A Night in the Lonesome October is a 1993 novel by Roger Zelazny. Some Octobers I like to play a game with it. The book is a day-by-day account of the life of Snuff, the guardian dog of Jack the Ripper. One of Snuff’s jobs is to keep an eye on the Thing in the Wardrobe and the Thing in the Steamer Trunk. And other Mythos style monsters. The whole thing is the most superb love letter to horror fiction and cinema. Zelazny works in material from horror masters like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker as well as lots of Arthur Conan Doyle and Victorian London, modern masters like H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch and even the dog writer, Albert Payson Terhune who created the penchant for collies. The original version has wonderful Gahan Wilson illustrations.
I won’t tell you the story because that ruins the game. The rules are very simple. Read the appropriate chapter on the day indicated, with the finale happening on Halloween. 31 days, not an overly burdensome amount of reading on each day of the month. That’s my October Game. You don’t play it in the dark. Nobody has to feel any chicken bones but it is the best way to enjoy this book. There are no losers. Only winners.
What do you win: well, I know as a writer and reader of Horror and Mystery that over time you can get a little jaded. You lose that edge that makes the Halloween season feel exciting and fun. For too many years I have felt like it was a chore: rake the leaves, get the winter tires on the car (I live in Canada. It always snows on Halloween night. Always.) and hand out candy to a horde of superheroes and video game characters. I can’t wait for November and its sombre, quietness. (Again, I live in Canada. Thanksgiving is in October.) Before the equally boring Christmas season begins. (I could swear I heard Christmas muzak at Wal-Mart last week!)
But A Night in the Lonesome October is like a shot of the old Halloween. It makes me want to re-read the classics, get out some Sherlock Holmes, curl up with some old Victorian ghost stories, the more Gothic the better. Roger left us so many gifts: great SF novels, Dilvish the Damned, the Amber Chronicles, but it is this little standalone that I come back to time and again.
So, get ready. Today is October 1. You have an intro and Chapter 1 to sample. On your marks, get set…. read. And smile. I will be smiling along with you.
