Archive for Stephen King
Two Stephen King Updates
Posted by: | CommentsStephen King’s short story, “Herman Wouk is Still Alive,” will be published in the May issue of The Atlantic, on newsstands April 19 and available on the web and to subscribers a week earlier.
This June, acclaimed artist and Eisner Award nominee Michael Lark (Daredevil, Gotham Central) joins the superstar writing team of Peter David & Robin Furth for Dark Tower: The Gunslinger – The Battle Of Tull #1 (of 5). Lark joins the acclaimed team of Peter David, Robin Furth and Richard Isanove in the select group of creators entrusted by Stephen King himself to bring the adult adventures of his most personal creation to life in Dark Tower: The Gunslinger – The Battle Of Tull! Longtime fans and newcomers alike are sure to be amazed as Lark’s take on the grit and grandeur of Mid-World this June with an outright merciless tale that sets in motion the fateful journey of Roland Deschain.
“I have nothing but respect and admiration for Stephen King and the chance to work on the Dark Tower is a wonderful privilege,” said Lark. “I only hope that I can come close to conveying his vision – a daunting task, but a challenge that I’m enjoying tremendously. It has allowed me to explore the darker aspects of my art and really start pushing some of the boundaries of my own style. And who doesn’t love drawing cowboys and horses?!”
The Man in Black has lured Roland to a barren saloon town and, once there, he’ll realize than even a stone cold killer is no match for the horrors of the Dark Tower! Why does a dead man still walk the streets of Tull and, why are this town’s living, breathing citizens a far greater threat? The baddest man in Mid-World is about to find out that the true price of his quest can only be paid in spent shells and innocent blood this June in Dark Tower: The Gunslinger – The Battle Of Tull #1.
The Wind Through The Keyhole
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Dark Tower fans will be excited to read the recent note by Stephen King on the series:
“At some point, while worrying over the copyedited manuscript of the next book (11/22/63, out November 8th), I started thinking — and dreaming — about Mid-World again. The major story of Roland and his ka-tet was told, but I realized there was at least one hole in the narrative progression: what happened to Roland, Jake, Eddie, Susannah, and Oy between the time they leave the Emerald City (the end of Wizard and Glass) and the time we pick them up again, on the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis (the beginning of Wolves of the Calla)?
“There was a storm, I decided. One of sudden and vicious intensity. The kind to which billy-bumblers like Oy are particularly susceptible. Little by little, a story began to take shape. I saw a line of riders, one of them Roland’s old mate, Jamie DeCurry, emerging from clouds of alkali dust thrown by a high wind. I saw a severed head on a fencepost. I saw a swamp full of dangers and terrors. I saw just enough to want to see the rest. Long story short, I went back to visit an-tet with my friends for awhile. The result is a novel called The Wind Through the Keyhole. It’s finished, and I expect it will be published next year.
“It won’t tell you much that’s new about Roland and his friends, but there’s a lot none of us knew about Mid-World, both past and present. The novel is shorter than DT 2-7, but quite a bit longer than the first volume — call this one DT 4.5. It’s not going to change anybody’s life, but God, I had fun.”
Stephen King’s 11/22/63
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Scribner is set to release Stephen King’s next novel, 11/22/63, on November 8th of this year. It runs 960 pages.
Description: On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed.
If you had the chance to change history, would you? Would the consequences be worth it?
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students — a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane — and insanely possible — mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life — a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
You can pre-order from Amazon here: 11/22/63
Alan Clark Art Prints
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Cemetery Dance has put a number of Alan Clark art prints based on Stephen King’s Riding The Bullet and The Dark Tower. These high quality prints were produced using photo archival ink on archival paper – perfect for the collector! They are signed and numbered by the artist.
You can view and order a print from the first set here: Riding The Bullet
You can view and order a print from the second set here: The Dark Tower
Riding the Bullet – Book Review
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Riding the Bullet by Stephen King
Screenplay by Mick Garris
Dust Jacket by Alan M. Clark
Art Gallery by Bernie Wrightson
Lonely Road Books, 2010, $75.00, 224 pages
Review by Wayne C. Rogers
Riding the Bullet is an exquisite Limited and Gift Edition that’s published in a somewhat larger book format. On the front side of the book you have Stephen King’s 48 page novella. When you turn the book over to the back side and then upside down, you now have the screenplay of Riding the Bullet by Mick Garris, who also directed the film. It’s reminiscent of the double-novel paperbacks of years past. Between the novella and the screenplay are an art gallery of Bernie Wrightson’s ink drawings and still shots from the movie of Riding the Bullet with notes by Mick Garris.
For those of you who haven’t read King’s novella or seen the movie, the story deals with college student, Alan Parker, and his attempt to hitchhike home one night to see his mother, who’s just been hospitalized with a stroke. Good rides, of course, are sometimes hard to find for a hitchhiker. Alan had hoped to be in Lewiston by night fall, but instead finds himself out on a lonely highway at night with his thumb stuck up in the air. When a muscle car happens along and the driver offers him a ride, Alan gladly hops in. Of course, this being a Stephen King story, the driver of the car turns out to be the spirit of a dead man from the past who’d lost his head in a car accident. Alan immediately wants to climb out of the car, but the driver won’t allow him to leave. You see the ghost has something in store for the college student. He’s going to offer Alan a choice. Either Alan can choose to take the long journey with the driver, or he can offer his dying mother up for the ride. It’s a tough decision to make for a young man, but, hey, life isn’t always fair, is it?
Stephen King’s novella is a fine piece of writing that displays his craftsmanship with the written word, while at the same time exploring the themes of one’s morality and the guilt that comes to a person when he/she knowingly makes the wrong decision. We all have a strong instinct for survival, but what would we do if we had to make a choice about who lives and dies. Would you be willing to surrender your life for another’s? I don’t know what I would do in a similar situation. It’s always easy to think you would take the high ground, until you find yourself with having to make a life or death decision.
The screenplay by Mick Garris is longer than the novella. Mick had to increase the length of the story with more information about Alan Parker, some new characters, and with a changed ending. Even with this, Mick manages to stay true to King’s story, following it as closely as possible with much of the dialogue that was used in the novella. If you’re interested in writing for the movies, then you’ll certainly learn a lot from the finished shooting script of Riding the Bullet. Script writing is different from writing a short story, novella, or novel. You have to see everything from the camera’s point of view, or what viewers see on the screen when they go to the movies. Also, when writing a screenplay, one will usually have to add or delete material to it from the original source. In this case, new material had to be added to make an almost two-hour movie. I enjoyed the screenplay and Mick Garris’s style of writing. In many ways, he’s just as good as Stephen King in his ability to create a story and to see it with his mind’s eye on up a big movie screen.
Add to this some really beautiful ink drawings by the great Bernie Wrightson of some wicked looking night crawlers and scantily-clad women, plus some behind-the-scenes shots of the movie, Riding the Bullet, stretch boards, and notes on production schedules, and you have a one-of-a-kind edition of a Stephen King novella. This is definitely a must-buy for collectors of Stephen King’s fiction. Lonely Road Books has done a fabulous job on this very special edition with hot wrap-around dust jacket by Alan Clark. Highly recommended!
Editor’s Note: Wayne C. Rogers is the author of the horror novellas – The Encounter, The Tunnels, and The Cat From Hell. These can be purchased as Kindle e-books on Amazon for ninety-nine cents each.
Taking Stephen King Seriously
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This is from November 2003, but I thought you’d enjoy it just the same. It’s an interview with Stephen King that appeared on National Public Radio on the day that King received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, which also bestows the prestigious National Book Awards.
King discusses the award and his writing with NPR’s Susan Stamberg.
“It’s always made me uneasy to be called a horror writer or a suspense writer,” King tells Stamberg on Morning Edition. “They’re hooks to hang your hat on and I reject them. I’ve never denied that I was a horror writer, but I’ve never introduced myself as that either. I see myself as Stephen King. I’m an American novelist, and that’s it.”
Listen in here: Stephen King Interview
