7/23/26
Jeff Strand texted me last night with this bit of wisdom: ‘As years go by, there’s a lot less “What a tragic loss for the horror genre,” and a lot more “He was my friend!”
This was in relation to attorney, pre-reader, and horror super-fan Jamie LaChance, who passed away yesterday at 1:15am. Jamie’s passing was not entirely unexpected. He’d been fighting the same sort of brain cancer that took Tom Piccirilli, but he’d had the surgeries and treatments and we’d all hoped he’d pull through. Sadly, that didn’t happen.
Kelly Laymon shared with me last night that Jamie was one of the first fans at one of her father’s first signings at Aladdin Books back in the day. He was also one of the first fans at one of my first signings — third in line for 4X4 at Dark Delicacies, back in 2001. He was at all of our signings. Anytime any of us passed through California — myself, Strand, Jesus Gonzalez, Weston Ochse, Tom Piccirilli, Tim Lebbon, etc — we could count on at least Jamie showing up. He was one of those readers like Mark ‘Dezm’ Sylva and Tod Clark who we became genuine friends with. Indeed, he’s embedded in our bibliographies and DNA in ways that aren’t immediately apparent to someone on the outside.
It was Jamie,for example, who took this infamous picture of then early thirty-somethings Keene and Lebbon at Poe’s grave.
And this hilarious “look how goofy we used to look” pic of myself, Weston Ochse, and bookseller Roy Robbins after Weston and signed at his store.
He did pre-reading and copyediting for a number of publishers, and had, up until he got sick a few months ago, had been helping me with INVISIBLE MONSTERS and some of Jesus’s unpublished works. We had hoped he’d get to work on FALLING ANGELS: THE LABYRINTH Book 4, but it wasn’t meant to be.
And though he practiced a different kind of law, when we drove a stake through Leisure Books and the midlist (thus leading to the rise of the indies) Jamie was super helpful to Jesus and myself, putting us in touch with colleagues who were specially suited to what we wanted to do, and offering some off the record observations over bourbon.
When I went to visit Jesus’s parents after his death, Jamie went with me (as recounted in END OF THE ROAD).
Here are two photos from that portion of the tour that did not get used in the book. The first one was taken at what would turn out to be the last time I signed at Dark Delicacies. The second one is Jamie with David J. Schow and Muggsy Parker Schow outside one of David’s favorite LA eateries.
The last time I saw Jamie was last year, when he flew out to Pennsylvania to visit Vortex. He spent the day hanging out with myself and Mary and Jesus’s wife, Cathy. I was particularly touched because he told Mary that the manuscript for her novel The Everywhere House was not only the best thing she’d ever written, but the best cosmic horror novel he’d ever read, possibly eclipsing even John Langan’s The Fisherman. (I remember teasing him that my pre-readers aren’t allowed to use multi-syllable words, and he said, “You mean possibly?” and I said, “No, I mean eclipsing.”). That meant a lot to Mary. Despite myself, Laird Barron, Paul Tremblay, Chris Golden, and others raving about the book, she’d been unable to sell it to any of the big five or any of the indies. The only edition that had seen print was a signed limited edition of 50 copies from Thunderstorm. It was Jamie’s praise that lifted her spirits and got the manuscript back into circulation, and I’m happy to report that The Everywhere House will get a big five mainstream release next year.
I wish Jamie could have stuck around to see it.
Anyway… see you at the end of the road, brother. Give my best to Jesus, the Daves, Weston, Pic, Gak, Dick, Dallas, H, and everyone else in that hotel convention bar in the sky.
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 89
The Everywhere House by Mary SanGiovanni
A group of paranormal investigators is bribed or extorted by a wealthy real estate holding company to investigate and neutralize their most sinister and powerful property — a mansion in a small suburb of Connecticut. However, Carrington House is not like other haunted houses; its ghosts are not like other ghosts. Death in Carrington House is inexorable and multifaceted…and only the beginning of the horrors that await in its halls. The team needs to find a way to stabilize the house and escape it, because the longer they stay, the less likely that they will ever find their way out again — in this universe, or in any other.
I told Mary her elevator pitch for this novel should be “The Haunting of Hill House meets something out of H.P. Lovecraft’s most feverish nightmares”.
A haunted house that exists simultaneously in the same spot across multiple alternate realities, and an eldritch entity that occupies its center. That’s it. That’s all you get. Because to tell you any more than that would involve major spoilers and the less you know going in, the better. It’s the best thing she’s ever written, and it took her a long time to write, and it earned heavy advance praise from Laird, Paul, Chris, and others. Especially Jamie.
It will be put next year as a trade hardcover, trade paperback, audiobook, etc., but in the meantime, Camelot Books has one or two copies of that long sold out hardcover available for sale here.
