In Laymon's Terms

James Futch

FIRST DISCOVERED Richard Laymon through his short stories. They were realistic, brutal, fast-moving, unflinching, assaults on the senses. Descriptions that made me shake my head and think, “This dude is doing it right!” And like the very best short stories, most of them cut in on the action and never let up, never got dull, right down to the surprise ending, the prose so smooth and clear, you could skip stones off it.

Throughout his long career, he wrote tons of short stories and it’s always a treat to stumble across one of them. Their frequent appearances in the magazines and anthologies kept the horror genre jumping with fresh new ideas and new spins on old ones. Among the first I read was the zombie gore-fest “Mess Hall” from the Book of the Dead anthology. I remember it as being the best of two worlds, with Richard Laymon blending serial killers with zombies in one totally gross-out story. I really admired that.

His influence on my writing has been tremendous and continues to this very day.