In Laymon's Terms

Brian Keene

RITE ABOUT HOW Dick Laymon influenced us, in two hundred words or less. Sounds like an impossible homework assignment. Dick was a lot of things. Look at his incredibly prolific body of work and you’ll understand how he influenced an entire generation of horror writers. He was a husband. Father. College graduate. Librarian. Schoolteacher. Temp worker. Legal report writer. Bram Stoker Award Winner. Practical joker. HWA President. History buff. Firearms expert. Friend. Mentor.

Cub scout den mother.

That’s how I remember Dick, as the den mother of the “Horrornet Cabal.” We were young and ready to conquer the horror genre. Dick cheered us on. We wrote, revised, and submitted. Dick guided us. We were full of piss and vinegar. Dick topped us off when we ran low. He drank with us. Laughed with us. And when we “occasionally” got ourselves into trouble, Dick was there to bail us out (even when he was the one that had inspired us to cause trouble in the first place).

When one of us did something he liked, a story or an essay perhaps, he’d say: “The Dick is pleased.”

First Laymon I ever read as a kid was The Cellar. I loved the Beasts, and tried to capture that in the story I wrote for this anthology.

Dick would be pleased with that, I think.

The table of contents for this book is full of those cub scouts (and girl scouts) that Dick Laymon watched over—all grown up now but still causing trouble.

The Dick would be pleased with that, too.

I miss him...