This is the story of how this book came about, as related to me and others by Robert Bloch at a party. Robert Bloch first heard that Universal Pictures were planning a sequel of Psycho through the studio grapevine. They didn't even bother to call him. He called the studio and offered to write the screenplay to which they replied "No thanks, we'll write our own." So the author said he would simply write his own sequel. In spite of threatened law suits, Bloch went ahead and wrote Psycho II before Universal finished their own script.
So this is why the movie and novel are so incredibly different. Mr. Bloch was a quiet and gentle man but you could feel his frustration with the movie industry that night and this frustration comes through in his novel. The result is a parody of the movie industry and a parody of the then current slasher film craze, which Bloch hated. The author's dead pan humor really comes out in this novel. Bloch also told us he showed the finished manuscript to the studio but they despised it. It was their loss for Bloch's Psycho II is cleverer than any of the unimaginative Psycho film sequels to come.
