An Odd Story

It was a good many years ago—I’m tru­ly not sure when but it may have been as long as twen­ty-five years ago—I had noticed that hor­ror stories—thrillers—were very pop­u­lar in the world of children’s’ lit. These books were rather vio­lent. I won­dered if I could write such a sto­ry, a scary one, but with­out actu­al vio­lence. I would allow myself to hint at vio­lence, but it would only be a threat, not an actuality.

In any case I set out to write such a sto­ry and in fact did com­pose one. It was scary, to the degree that it made even me—I recall—uncomfortable.

When it was done I was not sure what I want­ed to do with it such a creepy nov­el. In any case I sent it to my then agent—Dorothy Markinko.

She read it and said “I’m not sure you should pub­lish this. It’s too fright­en­ing. But, let’s see what your edi­tor thinks.”

My sole edi­tor in those days was Richard Jack­son. He got the man­u­script, read it. What he said was, “I don’t think you should pub­lish this. It’s well writ­ten but it won’t do your rep­u­ta­tion any good.”

I trust­ed Dick, even as I trust­ed my agent, and put the book aside.

Per­haps twelve years passed. In that time com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy shift­ed. When I had writ­ten the book I used those small, hard diskettes. Remem­ber them? Over time I went to a hard-dri­ve com­put­er. All those diskettes had to be stored away. Who knew where?

Some­time after those twelve years Dick Jack­son called, and quite out of the blue he said, “Remem­ber that thriller you wrote?” He described that book accurately.

“I do,” I said.

“I’ve been think­ing about it. Maybe the time is ripe to pub­lish it.”

My response: “Let me go find it.”

But I could not find the diskette. It had been lost. And diskettes were rather small objects.

From time to time I looked for it, but for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es it was gone.

A cou­ple of years passed when—cleaning out the garage pri­or to moving—I came upon a stashed hoard of diskettes. I looked for that miss­ing one and found it.

But it was still in that old for­mat. I locat­ed a com­put­er tech­ni­cian who was able to con­vert old files into my new for­mat. He gave it a name and sent the man­u­script to me via e‑mail. There was some missed com­mu­ni­ca­tion because I have no mem­o­ry of it being sent to me, nor did I know the name he had giv­en the file. Then before I could get back to him the guy moved away and I lost track of him too.

In oth­er words, once again, the man­u­script was lost.

Mean­while, Dick Jack­son has passed on, so there was no par­tic­u­lar incen­tive to find it.

A few weeks ago I was prowl­ing (via com­put­er) in my doc­u­ment lists, in search of some­thing that I knew would be there. Quite unex­pect­ed­ly I came upon a file name that I did not rec­og­nize, but it was such that it could only have come from that lost manuscript.

I opened it up and there it was.

Need­less to say I was curi­ous to see if it had any merit—at least in my own eyes.

I start­ed to read, but with­out even hav­ing read through it all I began to revise.

It is creepy, and it still makes me uncom­fort­able. But in the ensu­ing years it seems curi­ous­ly very up to date.

So, here I am revis­ing it, but not even sure how it ful­ly unfolds.

I’m telling myself the story.

It is rather odd. But I’m enjoy­ing it.

Maybe—someday—you will too.