Night In the Lonesome October

Night In the Lonesome October
by Richard Laymon

About the Book:
Shortly after returning to college for the start of the Fall semester, Ed Logan learns that the girl he loves has found herself a new boyfriend and won't be coming back to school. Heartbroken and restless, Ed strikes out late one night for a walk through town. He doesn't much care where he's going, but soon finds himself fascinated by what he discovers between midnight and dawn — frightened by the town's lurking terrors, lured by its mysteries... and enthralled by a strange, beautiful girl who roams the lonely streets.

" On February 14, Laymon died of a massive heart attack, at age 54. His death carried a particular poignancy because of late, after several years during which he couldn't find an American publisher even as his books climbed bestseller lists in England and Australia, he was enjoying a comeback here, with his current and backlist work being issued by Cemetery Dance and Leisure Books. Some of Laymon's problems with American publishers arose from the downturn in the horror market in the '90s; more came from what many considered excess sexual violence in his books. The poignancy of his death shades into irony because his first posthumous publication (there are more to come) not only features less of the sexual violence that in fact did mar some of his books but also highlights his tremendous strengths as a writer. This is at once one of the eeriest, and one of most immediate, horror novels of recent decades. It details what befalls a lovesick young man as he wanders on successive nights through his college town. Ed Logan, 20, just ditched by his long-term girlfriend, takes a seven-mile walk late one night from his apartment to Dandi Doughnuts the first steps in an odyssey that finds him mixing with a new girlfriend, cannibals ("trolls") living underneath neighborhood bridges, a gay college student with the hots for Ed, violent or potentially violent sexual predators both male and female and, most memorably, a fellow night-traveler: an 18-year-old homeless girl named Casey who teaches him to embrace the wonders and terrors of the night. The novel unfolds like a series of dreams some nightmarish, some amusing, some wet and is related in the extreme detail of moment-to-moment narration that allows Laymon, at his best as he is here, to plunge readers fully into the alternate reality of another's experiences. Due special praise here are the visceral truths of young adult life that Laymon plumbs in his characters. But above all, this novel, like so many of his others, is just good old nasty fun to read; it's a traipse through unknown territory, with jack-in-the-boxes of all sorts lurking just behind the next shadow or page. With Laymon's death, horror has lost one of its rarest talents. Horror fans know this, but, sadly, few others do. That horror remains literature's shunned child needs no further demonstration than that most major media (e.g., The New York Times) ignored the death of Laymon, who was, in addition to the author of more than 30 novels, some of them bestsellers, the president of the Horror Writers Association of America. RIP."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Richard Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947. He grew up in California and has a BA in English Literature from Willamette University, Oregon, and an MA from Loyola University, Los Angeles.

He published more than sixty short stories in magazines such as Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, and Cavalier and in anthologies, including Modern Masters of Horror, The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime, and Night Visions 7.

His novel Flesh was named Best Horror Novel of 1988 by Science Fiction Chronicle and also shortlisted for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award, as was Funland.

Richard Laymon is the author of more than thirty acclaimed novels, including The Cellar, The Stake, Savage, Quake, Island, and Body Rides. He won the Bram Stoker Award for his Cemetery Dance novel, The Traveling Vampire Show.

Over fifty authors contributed to a tribute anthology entitled In Laymon's Terms.

His latest book with Cemetery Dance is The Woods are Dark (The Original, Uncut Version).

Published in two states:
• Limited Edition of 1,000 copies ($40)
• Traycased Lettered Edition of 52 signed and lettered copies bound in leather with a satin ribbon page marker and additional full-color artwork ($175)

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