Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Today I would like to welcome,
multi-published author
Kathryn Meyer Griffith to my Blog.
Dinosaur Lake’s Backstory
Essay
By Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Of
all my 16 novels Dinosaur Lake has
the strangest story attached to its creation, death and rebirth…20 years later…of
any of them.
Not
so much because, as a few of my books, it took so long to write or publish, but
because in 1993 it was contracted, edited and the final galleys had been
proofed by me for a 5th paperback
book release from Zebra (Kensington Publishing) after 3 earlier novels with Leisure
Books. I even had a stack of the full-color, printed and embossed covers; it
was only weeks before it was to go to the bookshelves (in those days the brick &
mortar stores were still king, no Internet or ebooks). I strongly believed it’d
be my breakout book. You know, the book that’d make my career and launch me
into the stratosphere with Stephen King and Anne Rice? How wrong I’d be. But,
hey, I thought who wouldn’t love a tale of a cunning but malevolent rampaging prehistoric
dinosaur living in Crater Lake, Oregon, and the Park Ranger who, along with a
ragtag gang of heroes who’d try to stop it? I mean, I’d always loved anything
about dinosaurs…dinosaur books, playing with those little plastic figurines and
watching old stop-action dinosaur movies of the 1950’s and 60’s…who hadn’t?
Apparently
someone. My new editor at Zebra.
By
1994, after four novels with them, I’d lost my sweet editor there and a new one
took her place...and over the next year he didn’t like anything I wrote for him and later that year Zebra unceremoniously
dropped me and my book (Predator…which
never came out but still lingers to
this very day like some weird ghost book in every computer on the global
Internet) only six weeks away from
going to the bookstore shelves. When we were editing the book and deciding on
the title and the cover, I’d begged the new editor not to call it Predator (his choice as they hadn’t
liked my American Loch Ness Monster
title), bad title since there was a popular movie out of that name and the
movie, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, was nothing about a dinosaur, and the cover
was awful, an empty boat on a lake…what!!! Having that book–my first ever–dumped
like that was a crushing experience, let me tell you. I had a stack of
finished, printed covers and my final edits were done! But nothing my agent or
I could say or do would change their minds. They said they were cutting their
horror lines and setting adrift a lot of their mid-list horror authors because
horror (in 1994) was on the decline. The new editor-that-didn’t-like-my-writing
explained: “And no one wants to read a
book about a dinosaur.” Yeah, sure.
And
six months later Jurassic Park the book came out! We all know how that story
ended, don’t we? People loved the book, the movies; they loved dinosaurs.
I’ll
never know the real reason they cut the book but that male editor never bought
another book from me…which was another weird thing because when I’d met him in
New York (I went for a Horror Convention) in the summer of 1993 he’d taken my
husband and I out to lunch and gushed over me and said how much he’d loved my
last release WITCHES. Hmmm.
Anyway,
I got to keep my advance but the book was officially dead. It never came out. I grieved.
I
was so disgusted I stashed it in a drawer somewhere and tried to forget it.
Until
now. After I’d finished revising and rereleasing all my new/old 15 books (and besides paperbacks they’re in ebooks
for the first time ever) from Eternal Press/Damnation Books in June of 2012 I
remembered about my American Loch Ness Monster novel, took it out and reread
it.
Whoa,
like a lot of my older novels now
years later I could see what was wrong with it and how to fix it. Back then I
hadn’t seen the head-hopping I did or the awkward phrasing, stiff or overly
dramatic dialogue, repetitive words and other things I’ve learned since to
recognize and stay away from. Of course, computers help make the editing so
much easier. I think I’d done the original book on my electric typewriter.
Anyway,
telling myself the dumping of that book had been a turning point in my writing
life–sending me in the wrong direction for a long time apparently…I couldn’t
sell a book for eight long years after that–I decided to rewrite and finally
release it. In fact, I was going to do something that twenty years ago would
have been unheard of and frowned on…self-publish the book myself. With Kindle
Direct. For the first time in forty years I was walking away from the
traditional publishers and going on my own. Thank you J.A. Konrath’s blog! I
figured I could sell the Kindle ebook a lot cheaper and, thus, use it to introduce
(as enticement) more readers to my writing and perhaps, if they liked it,
they’d buy more of my other fifteen novels, novellas and various short stories.
It
could work, right?
So
here it is, retitled, rewritten, updated and with an amazing new cover I love by Dawne Dominique… Dinosaur Lake. I hope my readers will
like it.
Written this thirtieth day of Aug, 2012
by the author Kathryn Meyer Griffith rdgriff@htc.net
***
About
Kathryn Meyer Griffith...
Since
childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the
corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to
write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and
have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance, one
romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder mysteries)
previous novels and eight short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books,
Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I’ve
been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and two
grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in
Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis,
Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too),
and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though
I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing
has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably
write stories until the day I die…or until my memory goes.
Novels and short stories from Kathryn
Meyer Griffith.
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, June 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Blood Forge (Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition out 2011)
The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;
Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)
Don’t
Look Back, Agnes novella & bonus short story: In This House (2008; ghostly romantic
short story out; Eternal Press 2012)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (Damnation Books 2010)
The Woman in Crimson (Damnation Books 2010)
The
Complete Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume
1 (I did the Introduction)
My Websites:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1019954486
http://www.goodreads.com/profile/kathrynmeyergriffith
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