Through editor Brian Thomsen, I was commissioned to do two work-for-hire novels set in the TSR gaming worlds. The first of these was Mordenheim, TSR’s avatar of Frankenstein. I got to create my own plot, set in what was actually a mildly disguised universe of 1930s-40s Universal horror movies, and had a blast doing it. While certainly not the most serious thing I’ve ever written, I took it seriously and did the best job I could while playing in someone else’s world and by their rules.

I’ve always loved the classic horror monsters, and getting to write my own version using these archetypes was like getting a paid vacation…

I loved writing Reign, which was published in hardcover by Dark Harvest in several collectors’ editions. It was a novel set in world of the theatre, where I’ve lived a goodly portion of my life. I got into writing as the result of being a professional actor (a long story that I’ll blog about someday), and have, in the past few years, reinstated my Actors Equity card and am trodding the professional boards once again, to my great pleasure.

Reign is the story of an actor based on Yul Brynner, who plays the same stage role for so many years that he becomes identified with it. In my novel, however, the character takes on a life of its own, becoming a malevolent doppelganger. The scenes with “The Emperor” are written in play form, a harbinger, I suppose, of the actual plays I would later write. Reaction was strongly positive. The novel was nominated for a Stoker Award, and Publishers Weekly called it “believable, elegant (and) thoroughly enjoyable,” while Gauntlet said, “honest, uncompromising and emotionally charged in a way that is too uncommon in works of horror fiction.”

John and Laura Lakey did the beautiful wraparound dust jacket and interior illustrations. But that dust jacket proved a bit embarassing when my ole pard Joe R. Lansdale’s blurb was credited to Joe B. Lansdale. 20 years down the road, and I’m still apologizing…

The book has never been published in paperback, and I think it’s damn well about time…

Every volume of the Night Visions series from Dark Harvest allowed a different editor to ask three writers to come up with 30,000 words each. Stan Wiater recruited Dick Laymon, Gary Brandner, and me for the seventh volume. I wrote a novella ( The Confessions of St. James), a short story, “Blue Notes,” and a tiny short-short with a really long title (“Assurances of the Self-Extinction of Man”), so I really spanned word lengths.

The Confessions of St. James, which was nominated for a Stoker Award, was great fun to write, the tale of a cannibalistic clergyman who takes the concept of Holy Communion a bit too seriously. His fictional church was based on Donegal Presbyterian Church near my home. It has a marvelous old cemetery with graves & tombs dating back to the Revolutionary War.

I think the novella is my favorite length of story when I wrote horror. It really allows you to expand ideas and characterization without necessitating subplots and extra characters that can often make novel-length works lose that intense focus which is so imperative to a mood of terror. It’s too bad there are so few markets for that length of tale…

Lowland Rider was published as a paperback original, and was my “New York Subway System” novel. The cover painting has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, which concerns a man who buries himself beneath New York City after his wife and child are brutally murdered. He becomes aware of a dark supernatural plot brewing that threatens to undo the delicate balance between good and evil in the world. Naturally, hilarity and a lot of bloodshed ensue.

I wrote a faux Scottish ballad that I used in between sections of the novel to comment on the action, and several reviewers believed that it was an actual old ballad…always fun to fool people.

Reviews were good. My favorite was from Fear, which said: “He injects Lowland Rider with a humanity rarely seen in comparable horror novels. Commendably mature, unlike so many authors who sacrifice plot for excessive visceral sensationalism…A highly innovative and original novel (and) the bleakest and most downbeat horror novel of 1988…”

The cover of the British edition was much better than the U.S. edition, since it actually had something to do with subways…