JOYLAND pirated

photo credit: www.guardian.co.uk
(From M John Harrison's review of Joyland)

That's just rotten!  And illegal.  . . . oh, sorry, story first:

The LA Times posted an article that Stephen King's novel Joyland has been digitally reproduced and pirated.  Amazing, since Joyland wasn't even published digitally.

Carolyn Kellogg's article, "Stephen King's 'Joyland' pirated as e-book -- like all the rest," notes that Joyland is not alone -- almost all of King's work is pirated in the digital format.  She points out that one site offers "The Shining," "The Stand," "Pet Sematary," "It," "The Green Mile," and "The Gunslinger." Sound like a lot of King?  Kellogg then points out that "and that's all just one bundled package."

King said in May that he was hopeful people would go out to real bookstores and buy a copy of Joyland instead  of downloading the digital version.  Kellog notes, "The problem is that to some people, a pirate site looks like a digital bookstore -- one where everything is free."

The full article by Carolyn Kellogg is at www.latimes.com/features/books

mediabistro.com posted Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai full statement:

We’ve seen dozens of websites over the past year purporting to offer pirated downloadable copies of JOYLAND, and so far they’ve all been frauds – if you try to download the file, you get malware or a virus instead.  But inevitably the book will eventually be pirated for real, just as every best-selling book and popular movie or TV show or piece of music is.  As a publisher, you try to prevent it or to stamp it out when you discover it, but it’s like the “war on drugs” – good luck.  Seize a boatload of heroin, and what does it get you?   There are more boats, there’s more heroin. 

But all of that would be equally true regardless of Stephen King’s decision to release JOYLAND initially in printed-book form only.  Books that do have e-book editions get pirated, too, and I’m sure JOYLAND would have been pirated just as quickly either way.  There were pirated copies of HARRY POTTER before J.K. Rowling decided to release electronic editions and there were pirated versions after. 

In the end you have to rely on the good behavior of the vast majority of the audience – I see no reason to think that pirates represent more than a small fraction of all consumers.  That doesn’t mean we don’t care about piracy – we do.  But it’s just one of the many punches you have to learn to roll with in the rough-and-tumble world of modern publishing.

LA Times Review Of JOYLAND

I really liked David Unlin's (LA TIMES) review of Joyland.  Titled, "In Stephen King's new horror house, it's the everyday eeriness that grips," Ulin takes simple delight in the new novel.

In particular, I liked Ulin's note that the book is "written with a lighter touch, an air of if not nostalgia then wistfulness."  I totally agree.  Though I've read some reviews that said the book was so heavy, so dark that they would  not read it again.  I do think there are dark overtones, but it mostly remains true to the hard boiled crime imprint.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/06/12/4728743/in-stephen-kings-new-horror-house.html#storylink=cpy

Here's a great line -- "Joyland has a patina of the supernatural."

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/06/12/4728743/in-stephen-kings-new-horror-house.html#storylink=cpy

LA TIMES promises thrills from UTD

An article at LA Times runs with the headline, "CBS' 'Under the Dome' bringing thrills from King, Spielberg" and under that, "The thriller is a rare and big-budgeted summer foray for the network, which is counting on special effects and names like Stephen King and Steven Spielberg to draw interest." . . . I think they like it.

Steven Zeitchik says that CBS is "attempting a tricky creative feat: big-budget genre storytelling with intimate insights about humans in crisis."

By the way,  he also notes UTD and The Simpsons contain similar themes.  Well, both have a great big dome put over  their town.  But come on, Stephen King's characters aren't yellow!

And then there is this word of  real  hope for those of us who would like a better explanation for the dome itself:

All of them must solve the mystery — possibly supernatural, possibly conspiratorial — of the dome while negotiating the paranoia and in-fighting that sets in during a hometown emergency. Think "Lost," only this time the island comes to them.

I think CBS has come up with a new answer to the dome.  Don't have a clue what  it is, but I'm willing to bet it's a different direction than the book went.

The Time article  is at latimes.com/entertainment 

(I saw the article link first at www.liljas-library.com)

Darabont Talks About Ending THE MIST

Did you like the ending of The Mist?  Frank Darabont   Like it or hate it, you'll enjoy Blake Hennon's LA Times article, "‘The Mist’: Frank Darabont, Thomas Jane on ‘angry, bleak’ ending."  (herocomplex.latimes.com)

Hennon quoted Darabont,

“I was really getting something off my chest here,” Darabont said. “So if you hated the ending, I apologize for the two hours of your life I took. … This is an angry cry from the heart from a humanist who is really pretty pissed off about the fact that all the reasonable people seem to be marginalized, ground under the heel of the extremists.”

The good news is that I didn't lose two hours of my life.  The movie was great -- until characters  who had been making solid decisions began acting irrationally.

Darabont declares him the "reasonable" people. Was that ending reasonable?  No.  Because the situation wasn't really serious when David Drayton took things into his own hands. It had the potential of getting  bad -- but it wasn't that bad yet.

Warner Brothers Considering a Prequel to The Shining

photo credit: LA TIMES

Jack Nicholson waits as director Stanley Kubrick 

sets up a shot for the 1980 classic film "The Shining." 

(The Stanley Kubrick Estate / July 28, 2012)

HERE'S JOHNNY AGAIN!, the The Los Angeles Times announces.  The times is reporting that Warner Brothers is "exploring the possibility of a prequel to 'The Shining.'"

Times reporter Steven Zeitchik writes:

Warner Bros.is quietly exploring the possibility of a prequel to “The Shining,” the 1980 Stanley Kubrickchillfest that many fans regard as the scariest movie of all time. The studio has solicited the involvement of Hollywood writer-producer Laeta Kalogridis and her partners Bradley Fischer and James Vanderbilt to craft a new take as producers, according to a person familiar with the project who was not authorized to talk about it publicly.

What happened at the hotel before Jack Torrance and his family arrived?  According to the novel, the old caretaker went crazy under the influence of evil spirits at the hotel and killed his entire family. So. . .the new movie would focus on the terrible events surrounding the death of the former caretakers family at the overlook.  Of course, this is exactly the same plot as the King novel, except instead of escaping – the family gets slaughtered instead.

King once said that his original plan for The Shining involved the entire Torrance family getting killed. Check out my article, "Alternate Ending To The Shining."  King is quoted in In Tim Underwood's book, Stephen King Goes To Hollywood:

"The Shining' was open right until the end. I didn't know what was going to happen until the very end. The shows in the book. The original plan was for them all to die up there and for Danny to become the controlling force o the hotel after he died. And the psychic force of the hotel would go up exponentially. . . But I got connected with the kid.

In the first draft of the book Jack beats his wife to death with the mallet and it was blood and brains and everything. It was really just terrible and I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave it that way." S.K. Goes To Hollywood, p.76

Oh, my favorite line from the Times article: "there's no word yet on whether there will be a movie adaptation of the new novel."  King doesn't even have to write sequel's to his own work for them to make children of the Corn part 304.

The Times Article is HERE.

LA Times Remainders Article

I enjoyed Steve Hochman's article in the LA times about the Rock Bottom Remainders last show.

The article notes that it's been a good seven years since King has played with the Remainders, and "he's been practicing."  I'll bet!

King tells the story of Amy Tan getting kicked out of an L.A. hotel because the manager thought she was a working girl.  She was wearing a skintight cat suit,which she wears  when doing "These  Boots Are Made For Walking."

The article also includes a story about Stephen King giving Amy Tan's husband, Louis DeMattei, a kick.  (I'm not reposting it here, so you have to read the article.)

And then there's the weirdo's!

Barry also recalls King singing "Teen Angel" at a show in Nashville when a woman approached the stage, hands raised and flames rising from all 10 fingernails.

"I thought, 'Wow, Stephen's fans can be scary,'" he says. "Ridley came over and whispered in my ear, 'I don't ever want to be that famous.'"

King notes, "She probably was not strictly 100% sober. And Dave is careful to tell the audiences, 'The drunker you get, the better we sound.'"

The full article is HERE.

11/22/63 takes LA Times Prize

Martha Groves at the Los Angeles Times has an article titled, “Alex Shakar, Stephen King win Times Book Prizes.”  (HERE)

King’s novel, 11/22.63, took the prize for the catagory “mystery-thrillers.”

Groves writes:

More than 400 authors will participate in readings, signings, panel discussions, musical performances and other events. The festival, which moved to USC in 2011 after 15 years at UCLA, runs through Sunday. About 150,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Scott Snyder: SK ‘One of the best writers of all time’?

Cover art for “American Vampire” No. 22 (DC Comics)

The LA Times had an interesting interview in September with Scott Snyder of American Vampire.  Snyder talks about working with Stephen King, calling him (as the article's title suggest) one of the best writers of all time.

Snyder says he first got hooked on King at camp when the counselor would read to them from Eyes of the Dragon.  He says it was magic listening to the novel unfold. 

How did Snyder end up working with King?  Here's a bit of that story:

 Working with him is a joy. How that came out was really weird. He read some of my stories and wrote a blurb for my short story collection after he had read them. I was just incredibly honored and thrilled. And then when I got “American Vampire” through at Vertigo and it was greenlit, they basically asked me if I would be willing to ask Steve King to do a blurb. After sending him the outline, he said, “Well, I’ll do you one better. I’d love to write an issue sometime, because I really love that character Skinner.” And I was like, “Well, if I tell them you want to write an issue they’re going to want you writing.” He was like, “Nah. They probably won’t because I never wrote a comic, and I don’t know if I’m any good. I don’t think they’ll really want me to do it.” I was like, “They’ll definitely want you to write that comic. I promise.” So, I called them on like a Friday and left a message: “I think Steve’s going to want to say he’s willing to write an issue.” Monday morning it was a call from the whole office: “Did you say Stephen King said he would be willing to write a whole issue of ‘American Vampire?’” . . . MORE HERE

Reading the interview makes me much more interested in American Vampire.