Storytellersunplugged

To: JERRY WILLIAMSON IN SPRINGTIME
by Mort Castle
Dear Jer,

I figured it a good time to write because it is April and spring has come to Illinois–more or less, it hath, because last week snow still lay on the ground and a mixture of the same and rain is predicted for this weekend …

See, remembering over the many years, it was always this season when we both shook off hibernation and got springtime-goofy in those long, late night phone calls in the era when making a long distance telephone call was an event, a ritual, and a real expense. (Yes, dear hearts, hard to believe, but there was a time when Blue Tooth was not surgically inserted in the human ear at birth!)

“Hey, Jer, it’s springtime and the snakes are molting!”

“Uhm, uhm, uhm, I’ve been waxing poetic and the floors but I think I might have left my good leg at the Steak ‘n’ Shake.”

Bouncing words and laughs–wordplay!–at each other. And then you were onto the good stuff, the news, the ideas, the possibilities: Always a Williamson project or two in the works and a dozen or more a’borning: a new novel, this time combining Non-Euclidean geometry, silent movie history, werewolves, serial killers who are out to murder the Kabala and a lonely teenage waif whose parents won’t let her date the Golem. Or the newest MASQUES; you’re right, Jerry, no reason for that series not to go on forever. Or a series of columns or something that got all the neurons sparking in that ultra-quick and world-and-history-ranging brain you had.

(Jerry, I told lots of other people but did I ever tell you I considered you the only “genius” writer I knew? It wasn’t because you knew so damned much, though you did know so damned much, but you could find ways to connect it all and make others give credence to those connections.)

But what was I doing? You always wanted to know. Anything you could do to help me keep on doing the doing?

You always wanted to know.

Nah, Jer, we haven’t had that sort of telephone conversation for years. That’s somewhat your fault, what with your dying in 2005, but, I want you to know I miss our good talks. More than that, I’ll confess I am nostalgic for who we were in those spring seasons. Maybe time held us “green and dying” but the green felt fine –jes’ the sap a’rising–and the dying, hey, if you’re a writer, you can beat that wrap: A little talent, lots of perseverance, and some Good Luck, hey, you’ve got your shot at Immortality.

I also wanted to write to tell you the Gauntlet Press MASQUES V came out ever so fine. Your son, Gary Braunbeck, son in everything but DNA, definitely offspring of your heart and brain, did so well in making it happen. The anthology is Williamson’s guiding editorial vision aided and abetted by Braunbeck’s sniper sharp 20/20. Gary’s just won two new Stokers. He’s helped and is helping others write. I know your pride in Gary, and, wherever you’re hanging out these days, Jer, you can keep on being proud of him.

Oh, rebirth type news for this spring of 2008: You have some publications coming up. I’ll publicize ‘em as soon as deals and dates are fixed and firm, but it seems the graphic novel format books we produced with David Campiti that we called J. N. WILLIAMSON’S MASQUES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ELEGANT EVIL will be out in new deluxe editions. And how many times did we kick around a collaboration? Looks like we’ve got that in the works with your Sherlock Holmes novella: THE SPECTRE OF DEATH. With the four-fifths of the story you left behind and that detailed outline–I still use the outlining method you taught me on every lengthy fiction I undertake–I’ll finish it up. And you know, something? I don’t anticipate any problems in our working together on this one.

“Ever the best of friends; ain’t us, Pip?” as Joe said to Pip.

(Jer, it’s not easy these days finding folks with whom I can swap the good old lit’ry allusions. I’m grateful for Adam Niswander who can sling great lines of poetry from Robert Service and Don Blanding, the Vagabond Poet. When Niswander starts to top me, however, I toss in some Yiddish theater verse; that’ll teach ‘em bastards to mess around Chancevyville!)

Oh, and Jerry, I did want you to know that I’m just back from the World Horror Convention, which has been my regular spring event for eight years. This year, Salt Lake City was the site, and the chair, Charlie Harmon, and her crew did a splendid job. In my writing workshop, we had the largest turnout ever–and there is no one who was there who cannot succeed in the writing business. And yeah, as always, I started with the Prime Rule of Writing, that so simple maxim that can be so hard to follow: YOUR WRITING MUST BE INTERESTING.

You taught me that, Jer, and it’s the foundation for what I write and what I teach. And yes, hooray for me, way back I did thank you for that teaching and I thanked you again more than a few times at the WHC workshops.

You know, Jer, at WHC, one young guy referred to me as one of the “great statesmen of horror,” and it felt weird, the realization of just how long I have been at it, and to realize that what I preach about this writing business not being a sprint but instead a marathon seems to be true after all. But couldn’t help thinking, and it made me sad, that a certain guy I consider one of the “great statesmen of horror” wasn’t at the convention.

Wish you had been. Your peers and compadres (us other “statesmen”), would have been glad for your company. And the young ones, these horror writing very nice young people of whatever age, they know your work, they like you, they really, really like you.

So, that’s the letter for now, except for one other thing.

It’s spring and I miss you, pal.

Best,

Mort Castle