Jack Ketchum - I'm Not Sam

Id like to thank Paula White, Alice Martell and Kristy Baptist on this one they each know why, perfectly well also Caroline, Ana, and Jodi at the bar, for their little-girl dress-up tips.

There are two names on the cover of this book, but no one would see those two names together if it werent for a third: Alice Martell. Thank you, Alice, for representing our work with Class. I think we make a fine trio, and heres to more. Glad to be Your Client.

From Lucky McKee:

The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

From Jack Ketchum:

Love is friendship caught on fire.

In everyday life there are no starts or stops. Even the most startling, life-altering events unless theyre fatal are buffered and buffeted by other events, constant and ongoing, so that the impact of any one of them is muted.

Not so in fiction. Fictions like music. It starts and stops in silence. First theres no music and then there is and then its gone. And again like music if its any good that silence at the end should have a bit of resonance beyond itself. A loud or quiet buzzing in your ear that satisfies both you the reader and that particular story.

Because fiction wants to make a point. Sometimes many points. It wants to make you stop and think and feel at the end. So it needs its clear delineations, its exclamation points, its opening and closing curtain. Life has only one closing curtain. And it sucks.

IM NOT SAM started out its life as the idea for a short story which Lucky and I planned to adapt into a short film.

Then the damn thing started growing.

The root premise, which was a simple one, kept sprouting new shoots and branches and leaves as we worked it through in our daily Instant Mail messages to one another. We got a little crazy. We fell in love with the characters. We had fun.

Pretty soon though, as we started writing the prose version, it became clear that what we had on our hands was going to be novella-length, not a short story and a fairly long novella at that. No problem. A novellas just about a perfect length to adapt into a feature anyway. With a short story you have to expand and add on. With a novel youve got to compress and subtract.

The thing is, the rules and exigencies of prose are not the same as they are for film. Prose is a whole lot looser.

The modern film, most of the time, is divided into three clear acts. This as a lot of writers and directors will readily tell you is a pain-in-the -ass case of the tail wagging the dog. Because the acts are defined not by complexity of story or the directors vision but by simple running-time. Distributors and movie houses want to turn their feature over every two hours or so to maximize showings, hence draw in the bucks. The days of SPARTACUS and BEN-HUR and magnificent overtures and slowly drawn curtains are over, folks.

The first act of a movie today is probably twenty to thirty minutes long. It sets the premise, introduces the characters and kicks off the action. The second is probably forty-five minutes to an hour. It complicates the situations suggested by the premise and enriches the characters. It tries to pull you in deep. Then along comes the third act. The third act hopefully ties up all the loose ends set in motion thus far, brings things to a head, makes you glad youve plunked down your hard-earned money instead of sitting home with a beer watching cable. Its again about twenty to thirty minutes in length.

There are no such rules for prose. Sure, theres a beginning, middle and an end in any prose worth reading or writing but theres nobody standing over your shoulder with a stopwatch while youre doing it. The beginning can be a couple of paragraphs long if you want. The end can be a single punch to the gut.

So long as you adhere to the rule of silence.

A silence that has resonance and meaning.

When we finished IM NOT SAM we felt wed played our music pretty well. We were happy and satisfied with the piece. We felt it worked.

That it worked as a novella. But not as a movie. Not quite.

The end, in fact, was a single punch to the gut. Perfectly okay as far as we as prose-writers were concerned.

But as a film, it lacked a third act.

Bummer.

Lucky and I work pretty well together, though. So it didnt take us long to agree on a solution.

SAM would remain as she was, a stand-alone novella. We werent going to try to expand her. But wed go on to write another piece, a direct follow-up to the story, picking right up where SAM left off a story which would have a different kind of resonance altogether called WHERES LILY? So thats what we did.

As a film, the two would run seamlessly together. But here, on the page, each would stand alone. Same characters, wholly different themes and tones.

So heres where you come in.

Wed like to ask you a favor, Lucky and I. Hopefully you wont find it too pushy of us to be doing so. Were only asking because we think it might add to your experience of the thing, make it more fun for you and more fun for us thinking that you might just indulge us on this one.

If you like what you read in IM NOT SAM, there could easily be a temptation to dive right into WHOS LILY? immediately. As though it were simply another chapter in an ongoing tale. One blending into the other. Almost as though it were life, and not fiction. Wed like to ask you not to think of it that way.

Wed like to ask you to slow down. Take in the starts and stops.

To let SAM settle in a while.

A few minutes. A couple of hours. Maybe a day. Whatever.

Wed like to ask you to listen a while to the silence of the first tale before you draw open the curtain on the second. Theyre playing quite separate tunes, I promise you.

Feel free to tell us to go to hell.

Its your dime. You have every right.

But were trying to make a little music here, you know?

Couldnt hurt to listen.

I wake up in the morning to Zoeys crying.

Ive heard it before, many times. Its familiar. Its not the usual sounds cats make, its miles from a meeow. Its more of a muted wail. As though shes hurting. Though I know shes not.

It sounds as though her heart is breaking.

I know what it is.

Shes got that toy again.

Zoeys a tuxedo and so is her old stuffed toy. I dont recall who gave it to her now, some friend of ours who likes cats I guess, but that was long, long ago and though theres a tiny patch of stuffing leaking out over the back of its left ear, its miraculously still intact, after years between my nineteen-year-old cats not-always-so-tender jaws.

She protects that toy. She gentles it.

And theres that yowl again.

I glance over at Sam beside me and see that shes awake too. She yawns.

Again? she says and smiles.

Zoey pre-dates Sam in my life by nearly nine years but she loves this cat as much as I do.

Again, I tell her.

I get up and shuffle across the chilly hardwood floor and theres Zoey out in the hall looking at me with those big golden eyes, her toy face-up lying at her feet.

I lean down to stroke her and she raises her head to meet my hand. I use this opportunity, this distraction, to steal the toy with my free hand and tuck it back into the waistband of my pajamas.

I pet her head, her long bony back. Shes arthritic as hell so Im very gentle with her. I know exactly how to touch her, the exact weight and pressure of my hands on her body that she likes.

Ive always been able to do this. With animals and with people. Ive always known how to touch.