In Laymon's Terms

Norman Partridge

ICK LAYMON HAD a way with short, nasty stories that took a bite out of your hide by the time you hit the last line. That’s a harder trick to pull off than most people (especially most aspiring writers) suspect. The preceding story, “Second Chance”, is the first time I’ve tried to nail anyone’s eyeballs to the page with a twist ending in quite awhile. Hope I managed to do the job. Hope I gotcha!

That was definitely something Dick liked to do. He obviously enjoyed writing gotcha! fiction. From the time I first noticed his work in the late eighties, I could see that. Back then I was trying to get started writing fiction of my own, and I can remember gobbling up several Laymon novels as well as the numerous short stories that regularly appeared in the top anthologies of the day.

I admired more than a few of Dick’s short stories (“Dinker’s Pond” from Razored Saddles has always been a particular favorite), and I learned more than a little about pacing from reading his work. Dick was a master of that, and the talent carried over to his novels. You can see it in The Cellar, and you can see it in Resurrection Dreams, and you can see it in Funland...all barn-burner novels that bore the distinctive stamp of Dick’s personal narrative drive.

Dick was especially generous to new writers who were trying to get a foothold in the business. I sent him a copy of my first novel, Slippin’ Into Darkness, when it appeared from CD Publications. I’d never met Dick—he was simply a writer who’d taught me a few things through his work—and I got his address from Rich Chizmar and sent him a book as a way of saying thanks.

Shortly thereafter, I met Dick at an HWA event in Las Vegas. Much to my delight, he told me how much he enjoyed my novel. We spent the better part of an evening talking, and I told him about one particular section of my novel that his work had inspired. Slippin’ was told in third person shifting-viewpoint, and there was a moment in one particular section toward the end of the book where I tricked the reader into thinking the viewpoint character was one guy when it turned out to be another. When I told Dick I’d swiped that idea from one of his novels, he laughed and said, “Well, I stole it from William Goldman, so I win, because he’s a better writer than both of us!”

After the con, Dick dropped me a line and told me he’d sent a copy of Slippin’ to his U.K. publisher, hoping to pave the way for a foreign sale for me. It didn’t pan out, but that’s the kind of generous guy he was. I learned a lot about writing from him—both about the craft and the business, and especially about the power of tenacity.

I’m sure that I’m not the first person in these pages to say that Dick is missed, but that’s a simple truth. I wish I’d had the chance to give him a better payback than this story, but it’ll have to do.

I hope Dick would have liked it.

I’d like to think it might have caught him when he wasn’t looking.

Gotcha, Dick!