Reading The Other Guys

Waiting for Revival has me reading a few other horror writers.  The journey is both fun, and frustrating.  It's frustrating because I know how King writes.  I'm used to the way he builds characters, brackets thoughts, and slowly moves a plot.  Other writers have their own style.  It's fun because the journey can feel very new.

Of course, I read "non-King" all the time.  But I don't read much horror other than Stephen King.  I typically love Follett, classics, Dickens, Poe, Grisham, Clancy and more.  But what about Little, Mccammon, Koontz, Rice and other horror writers?  Well, the truth is, I don't read them much.  I DID; before I went into "King immersion."

Anne Rice used to be a particular joy to read.  Then her books kept getting -- well, bigger and bigger.  I wondered, "Does this lady have an editor?"

So here's what I've  been reading:

1. Dean Koontz, Lost Souls.  

I got this for the car, and actually, it's hard to follow.  Not because of the story, but because the narrator is dry as a pinewood coffin.  The plot moves quickly -- like lightening.  And, I didn't realize when I bought the audio book that I was picking up mid-series.  In fact, it's book FIVE.  Imagine stepping into the Dark Tower with Wolves of the Calla.  Might leave you with some questions, right?

At first I was thinking, "Why isn't he doing more to introduce these characters?"  Well, he did; in the other four novels.  So, Koontz is about to go on pause.  But not because I'm not enjoying his writing.  In fact, one of my favorite Dean Koontz books is Midnight.  (And the one about the dog. . . but I can't remember the books name.)

2. Robert Mccammon, Swan Song.  

I've been listening to this one also while I run.  I need to run more.  The book is fantastic every time I read it.  There's a tunnel scene which I actually think is much scarier than the one in The Stand.  But the two probably should not be compared too closely.  (I know, I have a blog post that does just that.)

Mccammon has a style that is very similar to King's.  A lot of character building, scene set up and a slower plot pace than, say, Koontz.  Mccammon also does something that is reminiscent of Stephen King; he mames some key characters early on.  OH MY!  There is a scene in which a boy has to cut off a man's hand with a meat cleaver.  Let's just say, it's horror at its very best!

And he sucked in his breath and brought the cleaver down with all of his strength on Colonel Macklin’s wrist. 

Bone crunched. Macklin jerked but made no sound. Roland thought the blade had gone all the way through, but he saw with renewed shock that it had only penetrated the man’s thick wrist to the depth of an inch. 

“Finish it!” Warner shouted. 

Roland pulled the cleaver out. 

Macklin’s eyes, ringed with purple, fluttered closed and then jerked open again. “Finish it,” he whispered. 

Roland lifted his arm and struck down again. Still the wrist wouldn’t part. Roland struck down a third time, and a fourth, harder and harder. He heard the one-eyed hunchback shouting at him to hurry, but Macklin remained silent. Roland pulled the cleaver free and struck a fifth time. There was a lot of blood now, but still the tendons hung together. Roland began to grind the cleaver back and forth; Macklin’s face had turned a pasty yellow-white, his lips as gray as graveyard dirt.

. . . it goes on like  that for quite a bit.

3. Jay Anson, The Amityville Horror

I've been reading this before  bed.  Go figure.  It's a mix of scary and stupid.  The scary thing is, this stuff might have actually happened.

The stupid part is the way the story is told.  It feels like children telling a ghost story.  "And then, there was black stuff that came out of our faucet.  And then she started levitating off the bed.  And then the window shut on the girls hand.  And then there were flies all over the window and a voice said to get out.  And then there was a marching band that George heard in the living room, but when he chekced there was no marching band.  And then there were spooky eyes peeking in on us but when we ran outside there were only pigs tracks in the snow."

Anyway, there were some real murders that happened in the house.  My interest was rekindled after seeing a documentary on Netflix titled, "My Amityville Horror."

The only reason Amityville is in any way scary is you think, "This might have happened.  Who  knows!  Demons are real.  And there were real murders that happened in that house!"  Not to mention, the place  just looks haunted.  Who wants a house that looks like it's looking at you?

4. William Malmborg, Text Message.

I've enjoyed this book quite a bit so far; though it reads very much like Richard Laymon.  The books moves very fast.  I would say it's a page turner, but I'm reading it on my phone (seems fitting for a book called Text Message.)

. . . so tell me what non-King horror books you've been reading.

The Most Frightening Book Stephen King Has Ever Written

This is reposted from William Malmborg's websit (williammalmborg.com) with permission.

William Malmborg is the author of Text Message, Dark Harvest, Nikkis Secret and several other horror novels.

So, I was standing at my bookshelf the other day looking at some early printings of Stephen King paperbacks when I noticed the back cover pictured to the left. As you can see, rather than having a book description or author photo, the designers of this edition decided upon a statement from Publishers Weekly, one that boldly shouted, “The most frightening book Stephen King has ever written.” Naturally, this got me wondering which books fans found frightening, and whether or not there is any agreement from everyone upon a single title that stands above the rest. Personally, I’ve never really been frightened by anything Stephen King has written. This isn’t due to any fault with his writing; I just came upon his fiction at a point in my life when reading no longer had the ability to frighten me. Of course, this wasn’t always the case. 

As a pre and young teen, stories had the ability to produce sleepless nights, my mom and grandmother often putting this to the test with stories they found scary and wanted to share -- or wrote themselves. Even at fifteen, I was once startled by the opening of a Dean Koontz novel titled Tick Tock, but that was the last time this has really happened, and by the time I started reading Stephen King at the age of seventeen, my mind was completely desensitized to fear. 

 Ironically, I can remember a time as a young kid when just the idea or plot behind a Stephen King novel would terrify me. The Shining was a perfect example of this. I don’t remember how old I was, but at some point during my grade school years my Mom told me about the The Shining and how, as a young girl, while reading it during a train ride to Kansas, suddenly began to smell oranges. Anyone who has read The Shining will understand the significance of this and why the moment would startle a young teen reader. As it turns out, the lady next to my Mom was peeling an orange. Another story element that chilled me to the core as a kid was the idea of a clown in the sewer, which a friend told me about after he saw the movie IT on TV. That was spooky, and, for a while, after hearing about that, I made sure to keep a good distance between curbside sewers and my walking paths. I also found the idea of a secret graveyard where pets came back to life mean and angry terrifying, and hoped to god things like that didn’t really exist because I would have hated to see my dog Leo return from the grave at some point only to be a darker version of his former self. The hardcover image of Desperation startled me as well. I saw that one sitting on the bookshelf at a friend house right after its release -- his parents were Stephen King fans -- and thought to myself that I would never be brave enough to start reading such a book. How funny is that?

Now, if I had to pick a book that I considered the most frightening even though it didn’t really scare me, that book would have to be Misery simply because finding oneself in such a situation would be horrible. It’s also plausible. This isn’t to say I discount the possibility of supernatural story-lines -- I may be a skeptic, but only in the sense that I don’t blindly believe everything I hear, and always let the facts and evidence of each situation determine what is really occurring -- but with Misery, this is the type of story that can easily move from being a tale of fiction to one of non-fiction without blinking an eye. Crazy people are out there.  We read about them every day in the paper (well, online news sources), and hear about them on the news (when they aren’t focusing on some stupid political or sport sex scandal. Another tale that has frightening elements would have to be The Stand. The idea of a virus leaving our current civilization in ruins has almost become a touchstone experience thanks to Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean it isn't a plausible scenario, one that has occurred time and time again throughout history. Such events are just a fact of life, though, thankfully, one that isn’t experienced by every generation.

With those two titles established as the Stephen King tales that I find the most frightening what are some of yours? Are their any titles that completely stand above the rest in your mind? Feel free to comment here about it, or, if you want, send me a guest post that I can share with readers (email me at wlmalmborg@gmail.com with the subject matter being GUEST POST STEPHEN KING). Also, anyone want to venture a guess as to what book the picture above was taken from?