“Hot Tub”, which first appeared in Hell Comes to Hollywood II,  may arguably be the best known of my short stories. But for the insistent prodding of Eric Miller, who edited that anthology, it might not have been written at all.  Eric was adamant that I write something for him even after I explained that because I am a “natural” novelist I have never been comfortable with the short fiction format. Though I already had four published novels under my belt, including a genre best-seller, I hadn’t done much in the way of short fiction. So you can imagine my surprise when“Hot Tub” – only my third try out of the chute – was nominated for a Bram Stoker award.

	The genesis of “Hot Tub” was a difficult one. While I struggled with the story for what seemed to be forever, the actual writing process took less than three days.  While I worked on it, I wrote and tossed out roughly 20,000 words to reach a story that eventually came in at  slightly under 6400. At the time, I worried that I was wasting a lot of effort, and that I might be doing something wrong. As I discovered later when I was writing “The Baker of Millepois”, when I threw out almost 50 thousand words to get a story of about 6100, discarding so much material is simply part of the process I have to go through when I write short fiction. 

	The theme of the anthology is obvious from the title – horror stories relating to Hollywood and, in particular, to the entertainment industry. Having spent 35-plus years of my career working in film, television, music and theater, I did not lack for material. Our industry practically overflows with horror. From Todd Browning’s Freaks to Freddie and Jason to Harvey Weinstein, we’ve got more horror – on both sides of the camera –  than anyone could want.

	Instinctively, I felt that simply setting the story in Hollywood, even if the plot involved the entertainment industry, wouldn’t be enough for me. To my mind, good short fiction needs to say something; it needs to have a purpose – a raison d’être. The message doesn’t need to be profound; it can be quite simple, or even obvious. But it needs to be there. Admittedly, I’ve certainly written short fiction that lacks that kind of purpose, and which has no discernible underlying message, but I’ve almost always found the result to be unsatisfying. For this story, I wanted to do something that felt “Hollywood” without actually being Hollywood – at least, not directly. I wanted to create an ambiance that was unique to the essence of the city, and tap into what makes Hollywood “Hollywood.”

	My early drafts of what would become “Hot Tub” were depressing and over-written. I approached the story from a kind of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” angle, and everything I wrote came out maudlin. I wanted to trace how the youthful optimism was slowly drained from a bunch of Hollywood hopefuls and, since this was to be a horror anthology, I figured I could use some kind of supernatural beastie to do it. But nothing seemed to work and, worse, every draft committed the cardinal sin of being boring, and read like a documentary on how to mix wallpaper paste, in Esperanto, directed by Bergman. 

	I quickly realized my approach was wrong, yet the idea was stuck in my head and refused to budge. Without knowing why, I also found myself fixating on the memory of the first apartment I rented when I arrived in town, with little money, no job, and dreams of my own. It was a small single just off La Brea above Sunset, one of the cheapest apartments I could find, and still more that I could comfortably afford. At first glance, the building looked great. It had a small on-site gym with a two-person sauna, and the central courtyard featured a large above-ground hot-tub that could fit almost a dozen people with a little squeezing, . Unfortunately, as happens with many things in Los Angeles, a closer look revealed that the building’s sleek trendiness was only skin deep, and concealed a decrepit and tarnished razzle-dazzle, and that most of the uber-attractive young tenants were as broke and as desperate as I was. 

	We were aspiring actors, hopeful screen writers, unappreciated musicians, and a wannabe director or two. Most of us worked through temp agencies, unwilling to take full time employment in case our Big Chance lurked just around the corner, and few of us had any money left after the rent was paid. Three square meals would have been a luxury–even two was pushing it. We survived by forming a sort of mini-commune, with each of us contributing whatever we had to the nightly pot-lucks. It was the actors who kept us from starving. They seemed to have an inside line on cater/waiter jobs and had no compunctions about loading their backpacks and purses with leftover food. When they were lucky enough to get acting gigs, even background work, it was cause for celebration. Extras usually had access to craft services, and there were many nights when dinner was whatever food they’d managed to smuggle off the studio lot. 

	There was rarely any money left over entertainment. Sometimes, one of the musicians would sneak us into a club they were playing, or one of the actors would have “paper” for an opening night – that is, free tickets to fool the critics into thinking it was a sell-out performance. But if it cost money, it was out of our reach. Most weekends, we all hung out in the courtyard, jumping in and out of the hot tub and the sauna, and playing cards or board games on the communal picnic tables. If we were lucky, two girls who had secretarial jobs at one of the big talent agencies would spring for a case of cheap beer.  

	Throughout the week, a subtle battle raged over the hot tub. I don’t think the building’s manager ever quite understood how the thing worked. Though we tried to explain that the water took several days to heat, he was worried about high utility bills and insisted that it be turned off unless it was actively in use. So starting midweek, the contest would begin. The tenants would turn the heater on – and the manager would turn it off. The process would repeat itself until Friday or Saturday night when he would interrupt our impromptu parties to triumphantly crow in his heavy Bulgarian accent, “You see? Is hot!”

	A young actor named and his slightly older brother shared an apartment directly across from the hot tub, and they would often join us on the weekends. The actor, whose name was Mike, was very cute. His brother was a god. The first time I saw him in the courtyard, shirtless, I desperately wanted to go to bed with him. I kept a lookout for him around the building, and would hurry to “coincidentally” run into him if I saw him heading for the laundry room or the mail boxes in the lobby. It didn’t take me long to find out that he was straight and then, of course, I gave up. But even now, Mike’s brother had one of the best bodies I’ve ever seen. 
	
	 What I didn’t know about him at the time, was that he not only dealt drugs, he also had his own problems with cocaine. Late one Sunday night, after the rest of us had gone to bed, he got into the hot tub, coked to the tits, had a heart attack, slid beneath the water and drowned. The next morning, when the building manager came into the courtyard, he saw the cover had been left off the hot tub and, assuming that we’d forgotten to do it as usual, he replaced it without bothering to glance inside. Some time that week, one of us turned on the heater, and Mike’s brother spent the next few days alternately simmering and parboiling. 

	I wasn’t there when the hot tub was uncovered on Saturday night, but since my apartment was just off the courtyard, and since my patio had a short flight of stairs that led directly to it, I got there within a minute after the screaming started. Oddly, I don’t remember much of a smell – though I’m sure there was one. Small chunks floated on the scummy surface and, when the  police arrived, we found out the “foam” was actually human fat. The whole thing was disgusting enough, but what made it even more disturbing was that I was still attracted to the dead guy – not as he was then, of course, but as he had been. Talk about mixed emotions!

	Anyway, that incident was the genesis of “Hot Tub”. On the surface, “Hot Tub” is a simple story, a combination of Aladdin and Faust, albeit, it’s a Faust turned upside down. But I think it has more layers than that. The relationship between the artist and the people whose job it is to exploit their talent is a complicated one. No matter how well the parties get along, the inherently parasitic dynamic inevitably breeds a degree of resentment. When you add issues of control and insecurity to the mix, not to mention a bombardment of  artistic temperaments and egos, it’s a marvel that the tabloids don’t feature even more disputes than they already do. 

	I think the thing I like best about “Hot Tub” is the narrator’s attempts to deal with his frustration. Though events continually conspire against him, he does the best he can. He meets each challenge with wry, caustic humor, and he never gives up. While it’s true that he’s completely self-centered, and while he’s certainly “evil” in the traditional sense, he’s got a certain pluckiness that’s hard not to find endearing. I particularly like the way he vacillates between outright hatred of his confinement, and being embarrassed by the triteness of his odd prison. 

	As for what he actually is – because many people have asked me that over the years – I suspect he’s some kind of evil genii, or djinn as they’re sometimes called. And if you’re wondering how he got trapped in a redwood hot tub in Southern California – well, I’ll have to leave that part up to your imagination!