Notes on “Tommy Rotten”

Originally published in the volume one of the Bad Apples Halloween anthology series, my goal was to create a new urban legend for my favorite holiday. The result was “Tommy Rotten,” and it think it turned out pretty damn good.

This also happens to be the first story I ever read for a live audience, at a horror convention in Virginia. I was batting a thousand that day, as minutes before my scheduled reading I ran face-first into a plate glass window as hundreds of people watched.

Nose sore and swollen, I clutched a tattered copy of “Tommy Rotten,” covered in red ink from last minute cuts made to fit the thirty-minute format. I didn’t want to run out of time with pages still left to read. That would be embarrassing.

Sweat dripped onto the paper as I white-knuckled that poor chapbook, trying hard to get a natural rhythm going. I have social anxiety, and it was not easy to overcome. But I did it.

And I ran out of time with one page left to go.

Bummer, right?

You would think so.

When my thirty-minute timer buzzed, I looked up for the first time since I’d begun reading. The small group present when I’d started had massively grown, filling the room to maximum capacity. This crowd had obviously come to see Thomas F. Monteleone and F. Paul Wilson, as they were scheduled to read immediately after me. Then I saw both of those masters of the craft (and brilliant readers, to boot) standing in the back, taking in my reading.

All of a sudden, my face flushed hot with blood. I wrapped up the final paragraphs of the story and to my utter surprise, received an inexplicable standing ovation.

That was one of the happiest moments of my life.