cry me a river. It could be worse. Trust me. Much worse. MUCH worse. And it has been. For many. But that sort of thing has never been done by Rich Chizmar. He’s on our side, and he’s one of the good guys. In all the years that I’ve had a relationship with Cemetery Dance – the longest and most fruitful professional relationship I've ever had – I’ve never met the man. But I think of him as a friend, and I’m grateful for CD. We could all be a little more grateful.
“When are you going to write something nice, Ray? Something I can read? When you are you going to write a love story?”
This has been the mantra of my family for decades. None of them reads horror fiction. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that none of them reads. To hear them tell it, the main reason they don’t read is that I have not yet written something nice that they can read. Something like a love story!
The fact is, I’ve written many love stories. Nearly every one of my novels contains a love story – even my horror novels, although Loveless: A Dark Love Story isn’t one of those. Of course, they’re not the kind of love stories my family would consider nice. The kind of love story they’re talking about is the kind of thing Nicholas Sparks writes. And if they’re waiting for me to write one of those ... well, all I’ve got to say is, pack a few sandwiches and get really, really comfortable, because it’s going to be a long wait.
My novel Loveless: A Dark Love Story is the kind of love story I write. I can’t help it. It’s out of my hands. Everything I write, even if it’s meant to be funny, takes a dark turn or two or three at one point or another. If it didn’t, it would feel dishonest to me. I think fiction should be a reflection of reality, not a distortion of it. In my horror fiction, things happen that have nothing to do with reality – people turn into werewolves, vaginas have fangs, spiders the size of Volkswagen Beetles eat people. But all of these things happen in an environment that is firmly grounded in reality.
Lots of good things happen in life. Wonderful things. They happen to all of us at one time or another. But bad things happen, too. They happen to good people for no other reason than ... well, for no reason. They just do. There’s a quote I love from Lawrence Kasdan’s sadly underrated 1991 film Grand Canyon. It’s delivered by Danny Glover:
“World’s a hard place. Sometimes you just get lucky. And, of course, sometimes you don’t. One thing’s for sure is that if you’re alive, some terrible shit’s gonna happen to you, and maybe some good things, too. But you can always count on the terrible. If it doesn’t kill you, you’re gonna be around to see it come down some other way.”
Some will say that’s an awfully pessimistic attitude. I think there’s a good chance those people enjoy the work of Nicholas Sparks. I think it’s an awfully realistic attitude. And a healthy one. I guess that’s reflected in my fiction. Bad things happen to good people for no reason. What’s wrong with facing up to that fact early on so you’re not surprised by it later? What’s important is how we deal with those bad things. Dealing with them is a lot easier when you have someone you love – and someone who loves you – by your side. And for me, that’s where the love stories come in.
Loveless is a love story about two lonely people. One of them is Amy Grady. For 16 years, she’s been married to her husband Roy, a man whose unpredictable anger and violence can explode at any moment, a man who slaps, punches and kicks her, and a man she no longer loves. Their teenage son Danny has been living with this tension all his life and it has taken a toll. The other lonely person is Walter Loveless, who has just moved in next door to Amy. He has been living a life of secrecy and isolation for so long that he is almost unaware of his loneliness anymore because it has become such a part of him.
Amy watches him – handsome, rugged – but is too shy to speak to him. But when they are finally brought together, electricity crackles between them and the attraction is instantaneous and powerful. But Loveless has secrets and a past that haunts him. Someone from that past – someone deadly – is still pursuing him. When Amy decides to escape her own past, she runs headlong into his.
Loveless: A Dark Love Story was first published in 2008 with my novel Murder Was My Alibi in a single limited edition from Lonely Roads Books that has become known as the Arthur Darknell Double because it was published under a pseudonym I intended to use for crime fiction, an idea I have since abandoned. Now it is available from Open Road Media in paperback and as an ebook for Kindle and Nook, and as an audiobook from Audible. For more information about my work and to keep up with new releases, visit my website at RayGartonOnline.
Live Girls was the result of my first visit to New York City. I was spending the day with my (then) editor in his office and he suggested I visit Times Square just a couple of blocks away. He told me to have fun ... just hang onto all my receipts and don’t make eye contact with anyone on the street.
“Eye contact?” I said. “Why not?”
“Because some people will misinterpret it, or take advantage of it. And don’t smile at people. You smile too much. That’ll make you look like an easy mark.”
Was I visiting Times Square or an institution for the criminally insane? I certainly wasn’t visiting the Times Square that exists today. This was early in 1986, before Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned up Times Square and moved Disney in, preparing the way for Mayor Michael Bloomberg to turn it into a family-friendly tourist destination. This was the old Times Square: dirty, gritty and a little dangerous.
I was 23 at the time and had led a pretty sheltered existence for most of my life. I’d grown up in a small town in a very protective religious family and had attended religious schools from grade one into my freshman year in college. My editor's warning made me nervous. For me, Times Square was an eye-opening experience.
As I strolled by the adult book stores and peep-show parlors and winos and hookers and guys selling drugs openly, I was often overcome, not unlike Davey Owen in Live Girls, with the irrational fear that one of my former bible teachers might spot me slowing down to get a better look at one of the posters outside an adult movie theater. It took a while, but I finally mustered the courage to go inside one of those dens of iniquity.
The establishment I entered is described, almost to the letter, in Live Girls. It was a dark little hole-in-the-wall peep-show with no posters or barkers out front like most of the others. There was only a single sign made up of three red neon words: LIVE NUDE GIRLS. The “I” in LIVE and the “DE” in NUDE flickered and buzzed. I purchased the minimum number of tokens and walked down a long, narrow corridor that turned to the right. There were doors on each side, some with men standing outside, waiting their turn.
I found an empty booth, went inside, closed the door and locked it. It was dark, humid and smelly in there. My heart was thundering. Although I’d never been inside such a place, I’d heard and read of them and knew that once I dropped my tokens in the slot beneath the red light, a panel would open and there would be a naked woman on the other side of the glass – a LIVE NUDE GIRL, just as the sputtering sign outside had promised.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a small opening beneath the vague outline of the rectangular panel. Pale, gray light came through the opening, falling on the black, glistening, sticky floor beneath my feet and faintly illuminating a small plastic plaque next to the token slot that read: INSERT TIP THROUGH SLOT. I realized the opening below the window had indeed been a slot at one time, but the center of it had been expanded into a crude circular opening. Well ... perhaps “expanded” isn’t the right word. There were rough grooves in the edges of the wood, as if someone had used a makeshift tool to widen the slot, something like a pocket knife or a sharp-edged piece of metal. Or ... teeth? Yes, it looked almost as if it had been chewed open. That thought gave me a brief, enjoyable chill ... and then another that wasn’t so enjoyable when I noticed the opening was level with my crotch. But the real chills didn’t come until I dropped my tokens and the panel slid open.
The girl on the other side was nude ... but I had some doubt as to whether she was “live.”
She was the color of chalk and so horribly thin that I winced involuntarily when I saw her. Her dark hair was greasy and fell in limp strands past her shoulders. Her face was little more than a skull with yellowish-brown half-moons beneath her dead, sunken eyes. Her lips parted only once, briefly, during my short-lived stay in that booth, but when they did, I saw that her tiny, snaggled teeth were a dark gray color. There was an angry sore on her lower lip. Her neck appeared much too thin and frail to hold up her head. Her chest was a sharply-etched ribcage with two thin flaps of flesh hanging over it, mere ghosts of breasts. The flesh around her nipples was puckered, like skin left too long in a tepid bath. The left nipple was pierced, sported a small ring and was swollen and inflamed. Her arms and legs were jointed sticks that wore bruises the color of over-ripe bananas.
I stopped breathing, just held my breath for a long time, thinking that she should be in a hospital, not on the other side of that window exposing herself for tips. I was at once repulsed and fascinated as she closed her eyes and began to perform.
Her performance consisted of a zombie-like gynecological self-examination. Her movements were stilted and she leaned her head back limply, as if in a stupor. When she lay back on one elbow and spread her legs, I gasped. Her shaved pubis and inner thighs were covered with an oozing rash.
I left. As I passed the men in the corridor, I wondered why they were waiting. There were other unoccupied booths. Were they waiting for their favorite LIVE NUDE GIRLS? Or had they chosen to wait because they knew what they’d find in those unoccupied booths ... like the one from which I’d just made a quick exit? My imagination raced with possibilities.
I returned to my editor’s office and began to write. I already had my title, that was easy. And I had my premise; after seeing that pale, corpse-like girl in the booth, that was easy, too. Live Girls began as a short story about vampires that ran a peep-show in Times Square. But the story became a novel, which was published in January of 1987 by Pocket Books.
Live Girls received some very good reviews. Some critics were kind enough to give me more credit than I deserved. The idea of vampires in a sex-for-sale setting was seen by some as a metaphor for AIDS. To be honest, that had never crossed my mind. But, hey, if they wanted to credit me with some depth, who the hell was I to get in their way?
After the book was published, I received some mail and even a couple of phone calls (I have no idea how they got my number) from people who wanted to know how I’d found out about them, about their secret, nocturnal, bloodsucking activities. Vampires were contacting li’l ol’ me!
Yeah, right.
Live Girls made a couple of chain book store bestseller lists and was very popular in the UK. The New York Times called it “artful” and one veteran, award-winning writer of quiet horror (now deceased) claimed it marked the end of intelligent writing in horror fiction. Dean Koontz called it "gripping, original and sly," and Ramsey Campbell called it "The most nightmarish vampire story I have ever read." It was published in several different languages and has found readers all over the world. A few years after it went out of print, I learned that mint-condition copies of the Pocket paperback were selling for outrageous prices, and the UK hardcover was selling for twice that! It became collectible and garnered some respect. And you know what? That shocked the hell out of me.
In the years since its initial release, there have been a number of movie options. Some of the people who’ve optioned the book have had some rather unusual ideas about what to do with it. One wanted to set it in a Blade Runner-like future. Another wanted to turn it into a rap/hip-hop musical. My favorite was the genius plan to cast it with a Brat Pack reunion – Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, that whole crowd. Kind of a John Hughes movie with titties and fangs. Fortunately, none of those ideas ever came to fruition.
Since the original publication of Live Girls, I’ve written about 60 books. I’ve encountered a lot of people who’ve never heard of any of them – but they know Live Girls. The novel has been reborn in reprints and has been kept alive by used book stores, flea markets, garage sales and eBay. I’m very grateful to the many readers it’s had over the decades, especially to those who’ve been kind enough to write me flattering letters and emails.
Two years ago, I got an email from a young woman who told me the story of how she was named. While her mother was pregnant with her, she’d read Live Girls. Not only had she enjoyed the book, she'd fallen in love with the names of two of the vampires – Anya and Shideh. So she named her daughter Anya Shideh. Anya told me that people frequently complimented her on her names and she’d always appreciated them. She wanted to thank me for them. Frankly, that made me a little misty-eyed.
Now Live Girls is available as an ebook for Kindle and Nook. For more information and to keep up on new releases, please visit my website.
By 1990, I had kind of developed a reputation for writing erotic horror. I would say this was entirely unintentional ... but it wasn’t. I use sex in my writing for a reason. I’ve always felt that one of the things that makes horror fiction work is familiarity. Take a familiar situation, characters the readers can identify with, make your readers comfortable with those things and then throw in a supernatural or twisted threat that turns all of that upside down. How many of us have been to a beach in our lives, whether it was the ocean or a lake? How many of us have gotten into the water not knowing what else was swimming around in there? That is why Jaws was such a blockbuster success. After the release of the movie in 1975, people were terrified of getting into the water. I knew people who didn’t even want to get into the bathtub! Suddenly, something safe and familiar had become dangerous and frightening. That’s what the horror genre does when it works.
Things like vampires and werewolves and the other creatures that populate the horror genre don’t really exist (there are people who will argue that point – some quite vehemently – but I tend to avoid those people) and we never have to deal with those creatures in our daily lives. So in order to make them work in a story, I think it’s vital that they be surrounded by characters and situations that are familiar to all of us. We may not deal with vampires in our daily lives, but we all know what unemployment is like. Werewolves may not be a common problem, but relationship trouble is. We may never have to shoot a zombie in the head, but we may have to watch a loved one die a slow, agonizing death of cancer. The monsters are stand-ins for these horrors and others – real-life horrors. They are an entertaining way to release the tensions and anxieties created by these real horrors in our lives. But those monsters have no effect unless they are placed in a world we know that is populated by people like us, who have experiences, anxieties and feelings in common with us. What is the one thing we all have in common? Sex.
They say sex sells. And that’s true, of course. But it sells because sex is something we all want, need and participate in at one time or another. It is during sex that we are the most vulnerable – literally naked and defenseless. When I was writing my first novel, Seductions, which is a very sexual book, I thought to myself, Wouldn’t it be fun if I could do to sex what Jaws did to swimming? Obviously, I didn’t succeed, and I doubt anyone could – even the threat of AIDS didn’t do that, and that was pretty damned scary. But I keep trying. Hey ... a guy’s gotta have some goals.
When I wrote The New Neighbor in 1990, I wanted to inject more than a supernatural threat into a typical small-town neighborhood. I wanted to take a Leave it to Beaver neighborhood and turn it into a black orgy of lust, adultery and incest. I wanted to write a horror novel that was a porn novel -- a porn novel that was a horror novel. While I was working on the book, whenever anyone asked me what I was writing, I’d respond, “Penthouse Forum from hell.” But in 1990, nobody was interested in that. It was too graphic, too dark – just too much. Reading the book now, that seems odd, because all these years later, it doesn't seem quite that extreme. But in 1990, it was too extreme for the publishers who read it. Then I met Joe Stefko of Charnel House. Joe is a fascinating guy. An successful musician, he toured with John Cale of the Velvet Underground for two years in the 1970s until Cale chopped the head off a live chicken on stage in London. Joe, a vegetarian and animal-lover, had told him in advance that he would walk off if it happened, but Cale did it anyway. And Joe walked off. He was Meat Loaf’s drummer during the three years that Bat Out of Hell was such a raging success. But decades of Joe’s life have been spent with The Turtles, where he remains on the drums, quite happy. “I have played with a lot of other acts during these Turtle years but none have been as much fun,” Joe says in his bio on the band’s website. “I even turned Meat Loaf down to stay with them. Life is short and fun is at a premium.”
But Joe is also a publisher. He started Charnel House in 1989 with the idea that book craftsmanship was an art form, and he turned it into the country’s foremost publisher of finely bound and printed limited edition books in the horror and science fiction genres. The New Neighbor was the company’s second title. It was published in two extremely limited, expensive, drop-dead gorgeous editions. There were 500 copies of the numbered edition, 26 copies of the lettered edition. The illustrations are by JK Potter and they are stunning. It was an enormous honor to have my work illustrated by such a brilliant artist. Potter is the best, and his work in this book is, I think, among his best.
The lettered edition was hand-sewn, bound in crimson Morocco leather with a strip of lace stocking embedded down the front cover and a black silk garter strap and clip for a bookmark. Because of the graphic sex and violence in the book, the publisher’s lawyers advised that each customer state in writing that he or she was at least 21 years old. You might find a one of the Charnel House editions available for sale now and then, but they ain’t cheap. I’ve seen the lettered edition sell for as much as $1,500. I will always be extremely proud of the Charnel House editions of The New Neighbor, but it was so limited that very few people read the book.
The novel languished in obscurity for 14 years until it was reprinted by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2005. Once again, a beautiful edition was published (CD link) with a gorgeous cover by Caniglia. It was limited to 1,000 signed copies, 52 lettered. My only complaint was that the book was inaccurately called a “vampire novel” on the publisher’s website.
Now, more than 20 years after its original publication, The New Neighbor is available to a much wider audience. It’s not limited this time – in fact, it’s unlimited as a paperback and ebook.
The Pritchard family is living a life of familial contentment on Deerfield Avenue, a street where the neighbors are friendly and the yards are neat. Then Lorelle Dupree moves in across the street. She is uncommonly beautiful, warm and friendly ... and powerfully seductive. One by one, the Pritchard family succumbs to her advances. But they aren’t the only ones. Lorelle gets to know everyone on the street. The residents of Deerfield Avenue slowly become ill, exhibiting flu-like symptoms, and the better they get to know Lorelle, the sicker they get. And then ... the killings start.
The New Neighbor is available as an ebook for Kindle and Nook. To see my entire bibliography and keep up with new releases, please visit my website, RayGartonOnline.
