The Woods are Dark (The Original, Uncut Version)

"The Woods Are Dark plunges forward like a Tobe Hooper film based on a scenario by Charles Manson. Gruesome, frenetic, blood-curdling."
— Dean Koontz

"The Woods Are Dark is a roller-coaster ride through hell. More disgusting than The Cellar."
— Gary Brandner

The Woods Are Dark (The Original, Uncut Version)
by Richard Laymon

Featuring a special introduction by Kelly Laymon explaining the history of the manuscript, how this version came to exist, and why this edition is more than just 50 pages of deleted scenes added back in, but instead a totally different novel you've never read before!

About the Book:
Neala and her friend Sherri only wanted to do a little backpacking through the woods. Little did they know they would soon be shackled to a dead tree, waiting for Them to arrive. The Dills family thought the small motor lodge in the quiet town of Barlow seemed quaint and harmless enough. Until they, too, found themselves shackled to trees in the middle of the night, while They approached, hungry for human flesh....

When this classic novel was first published in 1981, it was heavily cut, with nearly fifty pages removed. What remained was rewritten by both Laymon and a Warner Books line editor. Now, for the first time ever, the missing text has been completely restored—along with Laymon's original words and vision — and the novel can finally be read the way it was intended.

An excerpt from Kelly Laymon's special introduction to this edition:
"The version you're about to read was the one that was first submitted to Warner Books... Those of you who have read the Warner edition will notice that the two books are very different after, say, Chapter 8 or so. How did I do it? Especially since my father said it couldn't be done? I'm not sure. It was all there. But the pieces weren't in the same place. There were boxes of thirty year old manuscripts and I had played with the various drafts many times over the last six or seven years. I always believed it could be done. I sure had false starts though. I had to get to know each draft of the manuscript. Not by the content of the pages, but by the pages themselves. I evaluated them based on page numbering styles and other forms of continuity. I didn't want to read any draft until I had settled on what I believed was the true manuscript...."

"If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat!"
— Stephen King

"No one writes like Laymon and you're going to have a good time with anything he writes."
— Dean Koontz

Richard Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947. He grew up in California and has a BA in English Literature from Willamette University, Oregon, and an MA from Loyola University, Los Angeles.

He published more than sixty short stories in magazines such as Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, and Cavalier and in anthologies, including Modern Masters of Horror, The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime, and Night Visions 7.

His novel Flesh was named Best Horror Novel of 1988 by Science Fiction Chronicle and also shortlisted for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award, as was Funland.

Richard Laymon is the author of more than thirty acclaimed novels, including The Cellar, The Stake, Savage, Quake, Island, and Body Rides. He won the Bram Stoker Award for his Cemetery Dance novel, The Traveling Vampire Show.

Over fifty authors contributed to a tribute anthology entitled In Laymon's Terms.

His latest book with Cemetery Dance is The Woods are Dark (The Original, Uncut Version).

Published in two states:
• Trade Hardcover Edition featuring a cloth binding ($40)
• Traycased Lettered Edition of 52 lettered copies signed by Kelly Laymon, with a bookplate signed by Richard Laymon, bound in leather with a satin ribbon page marker ($200)

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