[SIZE="3"]Here's the story behind the
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium...
All this started with a book called
Freak Show. This was one of three theme anthologies contracted by HWA to put itself on firmer financial footing. Rick McCammon, Ramsey Campbell, and I were chosen as Editors. Rick’s
Under The Fang came first and was a disjointed collection of vampire stories with the premise that the undead have taken over – now what?
I was up next. I spent the early months of 1990 mulling a theme and a structure for my anthology and decided on a traveling circus / freak show. I boned up on circuses and such (in libraries, folks – no Google back then) and talked to Harlan Ellison about his experiences when he ran away from home at age 13 to join a circus but wound up in a freak show, and Dean Koontz about his sources for
Twilight Eyes.
And while I was doing this, Bob Weinberg called in April, asking for a story for the 1990 World Fantasy Convention program book. As writer GoH that year, I was expected to contribute some original fiction. Well, I was knee-deep in circus lore, so why not use that setting? And since Bob’s wife Phyllis was the world’s number-one Repairman Jack fan at the time (the only Repairman Jack fiction extant in 1990 was The Tomb and the novella, “A Day in the Life”
I decided to write a Jack story and dedicate it to Phyllis.
Thus, “The Last Rakosh” is the first appearance of Oz and his troupe.
On May 30, the first 20 letters went out to the biggest name writers I knew personally and felt I could work with. I wanted
Freak Show to be more unified than
Fang, so I included three pages of guidelines outlining the background of Oz and company, and how my connecting story would run, plus the general circular route the show would take around the country.
I asked for a description of each writer’s freak and an outline of the story. This was necessary to avoid duplication of characters, locations (I didn't want three stories in Chicago or LA) and plot lines. It also pretty much guaranteed that once I approved a proposal, I'd buy the story.
Many of the invitees – including Stephen King – turned me down. A number said they found the guidelines too restrictive; others blasted off and came up with great stories. I opened it then to the HWA membership and was inundated.
After the synopses were set, I began tying them together – solidifying an overall story arc and adding interstitial material to link the individual pieces. I also circulated descriptions of all the freaks to the contributors to encourage cross-fertilization (a passing mention of this freak or that in other stories).
This took a year of my life and interfered with my own writing projects. But I was 90% satisfied with the outcome.
The paperback, published September 1992, was truly ugly and disappeared very quickly – yet has become something of a collector’s item. I’ve done a number of online searches and can’t find a copy for less than eighteen bucks. Borderlands Press did a hardcover limited edition signed by all contributors, and I can’t find a copy of that for less than $75.
Fine and good. That was that. Until 1998 when I incorporated “The Last Rakosh” into
All the Rage. This got me thinking about Oz & Co. again and wishing my story and interstitial material were available to my readers. After all, it was linked to the Otherness and the Adversary Cycle.
But I was too busy to cull out my sections and rewrite them into a presentable whole with no prospect of finding a home for it. (It would never be novel length, and back in those days the small presses were publishing only novels or fat anthologies and collections.) So the idea lay fallow for more than a decade until Don Koish approached me and asked if I’d write a novella for his Necessary Evil imprint. I wanted to – I’d been blown away by his deluxe edition of Tim Lebbon’s
Dead Man’s Hand – but had no time for anything new.
However…
We made a deal. I took my original
Freak Show material and fleshed it out, adding new characters and situations. In the process it wound up fifty percent longer than what I’d started with. I called it
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium. The 500-copy Necessary Evil Press edition (
http://www.necessaryevilpress.com/tpotcoe_book.html) sold out before publication and is almost impossible to find. Readers have been requesting a reasonably priced edition. So… since I like to see my work remain in print…
NB: For those interested in interconnections, the story takes place about a year or so after
All the Rage, in the summer before
Nightworld. Oz's father and the Device will appear in the 2nd YA Jack novel.[/SIZE]