Classic King Is Coming Back

Cemetery has announced a return to Stephen King's "Doubleday Years."  Six volumes that will include Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Night Shift, The Stand and Pet Sematary.  Carrie will feature an introduction by Stephen King and an afterword by Tabitha King.  It also features six color paintings by Tomislav Tikulin, and "Special Bonus Features Exclusive to This Edition!"  What's that mean?  I dunno.

It's interesting that the Doubleday books were cheaply produced with sometimes awkward covers.  Who was that on the cover of Carrie? Is Cemetery Dance purposefully righting this wrong?  

From Cemetery Dance:

www.cemeterydance.com

These are the books that launched King's career and made him a household name, and our special editions will be beautiful and oversized volumes like we've published for From a Buick 8, It, Doctor Sleep, and many other King books over the years.

The first title in this special six volume set is Carrie, which will be published later this year and is available for preorder immediately. Other volumes in this series will follow approximately every six months after that and several acclaimed artists are already creating stunning art for these books. These special editions will feature exclusive bonus features such as introductions, afterwords, artwork, and even deleted material in some cases.

We expect extremely strong demand for these special editions of Stephen King's extraordinarily popular early books, and collectors who preorder Carrie directly from us will be the first collectors offered the opportunity to order the next volume before the general public.
Please note that our last Stephen King Gift Edition sold out in just ONE WEEK, so please don't wait because you could miss out and there will be NO second printings.

"These were the ghosts which kept trying to come between me and what I was writing, kept insisting that I combine them, somehow, into a story that would tell what could have happened if there really was such a thing as telekinetic energy..."— Stephen King, from the introduction

Special Features Exclusive To This Deluxe Special Edition:
• An introduction by Stephen King detailing why he wrote the book
• A lengthy afterword by Tabitha King discussing the book's unbridled exploration of adolescent terror, sexuality, and the unknown
• Deluxe oversized design (7 inches X 10 inches) featuring two color interior printing as part of the page design
• Printed on a heavy interior specialty paper stock that is much thicker than the paper in a normal trade edition
• Epic wrap-around full-color dust jacket artwork by Tomislav Tikulin
• A different full-color dust jacket for the Artist Edition painted by Tomislav Tikulin
• Six full-color interior paintings by Tomislav Tikulin
• Interior artwork will be printed on a heavy glossy stock and tipped into the book
• High-quality embossed endpapers and fine bindings for all editions
• Full-page reproduction of the telegram Doubleday editor Bill Thompson sent Stephen King to announce the publisher was buying the book
• Extremely collectible print run that is a tiny fraction of the TENS OF MILLIONS of copies of this novel you've seen in bookstores over the last 40 years!

Get it at cemeterydance.com

Keene Headed Back To Print

picture credit HERE

If you’re a Stephen King fan, you’re probably already familiar with Brian Keene’s work as well.  I find his writing a lot of fun.  Keene recently got in a battle with his publisher, Dorchester books, who decided to sell his books without paying him. See how I make a long story short?  The full story, from Keene's angle at least, is at www.briankeene.com.   Keene blogged aboutt his crisis over the last year and the chaos it created in his life.  It’s not fun when a publisher messes with you.

Dorchester also publishes Richard Laymon books. Too bad to see some great works in the horror industry mishandled.

Well, Brian Keene is back!  In a partnership between Thunderstorm Books and Keene (called Maelstorm) several limited run small press books will be published.

Blu Gilliand at examiner explains the plan:

In a nutshell, Maelstrom, a partnership between Keene and publisher Thunderstorm Books, is a new line of collectible, limited-run books designed specifically for the small press market. Maelstrom releases will consist of three signed hardcovers limited to 250 copies: a Keene novel, a Keene novella, and a novel by a new author that Keene himself will select. Each set will be priced at $125.  (Gilliand’s full article is HERE.)

Books include A Gathering of Crows, The Rising: Deliverane and Kelli Owen’s debut novel, Six Days.

Keene's writing is scary, engaging and at times frustrating.  But frustrations aside, I like his work, and thus I forgive those things that drive me crazy and just keep reading.  Okay, so what drives me crazy?  In "Darkness  on the Edge of Town" it seems like everyone is a druggie!  It's a town on the edge of a drug bust.  And they sure see a lot in the dark.  Okay. .. but none of that is worth getting hung up over.  The novel has been compared to Under The Dome.  I don't think so!  More like Poe, I would say.

I suspect the grind of publishing can get to a writer.  King recently said:

As of right now, if I died and everybody kept it a secret, it would go on until 2013. There’s a new Dark Tower novel, The Wind in the Keyhole.That comes out soon, and Dr Sleep is done. . . .
. . . I do want to slow down. My agent is dickering with the publishers about Dr Sleep, that’s the sequel to The Shining, but I held off showing them the manuscript because I wanted time to breathe.”

Time to breathe.  Why?  Okay, I'm guessing here. . . but I suspect it is not King's publisher that might be the issue here, but the demands of publishing a Stephen King book.  He doesn't just release a book, he does a whole big book tour.