Preface
THE FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH
YOUNG ADULT BOOKS
My personal involvement in the FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH universe began when I was working a 6am to 3pm shift as a morning filler at my local Kmart. A coworker, and friend, named Charisma Jones approached me one day when I was at lunch and told me that her brother was working as an editor for Berkley books and that they were looking for a writer to work on a series of books based on the supposed final FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH film, JASON GOES TO HELL.
The reason Charisma said she came to me was because I'd shown her some of my writing and she thought I was an excellent writer. Also, we'd talked a lot about horror films, including the FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH series and I'd amazed her with my knowledge.She'd felt that I would be a perfect choice to put in for the job.
On the other hand, I wasn't so sure. I'd worked on two Hollywood scripts, just to be denied any credit for my work. Also, I'd had two scripts stole by people I trusted in the industry. And, I'd had three of my stories viciously criticized by a professional writer I knew.
Another concern I had was that at the time the FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH franchise was in essence dead. This was before the FREDDY V.S JASON thing started up. So, starting a book series was a real gamble and I was honestly concerned about my reputation as a writer if the series failed.
Finally, both Charisma and my mother convinced me to take on the challenge. So I sent Charisma's brother a sampling of my work and some personal information and waited to see what happened.
Two months later I got a call from an executive from Berkley Books telling me that they were very interested possibly having me write their series of FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH young adult novels. The thing was that they wanted me to send them four treatments for the first four books in the series.
So over the next two weeks I came up with my four treatments. The first treatment was the original version of THE MASK OF JASON VOORHEES. This version was essentially the same story only the subplot of the documentary crew wasn't there and the killer in this one was the hunter, Joe Travers. Of course, at the end of the story Jason was reborn.This treatment was followed by the original treatments for MOTHER'S DAY, JASON'S CURSE, and THE CARNIVAL. As with THE MASK OF JASON, these were essentially the same stories, but they included Jason as the killer. So, with these finished, I sent them in and waited.
About a month later, I got a call from the same Berkley executive I talked to before. He told me that they liked the treatments. The thing was that they really liked the idea of the possessed hockey mask and having someone else besides Jason being the killer, so they wanted to hold off bringing Jason back to life and have me bring in a new killer in each novel. Also they didn't want to do a crossover between f13 the television series and the movies, so for now the MASK OF JASON treatment was on the back burner. So I was given another two weeks to revise the remaining treatments and to come up with one more treatment. After this, if they liked the revisions and the new story they'd send me a contract and I could start writing.
It was at this time that I informed Berkley Books that I'd be writing the books under a pen name. I decided to use the name Eric Morse. The first name came from the name of Gaston Leroux's classic character of The Phantom Of The Opera, Eric Desler. The last name came from the mystery detective Inspector Morse. Surprisingly enough, I've since found out that there are at least three other authors named Eric Morse.
The reason for using a pen name was because at the time I was also working on a sci fi novel titled THE TRAVELER: A CONFLICT OF INTEREST and figured if the F13 book series failed I didn't want it to affect my chances of selling my sci fi book.
Nearly a month after I sent in the revised treatments I got another call from the executive from Berkley Books. He told me that in a week one of their representatives would be coming to town and they'd bring the contract for me to sign.
So, I ended up taking the day off (actually I called in sick) and met up the representative for lunch and signed the contract.
The next day I made the biggest mistake of my life. I asked a lady I'd known from work (I will not mention her name) for three years and asked her out for an Italian dinner to celebrate my book deal. Anyway, to make a long story short, three weeks later I was charged with sexual harassment and lost my job.....fun...
Anyway, as I was looking for a job I was starting the work on the novel MOTHER'S DAY. It was during this time that my mother read my contract, and gave me a big surprise. She informed me that I'd misread the contract in regard to the amount of time I had to finish all the novels. I thought I had a year to finish each individual novel. The truth was that I only had one year to finish all four novels.
I nearly flipped when I found this out. I immediately contacted Berkley Books and tried to find out if this was a typo. They inform me that this was indeed what the contract said and that I needed to have all the books in final editorial form in one year's time or I'd forgo my money.
So rather than mess up my chance to be a published writer, I stopped looking for work and spent my days tied to the word processor writing. I managed to finish both MOTHER'S DAY and JASON'S CURSE in five months.
Then I started work on the forth novel, ROAD TRIP. The reason for this was that I thought while I was working on ROAD TRIP I could do some research on carnivals for the third novel. But that wasn't going to happen.
During this time Berkley Books sent me back the first two novels with piles of notes on what to cut and to rewrite. I was floored.
Upon reading the revisions I noted that the editors were cutting all my references to the films and all the subplots featuring the ghosts of Jason's victims.They also cut out ninety eight percent of the descriptions of the murders, which really pissed me off. I was actually surprised, given all the hard ball editing, that they hadn't cut Mrs. Voorhees' head out of MOTHER'S DAY. To put it simply, they were cutting out all the things I thought I was hired to provide. I mentioned this fact and sent questions about these revisions to the editor assigned to me, but all my inquiries were ignored.
So, by the time I got started writing THE CARNIVAL I was both mentally and physically exhausted. With all the rewriting the only research I was able to do for THE CARNIVAL was watch the movies FUN HOUSE and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. I had four months to both write and edit this novel, while working on the editing for ROAD TRIP as well.
It was three weeks into the writing of THE CARNIVAL that I got sick and nearly ended up in the hospital. I had to stop work on the books for nearly two weeks while I recovered.
In the end I did managed to deliver all four books on time, though I was really not all together pleased with the final product. I felt that the editors cut out most of the material that provided links to the series of films. Also, I thought the subplots they cut would've added another dimension to these stories. But I had no control over these things because I was in essence just a hired hack writer who was being paid to put words on pages.
But, what about the pay, you ask? Well, for all four books I got paid fifteen hundred dollars.That comes to about three hundred and twenty five dollars per book. Not much for a year of sixteen to eighteen hour days working in front of a word processor. But I consoled myself in the fact that I was supposed to get a percentage of the profits from the books. The only thing was I never ended up seeing any profits.
The reason for this was because Berkley Books only advertised the books to the booksellers. When it came to the general public Berkley didn't do squat. They didn't even provide cardboard displays for the books. So, to put it simply, the fans didn't even know these books were out there.
Of course, at the time I was unaware of this. I was under the delusion I was going to be going to horror conventions and doing book signings. Hell, I even thought there was going to be another series of four books.
After taking a month off, to get back my health, I wrote the treatments for four new novels. These were titled THE COLLECTION, BAD MEDICINE, THE DOCUMENTARY (Note: this was years before THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), and THE SCARCROW (Note: this one was a fall back in case I still couldn't convince them to do a revised version of THE MASK OF JASON VOORHEES).
Then, after waiting a few more months and not hearing anything, nor being invited to do anything in regard to the books, I called my contact at Berkley Books. I was informed my contact had been transferred and that Berkley wasn't going to do a second series of FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH books because the first series hadn't made enough sales even to warrant a second printing. I was devastated. So, I chalked up the whole thing to experience and tried to rebuild my life.
Then, eight years later, I was on the internet looking around at F13 websites, since I'd opened a F13 website of my own (FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH: JASON'S BLOODBATH), and came upon a website titled FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH: JASON'S LAIR. The website featured a section on my F13 young adult books, as well as a fan fiction novel (RETURN TO CRYSTAL LAKE) that the web masters, Matt Caddy and A.J. Urban, credited as being inspired by my work. I was overwelmed.
I immediately sent Matt and A.J. an email telling them how much I appreciated them including my work on their site and to see my work as an inspiration. Matt and A.J. were equally thrilled to hear from me.
Unfortunately, they were so thrilled that they posted that they heard from me and also posted my website. So, for the next eight months I was inundated with emails from fans. Hell, I was getting over a hundred emails a week. Many of the emails were from fans who were looking for my books.
Eventually, these emails inspired me to start THE OFFICIAL BRING BACK THE FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH YOUNG ADULT NOVELS SERIES CAMPAIGN. I started this campaign to convince Berkley Books and New Line Cinema to either reprint the young adult novels or start a new series of books based on FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH.
As a result of my campaign New Line hired Black Flame Publishing to create a new series of novels based not only on FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, but also on JASON X.
Soon after I started the book campaign Matt and A.J. suggested that I write one last book to finish off the possessed mask storyline. I reminded them that neither Berkley Books nor New Line would authorize the work. They suggested I just web publish it as fan fiction. So, I decided I'd finally write THE MASK OF JASON VOORHEES, but I'd write it the way it should be written.
The following is the result of that decision. It's the novel I wanted to write when I first accepted the assignment of chronicling the events that happened after the events in the film JASON GOES TO HELL. I hope once this book is finished the fans of FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH will consider it the masterwork of the book series. If not, I'm still proud of the work I've done. It's been quite a ride.
William Pattison
San Mateo, Ca