2006 - 09/2006 Meeting

Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Updated: 10/29/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 11/14/09.

SARAH LANGAN

Novels:

Audrey's Door

The Keeper

The Missing

Her Website is: http://www.sarahlangan.com/

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: September 11, 2006.

Meeting Site: Yeager Residence.

Official Attendance: 19.

Meeting Program: Talk by Horror Writer.

Notes:

The name of Ms Langan's novel, VIRUS, changed to THE MISSING along the road to publication.

Meeting Memories:

Newsletter Account:

The September 11, 2006 meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held at the home of Robert and William Yeager in Paramus, New Jersey.

The two pre meeting events took very different paths. Barry Weinberger led a full house discussion of cool stuff at the Ice Nine gathering on the first floor end room while Chuck Garofalo kept a lonely vigil at the screening of THOSE OBNOXIOUS ALIENS anime episodes at Animation Associates on the second floor. Our thanks to both dedicated club members.

The Yeagers are kind enough to host a meeting of the Association at their home in Paramus each year. This is normally done in October, but their travel schedule necessitated a September get together this year. The original plan had been to hold the meeting in the first floor living room, but the temperature made this impossible. Therefore, the event was moved to the cooler basement, which has become increasingly stuffed with bric-a-brac over the years.

Horror writer Sarah Langan was the evening's guest. Ms Langan has just had her first novel, THE KEEPER, published as a mass market paperback. The book had only been out a couple of days when she received her first hate email. The author has also written the highly regarded short stories "The Secrets of the Living" and "Taut Red Ribbon." She is currently at work on VIRUS, a sequel to THE KEEPER.

Sarah described herself as having a fairly normal childhood. Although she was always considered a bit odd, she always had friends and a loving family. She was not some estranged goth girl, but she was never really interested in writing anything other than horror.

She went to college in Maine where they tried to make her a literary writer in her Creative Writing classes, and came back to New York for graduate and post graduate courses at Columbia and NYU. Along the way, she hooked up with a non-genre Writers Group who just did not get her parody of ROSEMARY'S BABY. She decided that she had to meet people on her wavelength, discovered the Horror Writers of America, and then the New York horror/fantasy/science fiction crowd.

Ms Langan stated that she is not a plotter, so studying mathematics and statistics (she is preparing for a career in Toxicology) helps her to construct a framework for her stories. THE KEEPER began with an image, one which was never used in the novel, but which will appear in VIRUS. When she completed THE KEEPER, she sent it to a literary agent who held on to the work for two years without doing anything with it. A chance encounter led her to giving her manuscript to a film agent. Although the agent has not been able to close a film deal, the agent was able to get the work to a more effective literary agent who was able to get a book deal in two months.

Our guest talked about authors (Stephen King, Kelly Link, Joyce Carroll Oates, Peter Straub, and a batch of South American magical realists) and films (THE CHANGELING, THE EXORCIST, PHANTASM, THE SHINING, THE SIXTH SENSE) that she admires.

After the meeting was over, Robert Yeager gave a tour of the house that was enjoyed by many of the attendees.

Our thanks to Sarah Langan, the Yeagers, Chuck, Barry, and everyone who helped out.