The Amulet

FOREWORD

This novel was written during a twenty-two-day stretch back in January of 1989; while I usually write short fiction that quickly, I'd never done anything this long that fast; but I was working under a do-or-die deadline. My written-first novel, Dark Journey (that wasn't actually the title I wanted, but that's another story; from now on, I'll just call that first novel Dark Journey, or DJ for short), had already been accepted for publication as a hardcover (which is yet another story, since it was dumped out as a tightly-spaced paperback less than a year after this novel was published), but my publisher had a small problem.

DJ was a very long, complex book which they supposedly wanted to release with some degree of care, but it was considered an unlikely "first" novel; so they wanted me to put out a shorter, somewhat less complicated novel, albeit using some of the same characters that would be utilized in the second, more ambitious novel, in order to generate readership for the "second" book. And so I was told that, before a contract could be issued, I had to write a second "first" novel. DJ had taken me about seven years to write, and that didn't include the final drafts I did after I actually did get the contract, which should tell you a little something about how my novel-writing vs. short-fiction writing creative process operated.

I'm fairly proficient at writing short fiction, but the long works give me more trouble. DJ had taken years to reach a cohesive linear narrative, so suddenly I was faced with a choice-either come up with a second novel which could be written fast, or I'd lose my chance at being published by that particular house. My then-agent wanted me to jump ship and try the book elsewhere, but I had a problem-since I am probably one of the world's worst typists (a fact my editor later confirmed when she screamed at me over the phone, "You're the worst fucking typist in the whole god-damn universe!" a couple of years later), and computer illiterate on top of that, thanks to some learning disabilities which also prevented me from learning how to drive, etc., I was dependent on my editor's then-husband to actually get the book submitted in disk format to the publisher.

He'd ordered an Atari word processor and a different-brand printer for me from some computer company out East; and since the printer he ordered never worked right with the word processor, I was dependent on him to turn my diskettes into printed copy. And he told me that if I jumped ship with the book, he would not help me print out my disks-and since the system he used was obscure, and my typing skills were so awful, I'd have to pay a great deal of money up front to have my typed version of DJ turned into a submissable text, something even my agent would have to charge me for. And since I was hurting for money, I was trapped. But.my editor's husband came up with a solution to my novel problem on his own..

A year or so earlier, I'd published a short story in The Horror Show magazine called "Night Skirt," which was set in Ewerton, my fictionalized version of my own residence in Wisconsin (the setting of most of the stories I'd already had published, in the magazine my book-editor's husband also edited); and that story concerned a magical black skirt with dark, evil powers which falls into the hands of a most unpleasant little girl, on whom I'd based on my equally unpleasant and actually rather evil grandmother (who acted like a child until her death years later). The story was brief and pretty much self-contained, but the book-editor's husband thought it might work as a Foreword for a present-day story.

Since I was faced with many years spent writing DJ going down the drain if I didn't come up with a new novel, I reluctantly agreed that I'd try and come up with something based on my "Night Skirt" story. Only, I was soon told by the editor at the book publishing house that I could not use a skirt per se-the art department there simply could not find with a way to make a skirt scary. So I had a choice-I could turn the skirt into a ring or a bracelet of some sort. Which could be hidden in the skirt, initially, so I could still cannibalize most of the short story to act as the novel's prologue. I decided to use the bracelet, since I thought a scarab ring was just too darned clichéd (I'd also been told to make it a beetle-based ornament to provide a good cover image). And then I had a few days to create a rough outline and submit that. The editor wasn't crazy about it, but thought I could punch it up later-and so I finally got my contract.

That was December of 1988, and by the next month, I was writing a novel I'd never dreamed I'd be writing, using an infernal word processor I'd only employed once before to transcribe a previously-typed piece onto. I soon learned that the WP's rather bizarre system of self-filing each disk wasn't conducive to my style of writing (that is, looking at what I'd written a page or two earlier, then going on to the next section)-as each of the three banks within each file filled, it was impossible to scan backwards to, say, the beginning of the first or second file while filling up the second or third. So I had to guesstimate what I'd written about several pages earlier, and try to keep it all in my head as I worked.

If time hadn't been an issue, I would have written it on the typewriter instead, and then transcribed it into the WP; but I'd been told that writing directly into a WP was so much "easier" and supposedly enhanced the creative process-well, perhaps for most people, but not for me. This novel was the first-and last-thing that I ever wrote on a word processor. Which I'll admit wasn't a real computer, but the experience working with that blasted machine and its clunky software was enough to sour me on all non-typewriters for life. Within five years I'd sold the thing to Ardath Mayhar and her late husband Joe, who ran a used computer shop, along with the printer I'd never been able to use (and which, I later found out, was so thoroughly incompatible with the Atari machine that it would have never been recommended by anyone who sold computers, no matter what the fellow who ordered it for me said).

So.writing this novel wasn't the most naturally creative process of my writing career. Surprisingly, a number of people have liked it-once it was published, something my book editor wasn't thrilled to see happen, since she never did like the book, and only ended up putting it out because she had missed the accept-or-reject deadline once I sent the diskettes to her husband. Even though the book was cancelled from reprint status within a year of its release (along with DJ, which was summarily canceled immediately after the first sales statement arrived), it did earn back its advance plus some royalties. I have no idea to this day if all the copies of both books which had been sent to stores sold out, or if the rest were pulped. No one there seemed to know what happened with the two novels after my editor was fired a few years later-save that the rights ultimately reverted back to me.

Although the genesis of this novel was not the most pleasant creative experience I've ever had, the end result seemed to please a lot of folks, and it did eventually emerge as a serviceable prequel to DJ. I made every effort to produce an interesting read.

I ended up dipping into my own family history, so some of the events in this book were inspired by real (and deadly) occurrences. A brother-in-law of my maternal grandmother actually did kill his mother with an axe-this happened in the late 1930s in the Chicago area. No one knows why, and the man was never tried, just shipped off to the state mental hospital. Neighbors heard his mother calling the man's name, and shortly afterward, he was seen wandering around with the bloody axe still in hand. He wasn't a blood relative of mine, just a stray leaf on the family tree.

Lucy Miner is based on my maternal grandmother in virtually all ways save for being an only child (even though she did act like one), having a living grandparent to bond with, and, of course, her choice of a real-life mate (my maternal grandfather wasn't much of a catch-he was born blind with prenatal cataracts, remained legally blind as an adult, became an alcoholic, and had only a fourth-grade education). My grandmother was pretty much the Poster Child for Back Alley Abortion-one of those people the world said would have been much better off without her having graced it with her presence. She destroyed her only child's life, and she destroyed mine; and I know if I'd had a child, she would have destroyed that kid's life too. It was simply in her nature. Out of the ten children her parents had raised (five died in childhood), she was the one whom they feared and disliked the most.

I don't know why she was the way she was; all I know is that virtually everyone who came in contact with her ended up disliking her-or using her for what they could get out of her, then dumping her. She was a flirting machine: if she saw a man, she felt compelled to flirt with him, be he married, underaged, or openly not interested.

The "real" Lucy Miner was far more evil, frightening, and dangerous than my fictional creation could ever be on her own. To this day, I still have nightmares about her, even though she's been dead for many years. I wasn't even able to write about the worst of what she did to us; for that bit of information, check out my short story...