The monster wasn’t the problem…it was the solution!

Sorry, but this one is available only on ebook. It is 150,000 words, and self-publishing a phyisical book that large costs too much, and it doesn’t lend itself to two volumes.

There’s a story behind this book, and it was crucial to my development as a writer for several reasons. The story is a little long, so power up with the Pepsi and get ready. Or just go to another page.

Before I start I want to emphasize that this site is not just about me advertising my books, this is a site about educating readers about the foibles of the publishing business, and those who would write about what really happens to writers in this crazy business. Here we go.

I moved to Los Angeles in the early 80s and I began teaching martial arts. Yep, I had been doing martial arts for decades, became a writer and columnist for the martial arts magazines, and I love martial arts.

One day I get a call from a fellow, John Champion. He’s had a heart attack, lost part of his heart and had to take 18 pills a day to stay alive. His landscaper, one of my students, had told him that I knew some stuff that might help his rehabilitation.

A heart attack? Oh, crap. But I had been doing some pretty intense research into Tai Chi, and I had developed something I called ‘matrixing,’ and I decided to take him on.

What I didn’t know was that John was a producer. He had made movies for a couple of decades, and was heavily involved in a series called ‘Laramie,’ and another one called ‘McHale’s Navy.’

I taught him, he did pretty well, and he wrote me a win. I saw all the episodes of his TV work in book form on a shelf, and next to them was a western novel.

I asked him why he didn’t write more novels, and he asked if I wrote. I said I had written a few novels. Mind you, I wasn’t trying anything sneaky, this was all just honest conversing.

He says, “Not much money in novels. The real money is in movies. Do you have any screenplays?”

“Nope.”

“Well, write one, make one of your books into a screenplay and I’ll look at it. Who knows, you might have some money in your books.”

A week later I gave him the screenplay for The North Mansion.

Now, the North Mansion was not just about a monster, it was a monster…a monster to write. It was only my fourth book, and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

I also didn’t understand how writing a long book can mess your mind. How do you remember everything? I could hardly remember the names of the characters!

But I had put my butt in the chair and gone crazy and written the book. I forgot things, my mind was blank at times, but I was determined not to let the book beat me. Rewriting it in script form, however, was pretty easy. I just read Syd Field’s book on screenplays and went to work.

John offered me $35,000 for the script. Right off the bat. No hesitation.

More, he told me he would make me a producer, that he would teach me the business from the inside.

I wasn’t even tempted. I turned him down flat.

Why?

There were several reasons.

First, he was going to die if he started producing again. When he sat me down and made that offer I could see the fire rise up in him. He had told me that Hollywood had almost killed him, that it had caused his heart attack, and now I was seeing the hard core, no nonsense, take no prisoners producer rise up in his eyes.

If I took the money his family would be robbed of him, the script would end up in limbo, and, most important, the idea of being a producer frightened me. I wanted to do martial arts, and write books. I didn’t want to be a power producer like John. (This was 1985, he died in 1994, so I gave him 9 years of extra life.)

He told me, “Al, you’ll always regret walking away from this deal.”

No. I don’t. I did the right thing. So what if it doesn’t sell. People are more important than money any day of the week, month or year!

ABOUT THE BOOK

I had written, I believe, three books before this. Spreadwing, The Mortal Coil and Grave Business. I never tried to sell any of them because they were me trying to figure out how to be a writer.

But with The North Mansion I ‘found my voice.’

Finding your voice is a funny concept, because it isn’t the ambiguity of ‘finding your voice’ so much as finding your confidence.

Suddenly I wasn’t fumbling and stumbling, I was exploring characters who leaped into my mind and screamed ‘Look at me!’ I was arcing through plot contrivances like a maniac on LSD trapped in a steel ball caroming on a pinball machine. I was a hopeless victim to the whims and vagaries of that weird misinterpretation of the psyche called ‘The Muse.’

Most of all, I was growing my mind, increasing its capacity for handling larger and larger amounts of words, plots and pages.

After The North Mansion I gave up writing short stories and focused on novels. Short stories, once I had truly expanded my mind, were like masturbation. I wanted the real thing.

Want to know a drill that I did to become a great writer? I wrote a book (50,000 words) in two days. The first time a weird sort of compulsion gripped me. The other times I just didn’t want to stop writing.

Think about that the next time you want to write a book.

Anyway, the idea for The North Mansion came from sitting around the campfire as a boy scout and telling scary stories.

A fellow builds a mansion in the wilderness. He is so proud he has a plane fly overhead and take a picture of his grand property. Except there is a smudge on the photo.

He has another photo taken, and the smudge has moved closer to his mansion. And closer and closer, until one night….moo ha ha!

I took that simple story and embellished it with Indian graveyards, mysterious and evil organizations/corporations, several people trapped in town, and that whole town going homicidal and loving it.

Now, the problem with the book, if one was to analyze it mechanically, is that I spend too much time building the characters. But I was discovering that characters are real people!

Later, as you can see in White Dove, I had figured out how to insert back grounds into stories. But in this story I still had a few things to figure out.

That was my experience writing my first ‘real’ big book, and dealing with a Hollywood producer who really was an incredible fellow.

The North Mansion (Coming soon!)

One of my back covers…

Monster Killer!

…just when you thought it was safe to read a book

(Monster Killer was one of the titles I tried out)

The sheriff runs his dog through a meat grinder.

The cook in the town restaurant holds an impromptu barbecue, with himself on the grill.

A trucker drives his eighteen wheeler through a house.

In the small town of Matah, Montana the people have gone mad. With knife and gun, or whatever implement they can find, they invent new ways to murder and die, and they laugh the whole time.

A monster is coming to the town. It is watching all the murder, and helping it happen. It is inside the people’s minds, making them kill, making them laugh, making them die.

The monster must be the source of all the death and insanity, right?

Nope. The monster isn’t the problem…it’s the solution for something a LOT worse!

Welcome to a BIG (150,000 word) horror extravaganza.

PS If there are any ‘big time’ Hollywood producers out there who want to see the script, write me at aganzul@gmail.com. I’ve got scripts for Monkeyland, White Dove, and others, or I can translate them from book to script very quickly.