Waiting For A New Stephen King Book

Waiting for a new Stephen King book is like waiting in line for a roller coaster.  You try to find things to talk about with your friends as you wait in line.  Little snippets of the coaster thunder by as you wait,  building the anticipation.

I didn't get to read  this one early.  (I did Joyland.  And was quoted on some of their publicity stuff.)  But I know Lilja has already read it and has expressed pleasure.  See, there's always people getting off the ride going, "Yah dude!  That was awesome!"  Of course, there are also people getting off who are puking their guts up.

As you near the gate, everyone gets a little quiet.  Both scared and excited.  Scared -- in terms of a book, what if this thing is a total bummer?  Excited because it might just blow us away.

Did I mention I live in SoCal -- where there seems to be more roller-coasters  here than anywhere else on planet earth.  We have Six Flags, Disneyland (yes they do have good coasters), Knotts Berry Farm and Legoland.  Yeah, there's no cool coasters at Legoland!

But this is Stephen Kingish -- this year my favorite wood Coaster got torn down.  Magic Mountain decided it was time to take out the old wood structure, which had been a park staple  for years.  It was once a duel track coaster, but in later years  they just ran one track because. . . I don't know.  At Halloween time, they'd run the coaster backward, which was indeed the freakiest, funniest thing I'd  ever been on.  It was awesome!  When riding a coaster, your eyes do a lot of talking to your brain as you judge  how much further you have to fall.  Without seeing the drops, even little  drops felt like dips toward a bottomless pit.

When Magic Mountain decided to tear the Colossus out, it was a sad day for many of us.  But the old pile of wood did not go down without a fight.  A big fight.  The thing caught fire as they tried to tear it down!  The fire department had to be called in to put out the fire.  Imagine the person who had  to call 911 on that.  "911, what's your emergency?"  "Yeah, well, I work for Magic Mountain, and our roller-coaster is on fire.  You'll probably need a ladder truck, it's pretty big."