Reflecting on typing my first horror novel Town & Train

Oh, I remember typing, not keyboarding. Started my first novel in grade twelve and continued it in grade 13 as an Independent Study, writing on my Olympia typewriter, then longhand on blue-and-red-lined foolscap, then on my Smith Corona electronic typewriter, finishing the walloping 100-page first draft on the family Adam Computer. All this I did at my desk from Sears. It was then The Train of the Damned, a title which  rocked to 18-year-old me drunk on Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and Clive Barker inspiration. A later draft became The Town and Train after Kerouac's first novel, the epic, Thomas-Wolfe-inspired The Town and the City. I thought my debut title should be a nod to his, as he was also following in novelistic traditions of the time before breaking out with his own voice. Still later, the title was gently but firmly shortened by my publisher when I lucked out, ten drafts (and about 20 years later, after rewriting on the side), to Town & Train.

Second novel is an eight-year grapple, mainly on laptop, with copious notes in moleskin notebooks.