On February 14, 2001, at far too young an age, Richard Laymon left this world for another. Within a large community of suspense, horror, mystery, and fantasy writers, news of his death was received with shock and grief. His writing was edgy, often disturbing, and definitely not for everyone, but even those colleagues who didn’t read Richard Laymon’s work nevertheless acutely felt the loss of him because he was such a reliably cheerful, forthcoming, likable man. Years before we lost Dick, I wrote this tribute to him for a special occasion. It made him laugh then, and in rereading it recently, I smiled because it reminded me of how amiable Dick was. Therefore:

At the moment that Richard Laymon was born, a mysterious rain of one million frogs fell on Cleveland, Ohio, and over seven hundred citizens were severely injured by large plummeting amphibians. In Tibet, at that same hour, a holy man suddenly levitated twelve feet off his monastery floor and, seized by some strange entity, began barking like a dog and shouting the word “gravy” in seventy-nine languages. While the holy man was aloft and shrieking, two archaeologists, at work outside Jerusalem, unearthed the altar of a third-century devil-worshipping cult on which was carved an image of Satan that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Warner Brothers’ cartoon character Yosemite Sam. Even as the doctor slapped Richard Laymon’s butt and the author’s first cry echoed through the hospital delivery room, a group of nuns in Boston inexplicably fell into a ferocious hysteria and, racing through the streets of that city, set fire to anyone they encountered who was named “Herman.” In London, the queen’s favorite feathered hat exploded for no good reason, causing no harm to her august personage but putting her in such a foul mood that, forgetting what century she was in, she ordered the royal hatmaker beheaded.