The Plant (2 page)

John

p.s.—Don’t bother to thank me.

8

January 16, 1981

Mr. Carlos Detweiller

147 E. 14th Street, Apt. E

Central Falls, Rhode Island 40222

Dear Mr. Detweiller,

Thank you for your interesting letter of January 4th, with its brief but intriguing description of your book, True Tales of Demon Infestations. I would welcome a fuller synopsis of the book, and invite you to submit sample chapters (I would prefer chapters 1–3) with your synopsis. Both the synopsis and the sample chapters should be typed and double-spaced, on good quality white bond paper (not the erasable type; on erasable bond, whole chapters have a way of simply disappearing in the mail).

As you may know, Zenith is a small paperback house, and our lists currently match our size. Because we publish only originals, we look at a great many proposals; because we are small, the proposals we look at are, in most cases, returned because they do not seem to fit our current needs. All of which is my way of cautioning you not to construe this letter as a covenant to publish your book, because that is most definitely not the case. I would suggest you mail off the synopsis and sample chapters with the idea that we will ultimately reject your book. Then you will be prepared for the worst...or pleasantly surprised if we should find it is right for Zenith Books.

Finally, here are the standard caveats upon which our legal department (and the legal departments, so far as I know, of all publishing houses) insist: you must enclose adequate postage to ensure the return of your manuscript (but please do not send cash to cover postage), you should realize that 9

Zenith House accepts no responsibility for the safe return of your manuscript, although we’ll take all reasonable care, and that, as I said above, our agreement to look is in no way a covenant to publish.

I look forward to hearing from you, and hope this finds you well.

Sincerely yours,

John Kenton

Associate Editor

Zenith House, Publishers

490 Park Avenue South

New York, New York 10017

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

t o: Roger

f r o m : John

r e: upon further study...

...I agree. I do write too much. Appended to this is a copy of my letter to Detweiller. Looks like a synopsis of The Naked and the Dead, doesn’t it?

John

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January 21, 1981

Mr. John Kenton, Editor

Zenith House, Publishers

490 Park Avenue South

New York, New York 10017

Dear Mr. Kenton,

Thank you for your letter of January 16th, in which I am of receipt of. I am sending off the entire manuscript of
True Tales of Demon Infestations
tomorrow. My money is low today, but my boss, Mrs. Barfield, owes me about five dollars from playing the lot-tery. Boy, she’s a real sucker for those little cards you scratch off!

I would s end you a “sinopsis proposal,” as you say, but there is no sense of doing that when you can read it for yourself. As Mr. Keen in my building says, “Why describe a guest when you can see that gue st.” Mr. Keen does not really have any deep wisdom but he says something witty like that from time to time. I tried on one occasion to instruct him (Mr. Keen) in the “deeper mysteries” and he only said, “Each to his own, Carlos.” I think you will probably agree that this is a silly comment which only
sounds
witty.

Because we don’t have to worry about the “sinopsis proposal,” I will spend my letter telling you something about me. I am twenty-three (although everyone says I look older). I work at the Central Falls House of Flowers for Mrs. Tina Barfield, who knew my mother when my mother was still alive. I was born on March 24th, which makes me an Aries. Aries people, as you know, are very psychic, but
wild.
Luckily for me, I am on the “cusp” of Pisces, which gives me the control I need to deal with the psychic universe. I have tried to explain all this to Mr. Keen, but he only says, “There’s something
fishy
about you, Carlos,” he is always joking like that and sometimes he can be very irri-tating.

But enough about me.

I have worked on
True Tales of Demon Infestations
for seven years (since age 16).

Much of the information in it I got from the “OUIJA” board. I used to do the “OUIJA”

with my mother, Mrs. Barfield, Don Barfield (he is now dead), and s ometimes a friend of mine named Herb Hagstrom (also now dead, poor lad). Once in awhile others would join our little “circle” as well. Back in our Pawtucket days, my mother and I were quite

“social!”

11

Some of the things we found out from “OUIJA” that are described in “blood-cur-dling detail” in
True Tales of Demon Infestations:
1. The disappearance of Amelia Earhart was actually the work of
demons
! 2. Demonic forces at work on H.M.S.
Titanic.

3. The “tulpa” that infested Richard Nixon. 4. There will be a President from ARKANSAS! 5. More.

Of course this is not “all.” “Don’t cool me off, I’m just gettin’ warmed up,” as Mr.

Keen says. In many ways
True Tales of Demon Infestations
is like
The Necronomicon,
except that book was fictional (made up by H. P. Lovecraft, who also came from Rhode Island) and mine is
true.
I have amazing stories of black magic “covens” I have attended, by taking a potion and flying to these covens through the aether (I have recently been to covens in Omaha, Neb., Flagstaff, Ariz., and Fall River, Mass., without ever leaving

“the c omfort of my own home”). You are probably asking yourself, “Carlos, does this mean you are a student of the ‘black Arts’?” Yes, but don’t worry! After all, you are my

“connection” to getting my book published, right?

As I told you in my last letter, there is also a chapter, “The World of Spells,” which most people will find very interesting. Working in a greenhouse and flower-shop has been especially good for working spells, as most require
fresh
herbs and plants. I am very good with plants, Mrs. Barfield would even tell you that, and I am now growing some very “strange” ones in the back of the greenhouse. It is probably too late to put them in this book, but as Mr. Keen sometimes tells me, “Carlos, the time to think about tomorrow is yesterday.” Maybe we could do a follow-up,
Strange Plants.
Let me have your thinking on this.

I will close now. Let me know when you get the manuscript (a postcard will do), and fill me in as soon as possible on royalty rates,
etc.
I can come to N.Y.C. any Wednesday on the train or Greyhound Bus if you want to have a “publishing luncheon”

or come here and I will introduce you to Mrs. Barfield and Mr. Keen. I also have more photographs than the ones I am sending. I am happy to have you publish
True Tales of
Demon Infestations.

Your new author,

Carlos Detweiller

147 E. 14th St., Apt. E

Central Falls, R.I. 40222

12

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

t o : Roger

f r o m: John

r e : True Tales of Demon Infestations, by Carlos Detweiller I just received a letter from Detweiller in regard to his book. I think that, in inviting him to submit, I made the biggest mistake of my editorial career. Oooh, my skin is starting to hurt...

from the office of the editor-in-chief

T O: John Kenton

DATE: 1/23/81

You made your bed. Now lie in it. After all, we can always get it ghost-written, right? Hee-hee.

Roger

13

January 25, 1981

Dear Ruth,

I feel almost as if I am in the middle of a goddam archetype—segments of the Sunday New York Times on the floor, an old Simon and Garfunkel album on the stereo, a Bloody Mary near at hand. Rain tapping on the glass, making it all the more cozy. Am I trying to make you homesick? Well...

maybe a little. After all, the only thing the scene lacks is you, and you’re probably paddling out beyond the line of breakers on a surfboard as I write these words (and wearing a bikini more non than existent).

Actually, I know you’re working hard (probably not too hard) and I have every confidence that the PhD will be a world-beater. It’s just that last week was a real horror show for me and I’m afraid there may be worse to come.

Among other things, Roger accused me of prolixity (well, actually that was the week before, but you know what I mean), and I think I feel a real prolixity attack coming on. Try to bear with me, okay?

Basically, the problem is Carlos Detweiller (with a name like that he couldn’t be anything but a problem, right?) He’s going to be a short-term problem, is old Carlos, like poison ivy or a mouth sore, but as with those two things, knowing the problem is short-term doesn’t ease the pain at all—it only keeps you from going insane.

Roger’s right—I do tend toward prolixity, That’s not the same as logor-rhea, though. I’ll try to avoid that.

The facts, then. As you know, every week we get thirty or forty “over the transom” submissions. An “over the transom” is anything addressed to

“Gentlemen,” “Dear Sir,” or “To Whom It May Concern”—an unsolicited manuscript, in other words. Well...they’re not all manuscripts; at least half of them are what us hip publishing guys call “query letters” (getting tired of 14

all these quotation marks yet? You should read Carlos’s last letter—it would put you off them for life).

Anyway, they should all be query letters if this mudball lived up to its advance billing and really was the best of all possible worlds. Like 99% of the other publishers in New York, we no longer read unsolicited manuscripts—at least, that’s our official policy. It says so in Writer’s Market, Writer’s Yearbook, The Freelance, and The Pen Newsletter. But apparently a lot of the aspiring Wolfes and Hemingways out there either don’t read those things, don’t believe them when they do read them, or simply ignore them—pick what sounds best to you.

In most cases we at least look at the slush, if it’s typewritten (please don’t breathe a word of this or we’ll be inundated with manuscripts and Roger will probably shoot me—he’s close now, I think). After all, Ordinary People came in over the transom and was first read by some editorial assistant who just happened to recognize that it was a hell of a story. But that, of course, was a million-to-one shot. I’ve never seen an unsolicited manuscript that looked like any more than the work of a bright fifth-grader. Of course Zenith House is hardly Alfred A. Knopf (our lead title for February is Scorpions from Hell, by Anthony L. K. LaScorbia, his follow-up to Rats from Hell), but still...you hope...

Detweiller, at least, followed protocol and sent a query letter. Herb Porter, Sandra Jackson, Bill Gelb, and I divvy those that came in the week before each Monday, and I had the misfortune to get this one. After reading it and mulling it over in my mind for all of twenty-five minutes (long enough to write Roger a long-winded memo on the subject that, under the circumstances, I’m probably never going to live down), I wrote Detweiller a letter asking him to submit a few sample chapters and an outline of the rest. And last Friday I got a letter that...well, short of sending it to you, I’m not sure how to describe it. He seems to be a twenty-three-year-old florist’s assistant from Central Falls with a mother fixation and the conviction that he’s attended witch’s sabbats all over America while high on nutmeg, or something. I keep envisioning covens in Motel Six parking lots.

15

I thought ole Carlos’s True Tales of Demon Infestations (I have gotten to the point where the title alone has the power to make me blanch and shudder in my shoes) might be some kid’s adolescent research hobby—

something that could be cut down and juiced up and sold to the Amityville Horror audience. His original letter was short, you see, and so full of these punchy little sentences—subject-predicate, subject-predicate, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am—that one could believe that. And while I was never under any illusions that the man was a writer, I made an assumption of marginal literacy that turns out to be totally unfounded. In fact, just looking back at the original Detweiller letter makes me wonder how I ever could have scribbled the word This has a certain half-baked charm in the margin...

and yet I see I did.

So what? You’re saying. Big deal. Give the schmuck’s manuscript a token look when it comes in and then send it back with a form letter—

“Zenith House regrets,”
etc.
That’s right...but it’s wrong, too. It’s wrong because guys like Carlos Detweiller turn out all too often to be like a bad case of head-lice—easy to get, the very devil to get rid of. The worst of it is, I mentioned this very fact to Roger in my original overlong memo about the book, recalling General Hecksler and his Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers—

you must remember me telling you how the General bombarded us with registered letters and phone calls after we rejected the book (you may not know, however, about the Mailgram Herb Porter got from him—in it Hecksler referred to Herb as “the designated Jew,” a reference none of us has figured out to this day). It got steadily more abusive, and just before his sister had him committed to an asylum upstate, Sandra Jackson confessed to me that she was getting scared to go home alone—said she was afraid the General might jump out of a darkened doorway with a knife in one hand and a bouquet of psychic posies in the other. She said the hell of it was that none of us even knew what he looked like—we’d have needed a writing sample instead of a mug-shot to identify him.

And of course it all sounds funny now, but it wasn’t funny when it happened—it was only after his sister wrote to us that we found out we were 16

actually one of his lesser obsessions, and of course he did turn out to be dangerous; just ask the Albany bus driver he stabbed.