My papers – notes, drafts, correspondence,
page proofs, copies of published work, etc. – are going to be archived by the University of Pittsburgh Library System Horror Studies
program. You can check out the program here: https://horrorstudies.library.pitt.edu/
It’s a great honor to have my work preserved at a
university – and how cool is it that the University of Pittsburgh has a Horror
Studies Program? I’ve spent the last few weeks going through forty years’ worth
of material, printed as well as digital, packing it into cardboard boxes and
getting ready to ship it. It’s been a real trip down memory lane, and I was
surprised by how much unpublished stuff I’d saved that I have little to no
memory of writing. I created shipping lists for each box, and while some items
were self-explanatory, such as copies of published novels I’ve written, other
items required some explaining. For example:
Nonfiction: “Shop Smarter, Not Harder,” Columbus City
Scene, Summer 1999. This was a weird situation. I wrote an article for a
small company that employed freelance writers and then marketed their articles
to publications. I was assigned to write an article about the Tuttle Crossing
Mall in the Columbus area. The company used my opening paragraph, but they cut
the rest, then had someone else write an entirely different article. They still
used my byline, and they never paid me.
I included the magazine because it counted as published
work (sort of) and because it says something about the bizarre publishing situations
writers encounter sometimes. Will the university library want it? Who knows?
But I sent it anyway.
In an email, one of the university’s Archives and Special
Collections librarians said that the purpose of archiving my work is so that it
will be “preserved and made available to students, teachers, scholars,
historians and fans.” Do I truly believe that future generations will pore over
my work and find some manner of divine enlightenment in it? It’s a great honor
to have my work collected and preserved by the university, but I don’t have
that large an ego. I think it more likely that my work will end up housed forever
and never looked at again, much like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders
of the Lost Ark. But by sending my work to the university, I’ll create the possibility
that it might have some type of positive impact in the future. That’s better
than my family tossing it all into a dumpster after I die, or worse, dragging
it around with them until they themselves die, and someone else finally decides
to get rid of it. It’s a message in a bottle, which you could say about
anything writers write, I suppose. Sometimes I feel as if soon after birth, I was
thrown into a dark, bottomless pit, and I’ve been falling ever since. And as I fall,
I’m writing as fast as I can and hurling the pages upward in hopes that they’ll
make it out of the hole and someone will find and read them.
So why did I feel it was time for my work to be preserved
like this?
This March I’ll be 59. That’s the age my mother was when
she died, so it’s not surprising that I’ve been thinking about my mortality a
bit more than often lately. (I’m a horror writer; mortality is always on my mind
one way or another.) And I’ve been in two serious car accidents in the last
year – both at the same section of highway and at the same time of day. (I’m
going to avoid that stretch of road from now on!) While both of my cars were
totaled, I was fortunate not to have been injured either time. But the thought that
I could’ve died each time wasn’t lost on me. I’ve written a lot over the
last forty years, and along with copies of my published work, I have a ton of notebooks
filled with text (I handwrote my first drafts for years), along with printed
material from the early days of my career, when everyone printed things out as
well as saving them digitally. That’s a lot of junk for my wife and daughters
to deal with if I suddenly died, and I didn’t want to saddle them with that responsibility.
A few months ago, I created a file folder of information I
titled Tim’s Death Stuff for my relatives. It contains a list of all my
passwords, contact info for my agent, my web designer, my publishers, etc. It
also contains an author’s will, as well as a book for an author’s heirs to tell
them what they need to know after their loved one’s death. Compiling that
information got me thinking about what else I needed to do to prepare my
family, and finding a home for all my writing-career materials seemed like the
next logical choice.
What did I learn from packing those sixteen boxes for the archive?
1) I used to give up on my work way too early.
I already knew that I often gave up on stories or novels after a couple
rejections, but I was surprised by how many novels and stories I gave up on
before finishing – or which I did finish but for some reason never submitted to
publishers. I’m sure some (maybe a lot) of those stories were better off never
seeing the light of day, but others might’ve been successful if I’d given them
more of a chance. Legendary science fiction editor John Campbell once said, “The
reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors
never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.” But on the
other hand . . .
2) I’m
glad self-publishing wasn’t as easy in my early career as it is now. I finished
my first novel in 1983 when I was 19, and if Amazon had existed back then, I’d
have uploaded that motherfucker to their site seconds after typing THE END. I
would’ve continued writing, and I would’ve hopefully continued improving, but I
wouldn’t have had the same impetus, the same drive to improve if I wasn’t
working toward the goal of placing my work with traditional publishers. I don’t
mean to pick on any indie writers reading this. I just talking about myself. I
may not be a famous bestseller, but I know I’m a better writer because of the
highly competitive nature of traditional publishing. And after looking over
some of my earliest work, I’m grateful it wasn’t published! If you’d like to
check out on of my earliest stories – and one with a holiday theme – and get an
idea of how far I’ve come in the last four decades, You can read "Scary Christmas” toward the bottom of this post.
3) I
explored a lot of different types of writing. Early on, I wrote science
fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories, some serious, some humorous. My
first novel was a fantasy adventure (inspired by Piers Anthony’s Xanth books),
my second was a science fiction adventure (inspired by Doctor Who), and
my third was an urban fantasy (although we called them contemporary fantasies
back then), and it was the most original of the lot. In college, I wrote a science
fiction play, a horror musical (without any music – I’m no composer) inspired
by The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and an absurdist play which I produced
and directed for a class. I also worked for a local weekly newspaper writing
articles, and during my senior year I served as the editor for the campus
literary magazine. In grad school, I wrote a couple more fantasy adventures and
various SF/F/H stories, and after graduation I wrote three humorous fantasy
novels – one in which God was a computer and Satan was an embodiment of
entropy, one about a realm where all the gods of humanity co-existed, including
modern ones like Freud, Darwin, and Einstein, and one where all the bizarre
tabloid stories that appeared in publications like the Weekly World News
was true. After that, I wrote a couple more traditional fantasy novels, I focused
on writing nonfiction and humorous articles for a while, and I wrote a couple mysteries.
All of these were the works I completed – there were more that I started and
never finished. As time went by, publishers and readers responded most
favorably to my horror, so I started focusing on that, trying to come up with
my own unique subject matter and style. The point is I never stopped moving. I
was always in motion as a writer, always exploring, always trying this or that.
Was this good? I’m not sure. I had a lot of fun trying my hand at different
kinds of writing, but I always got depressed when I didn’t much a great deal of
success at any of them (until I focused on horror, of course). I’d like to
think it made me a better writer – maybe more suited to writing media tie-ins
which can be in any genre – but this wandering about may have delayed my
development of a professional career. I’m really not sure.
4) Nothing
I’ve ever written was wasted. As I began assembling my work – so much of it
unpublished or unfinished – I realized that all of it was material that I was
using to create my archive. It all had a place ultimately, one I couldn’t have
imagined when I started writing seriously at 18. And of course this reinforced the
truth that every word I’ve ever written has led me to where I am now as a writer,
regardless of whether it was ever published or not. It all had purpose.
5) My
career isn’t over yet. As I’ve been cruising steadily toward my 60’s, I’ve started
feeling like maybe my writing career is winding down. I’ll be retiring from my
teaching job in six years, and I guess I started thinking about retiring from
writing too, without really realizing it. And I am weary of the never-ending
push-push-push of a writing career – the dozens of novel proposals I’ve written
that haven’t sold yet (most of which will likely never sell) but which my agent
keeps sending around, the constant marketing of my work on social media (and
feeling like all I’m being is an annoyance to people), editors who now ghost me
or my agent (a comparatively recent development in the publishing world) . . . But
as I worked on gathering and collating my archive materials, I saw that the
first twenty years of my career were my early development as a writer, and my
second twenty years were my development as a working professional. If I’m
lucky, I’ll live for a while longer – maybe even another twenty years or more.
I don’t know what the next stage will be for me, or if there will even be a
next stage, but I’m more determined than ever to keep telling stories and
writing articles.
6) There
is no one path. I’ve known this for years, but working on my archive reinforced
it. Every writer creates his or her own path as they go, and no two are exactly
alike. One of the dangers of social media is that you can be fooled into
thinking something is wrong with your path because it isn’t exactly like that
of someone else whose posts you read. I have a much better sense of my
particular path now, and I can see myself in it. In some ways, my path might be
my ultimate creation. Same for you.
Thinking about preserving your
own writing legacy? Here are some resources that can help.
·
Here are all the things in my Death Stuff folder
so you can create one of your own: A signed document called Last Wishes For My Literary
Estate After My Death that spells out how my literary executors are (my wife
and two daughters) and exactly what I want to have happen with my work when I’m
gone. A document called Info for Heirs that lists all my various passwords and
info on online accounts, agent contact info, etc. A complete Bibliography in case
my heirs wish to republish any of my work, along with a list of awards and my
author bio that they can give to publishers/media. A copy agreement with the
University of Pittsburgh Library System Horror Studies program.
·
I also have a copy of a book in my Death Stuff
file: The Author Heir Handbook: How to Manage an
Author Estate by M.L. Ronn. Ronn also wrote The Author Estate
Handbook: How to Organize Your Affairs and Leave a Legacy, which I bought
for myself (which is where I got the ideas for what to put in my Death Stuff
File).
·
The Author Estate Handbook: How to Organize
Your Affairs and Leave a Legacy: https://www.amazon.com/Author-Estate-Handbook-Organize-Affairs/dp/B09QNX2MMH/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1671822647&sr=8-2-spons
·
The Author Heir Handbook: How to Manage an
Author Estate: https://www.amazon.com/Author-Heir-Handbook-Manage-Estate/dp/B09TDW94FD/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1671822872&sr=8-1
·
Neil Gaiman created a great template for an
author will a while back. You can find a link to a PDF of it here, along with
some good advice from Neil: https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/10/important-and-pass-it-on.html
SCARY CHRISTMAS
(Written at age 18)
Jerry panted as he
hid in the dim alley. Rats and roaches vied for what little food they could get
out of the filth that filled the metal and plastic garbage cans that lined the
alley walls. Jerry hoped with all of his might, which was considerable for a
sixteen year old, that no one heard the old man scream. The last thing that
Jerry needed was to spend Christmas Eve in jail on a murder rap. His heart
pounded in his head, the world blurred for a second and Jerry realized that he
was crying. Shit, why the hell was he crying over an old drunk? The dumb
sonofabitch was asking for it, stumbling out of the bar like that, singing at
the top of his lungs, and waving all that money around. Hell, the old man
probably had wanted to die; why else would he make
himself so conspicous in the middle of the night in this part of town unless he
had a death wish?
Jerry froze when
he heard the sirens. Seconds became moments and moments became Little subjective
eternitites as the sound grew and peaked, only to fade away. Jerry released the
breath that he had been holding and watched as the winter cold made it visible.
He ought to be far
enough away by now, Jerry thought, and he took out the crumbled wad of green
that had, only a few minutes ago, been in the wallet of a merry old drunk man.
Jerry had taken a few seconds to remove the money from the wallet instead of
panicking and running with it like so many others did. That was how you got
caught. No, Jerry was much sharper than that, much more calculating. If they
found the wallet on the body without money they would be suspicious, but Jerry
had left a twenty there to throw them off. Twenty dollars was not an
unreasonable amount of money for a man to have left on Christmas Eve after
spending the night in a bar; indeed, it was more than most left with. Jerry had
been careful to move the wallet around in the snow with his shoe to remove or at least blur, his fingerprints. He then
used on old pedce of newspaper to return the wallet to its proper place in the
old man’s coat pocket. Jerry knew that all this would have been mere
foolishness on his part if he had actually gone through with his plan and
bashed the old geezer in the head with the hunk of
pipe that he carried for “insurance”. As it was, the drunk was frightened
enough by Jerry when he leapt out of the alley that the old man’s heart did all
the work for him. Not that he thought that the cops wouldn't be able to pin it
on him somehow. Not if they knew that he had been there, which Jerry hoped,
they never would.
Jerry couldn't believe it. When he finished counting he knew
that he was now the proud owner of roughly 350 dollars. What that dumbass had
been doing with that much money around here Jerry would never be able to figure
out...not in a thousand years. A considerably less amount of time on earth than
he had left.
Jerry lived by himself in his mother's apartment. She had left
six months earlier to move in with some black guy across town. Not that Jerry
gave a shit. He hated the bitch anyway. He especially hated the demands she
used to make of him...especially when he had hit puberty, but that was
something that he didn't like to think about. Yeah, if anyone had asked him, he would've replied that he was
glad that his mother was gone. Jerry
had stopped on the way home and had bought himself a bottle of whisky. A cheap
bottle, but then Jerry would have been unable to tell the difference between
good and bad whisky anyway. Besides it all tasted like shit to him. All he
cared about was what it did to him.
Getting the booze hadn't been a problem. He knew the store owner
well enough to know that the old bitch was terrified of him. Jerry, while not
the most muscular boy in the city was enough to give people twice his age
pause. He stood at six foot even and had broad shoulders, the kind which
would've made him a good football player. That is if his school had a football
team and if he still went to school. Jerry had just about finished climbing up
the stairs when a rat, a particularly big and ugly one, which was saying a lot
for the building in which Jerry lived, ran across his feet. Startled, Jerry
dropped the bottle of whisky, which he had taken a few hits of on the way up
the stairs, and watched as his plans for a merry, if numb, Christmas shatter
and spill across the floor. He stared at the broken shards for a moment,
wondering wheather or not to go back to the liquor store and try and scare the
old bitch into giving him another bottle. It wasn't worth it, he decided...maybe next week. He still had a handfull of pills and a joint or
two left in the apartment. He would just have to make due with them.
A few hours later Jerry was sleeping of the effects of his
little private Christmas party. And in his sleep of stupor and numbness and
short circuiting nerves, he dreamed.
He saw the old man's face, only this time it was frozen at the
exact moment that his heart had decided to give out, and Jerry had the chance
to study it in more detail. It was a round face; round and wrinkled. It kind of
remined Jerry of a flesh colored orange. One that for some reason, had a nose,
eyes, ears and a mouth. Something like a Florida version of Mr. Potato Head.
The man's hair was white and stringy. In
way it looked like someone had taken the orange-head and glued old white yarn
to it. Jerry would've laughed at such a face, if it wasn't for the expression
of pure animal terror that lit up the eyes. It was an expression that Jerry had
seen before, in the eyes
of his brother just before he had died
from the knife wound that had sent their father to jail. It was the look that
Jerry sometimes saw in rats when he had them trapped. They had that same look
in their eyes when they saw Jerry's booted foot coming down on them. Things began to change in Jerry’s dream now. The old man was
lying there, just like he had left him; stone cold dead, small piles of snow forming a kind of shroud around hm. Then the snow near the old
man's hand stirred. No, the old man's hand that had stirred. Then before Jerry
knew it, the old man was pushing himself, slowly and haltingly to his feet. He
stood there like he was dazed or spaced out. Then Jerry saw the old man's face. It was white. Bloodless. Dead. And, if
Jerry read the look in the old man's unseeing eyes right, it hated.
Jerry awoke with a start. he sat in bed for a second before he realized that he had wet himself. Jerry climbed out of bed and
almost fell down. his head was still spinning, partly from the drugs, partly from the dream. Shit, but that had been one mother of a dream!
If Jerry had been a little less cynical, he might have thought that the dream
was caused from guilt. Jerry never felt guilt. . .not about anything. He
stumbled out of one where
an old mattress served as his bed and
stumbled into the other, which served as everything esle. Jerry stumbled once
more and this time ended up in a pile on the floor. Luckily he had landed next
to what he had come in he looking for. He didn't own a television, but he did
have a radio that he had taken from some punk or other. Jerry flipped it on. It
was tuned, as it always was to his favorite station. They always played songs
about sex and drugs and cars and all the other things that made life
worthwhile, Jerry wondered if he had any pills left, then thought better of it.
Better lay off for a while, especially after a dream like that! Jerry had seen
things before of course when taking drugs. That was part of the fun of it, but
somehow, nothing that Jerry had ever seen had seemed as real as that. Jerry dismissed
such thoughts from his mind and instead concentrated on a song about girls with
big breasts who happened to get off on a particular style of car.
Jerry started when he heard someone call
his name
jerry.....
What the fuck? Had Rico or one of his gang come around here to
hassle him! That was just what he needed right now! Jerry got up haltingly and
made his way to the door, picking up a ball bat on his way. If Rico wanted to
fuck around Jerry would show him some fucking around! Right upside his skull.
Jerry stopped and listened at the door.
jerry.....
Now that he was closer, Jerry wasn't sure that there was any
voice at all. It sounded more like the wind...or something out of a dream. A
dream. Jerry suddenly realized that he was sweating. And shaking. What the hell
did he have to be afraid of? Jerry threw open the door, the bat held high.
There was nothing there. He looked around for a couple of seconds , until he
was satisfied that no one was there. Swearing he closed the door. Lousy
dope...Just what until he got his hands on that little punk that sold it to
him!
A rat stood in the middle of the bare room when Jerry returned.
He smiled. Now this was exactly what he needed to take his minds off things!
Jerry tightened his grip on the bat and ad vanced on the rat. He had met some pretty mean rodents in his life here, so he
wasn't especially surprised when this one didn't run. No, this was one of the
arrogant ones, the kind that liked to try and stare you down. This was just
fine with Jerry. The more arrogant they were the better... all the more fun to
watch the little peckers go squish. Jerry raised the bat. This was going to be
good. But before he could bring the wooden bat down, the rat had attched itself
to Jerry's leg and was gnawing away. Dark blood spilled into the rat's mouth
and all over the floor. He screamed and swung the ball bat at the rodent only
to connect violently with his Leg. Jerry howled as he hit the ground. The rat,
who had leapt away at the last minute, went for his eyes. In seconds one eye
was a mass of blood. Jerry clawed frantically at his face. He caught the rat
and crushed it in his hand. He flung the handful of smashed fur and guts into
the wall, where it stuck for a second before sliding to the floor. Tears welled
out of the one good eye that he had left. His whole face had gone numb with
pain.
jerry.....
There it was again, that damn voice!! Only this time it filled
Jerry with a vauge sense of something that he would’ve once called hope.
Whoever it was, maybe they would help him to get to a hospital, or at least
call an ambulance. Jerry rose, slipped once on his own blood, and staggered to
the door, leaving a trail of gore in his wake. He
threw open the door, saying something about help.
No one was there... yet Jerry could swear that he still heard
the voice. The hole where Jerry's eye had been was bleeding even more now, and
the tears in his other eye obscured his vision.
jerry.....
There it was again! Jerry stumbled into the hallway, hoping and
for the first time in his life praying, that someone, anyone, was out there.
Hell, even Rico would help him now. He'd have to!!
Through his haze Jerry thought that he
saw someone. Funny, he hadn't a second ago...that didn’t matter though. This
person, whoever it was would help him. Jerry was sure of it. Jerry reached out imporingly.
"Help...m-me....” The person, the old man, smiled.
Jerry’s eyes cleared and he saw who it was standing in the
hallway. Most of all, Jerry saw the eyes...the eyes from his dream. Dead eyes.
Jerry turned to run, blood welling anew, splattering all over, filling his good
eye. He turned and ran…
He bounced seven times before he died, and nine before he cam to
a rest at the bottom of the stairs. The old man stood at the top of the stairs,
smiling his grimace of a smile. He looked down at the twisted, wet mess at the
bottom of the stairs.
“Merry
Christmas Jerry...and a Happy New Year.”
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
My Next Horror Novel Up for Pre-Order!
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My next novel for Flame Tree Press is
A Hunter Called Night. It’ll be out May 9, 2023, and it’s available to pre-order
now!
A sinister being called Night and her
panther-like Harriers stalk their quarry, a man known only as Arron. Arron
seeks refuge within an office building, a place Night cannot go, for it’s part
of the civilized world, and she’s a creature of the Wild. To flush Arron out,
she creates Blight, a reality-warping field that slowly transforms the building
and its occupants in horrible and deadly ways. But unknown to Night, while she
waits for the Blight to do its work, a group of survivors from a previous
attempt to capture Arron are coming for her. The hunter is now the hunted.
Order Links
Flame Tree: https://www.flametreepublishing.com/a-hunter-called-night-isbn-9781787586345.html
Amazon Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Hunter-Called-Night-Tim-Waggoner/dp/1787586316/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1668832377&sr=1-1
Barnes and Noble Paperback: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-hunter-called-night-tim-waggoner/1142487192?ean=9781787586314
NOOK: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-hunter-called-night-tim-waggoner/1142487192?ean=9781787586352
Scheduled Appearances
The Scarelastic Book Fair, Scarlet Lane
Brewing Company, McCordsville, Indiana: February 18, 2023 https://www.scarletlanebrew.com/
Authorcon 2.
Williamsburg, Virgina: March 31-April 2, 2023 https://scaresthatcare.org/authorcon
Stokercon.
Pittsburgh: June 15-18, 2023 https://www.stokercon2023.com/
Social Media Links
Website: www.timwaggoner.com
Twitter: @timwaggoner
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZEz6_ALPrV3tdC0V3peKNw
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