Carrion Comfort - By Dan Simmons Page 0,3

the constant overtime one bit. It was exhilarating. Given the quality of kids I was honored to work with and the unparalleled height of our goals and expectations met, it was the teacher equivalent of mainlining heroin. I loved it.

In 1985, I received a phone call at my APEX office from my agent Richard Curtis. Song of Kali had finally sold. After being “Almost, not quite” rejected by Doubleday and Random House and Bantam and many other houses, a new publishing house called Bluejay Books, begun by a certain James Frenkel, was willing to take the risk on this dangerous tale by this unknown novelist. Bluejay would pay me $5,000 for the book.

When I got home that evening, Karen and I literally danced around the kitchen in joy. Three-year-old Jane, lifted up first by Karen and then by me, was part of the dance, whether she wanted to be or not. Life, I thought, doesn’t get much better than this.

The tease on the back of the 1990 Warner paperback of Carrion Comfort says it all and should have been a premonition and a warning to me in 1985—

All humans feed on violence. But only those with the Ability have tasted the ultimate power.

Ordinary vampires possess the body. But only those who use the living can violate the soul.

They gather their strength through the years. They plot their unholy games. They war among themselves. And the victor will stand alone against a world without defenses.

Mind vampires, you see, have infinite patience. They will wait and wait and wait and wait and then strike when you least expect them.

Song of Kali didn’t sell that many copies but it received some critical attention and eventually it would be nominated for (and win) the World Fantasy Award.

This time the Great News from my agent was that Jim Frenkel wanted a second book from me. Knowing that the dream of the old woman in the forest, now recognized as the vampire Melaine Fuller in my long story, was still haunting me— the theme of people exerting their will over others without their permission has haunted me my entire life— I proposed a large novel also titled Carrion Comfort.

James Frenkel agreed. This time, Bluejay Books would pay me an astounding $25,000 with half paid upon signing the contract. For Karen and me (and little Jane) who’d always survived on a single teacher’s salary, this was fantastic. This time the three of us danced not only in the kitchen but right through the tiny living room of our house and out the front door.

And then I got to work writing Carrion Comfort, the epic novel. (I had warned Jim Frenkel from the beginning that it would be a large, large book. I was young, at least as a writer, and I had a lot to say about violence and about those who impose their will on us. The tale would begin with the Holocaust and work its way right up into the violence of the terrible 1980s, a decade that began with the murder of John Lennon, as well as the shooting of the pope and the American president.)

Reader, which is the worst mind vampire you’ve ever encountered?

Was it a pettifogging boss who made your employment a living hell as he or she got off on exerting control over you in your work or profession, ruining your own plea sure in that work?

Was it a lover who turned the most sacred things in life into tools of leverage over your heart and mind and life and emotions?

Was it someone you were sure would be your mentor who turned out to be a monster?

Was it one of your own children who devoted his or her young life to controlling your life with demands and confrontations and scenes and tantrums?

Or was it someone you would never have expected to be of the mind-vampire variety— the lurker in the shadows, the stranger soul-drainer hiding and gathering its strength while it waited for you to enter its web?

I had less than a year to write Carrion Comfort in 1985–1986. For an eager young novelist, it seemed plenty of time.

I was still working eighty and more hours a week on APEX, of course, but that was no problem. evenings, weekends, watching TV with Karen and little Jane, going to movies, outings, trips, everything disappeared. I wrote the first draft longhand on yellow legal pads late into the night. In the morning I rose early— I often had to leave to supervise the