In Laymon's Terms

Ron R. Clinton

Y INFANT SON DIED seven years ago.

When grief of such unexpected and electrifying power strikes you, it instantly sears many of your casual assumptions: that bad things only happen to other people, that life is ultimately fair and just. One is then left with the chilling and numbing understanding that the world can be—and often is—undependable, hazardous, and filled with sudden pain.

Kind of like a Laymon story, actually.

On March 28^th, 1999, at 5:20pm, much of the burning pleasure in activities I had previously enjoyed was instantly smothered. For the next several years, a dark and deafening emotional maelstrom drowned out any whisper of writing creative fiction.

Until In Laymon’s Terms.

Richard Laymon has contributed much to my life for which I will always be grateful: an expansion of my reading and personal involvement in the horror genre; the acquaintance of individuals who share my macabre leanings; and, of course, countless hours of breathless reading that infused me with chills and thrills and an instinctive understanding of the mechanics of a well-told story.

Dick’s final gift came about through In Laymon’s Terms: the need to honor all that he has given me became the unexpected impetus to write this tale, my first story since my son’s death three years earlier. And, in turn, helped me regain at least a small bit from all that I’d lost.

Hey, Dick, how about reading my son The Halloween Mouse up there? I think he’d like that.