Highlights From the ROLLING STONE Interview

Rolling Stone has  posted their interview with Stephen King (rollingstone.com/culture)

The interview is interesting.  King admits he still feels insecurity.  He also admits that there is a cost to being "too political."  King says he never liked Tom Clancy, not because of politics, but because he did not feel Clancy was a good writer. Keep in mind, Clancy is almost totally plot-driven, while King is character driven. However, King likes an author named Stephen Hunter, and he's a republican.  So his taste in books and writing are not driven by his political views.  Or, put another way -- you can read novels by someone you politically disagree with.  (Sounds familiar to me)

Funny thing, King says he watched  about half of the room 237 documentary and then got "impatient" with it. He also says he doesn't "get"  the cult following that's grown up around Kubrick's version of the Shining.

Discussing his upcoming novel Revival, King said he's had the idea since he was a kid. He also noted that actually writing a book takes at least a year for him as it moves through various drafts. "I read this story called The Great God Pan in high school, and there were these two characters waiting to see if this woman could come back from the dead and tell them what was over there. It just creeped me out. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about this Mary Shelley-Frankenstein thing."

When asked if he is done writing the Dark Tower books, King said he's never done with the Tower.  He then drops something of a Tower-Bomb by revealing "those books were never edited, so I look at them as first drafts." Really?  King says the problem is in finding time to rewrite the books.  He acknowledges, "There's a missing element – a big battle at a place called Jericho Hill. And that whole thing should be written, and I've thought about it several times, and I don't know how to get into it."  I've been reading Dark Tower books -- and I agree with him.  I like the novels, bu it does feel like there is more to be done.

The interview also covers familiar ground about addiction and how in the world King would churn out bestsellers while hooked on coke.

Discussing his best and worst novels, King fesses up that in his view The  Tommyknockers is "an awful book."  The problem?  Well, he  says there might be a 350 novel in there -- but it's 700 pages!  That's insightful.  I've thought for a long time King should give us a revised/smaller version of the book, just as he gave us an expanded version of The Stand.

King also admits that he does not like Dreamcatcher.  That's a novel  I also struggled with; even though the early pages were totally engrossing.  But what is his favorite book?  Well, it's another I can't get through!  King chooses Lisey's Story. "That one felt like an important book to me because it was about marriage, and I'd never written about that. I wanted to talk about two things: One is the secret world that people build inside a marriage, and the other was that even in that intimate world, there's still things that we don't know about each other."

After discussing his struggles with organized religion, King spoke about his personal belief, stating, "Yeah. I choose to believe in God because it makes things better. You have a meditation point, a source of strength. I don't ask myself, Well, does God exist or does God not exist? I choose to believe that God exists, and therefore I can say, God, I can't do this by myself. Help me not to take a drink today. Help me not to take a drug today. And that works fine for me."

Asked if he wants to go to heaven, King replied, "I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring. The idea that you're going to lounge around on a cloud all day and listen to guys play harps? I don't want to listen to harps. I want to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis!"

As I read views on religion, I wonder -- who taught this guy?  People on clouds?  That's -- NOWHERE.  Harps?  He must have had like the worst Sunday School teacher ever.

Stephen King -- Connecting The Dots

I loved Louis  Peitzman's article at BuzzFeed titled, "These Stephen King Connections Will Blow Your Mind."  They did  not blow my mind -- butstill pretty cool.

Here's a snippet, be sure to check  out the entire article at  www.buzzfeed.com

 In The Tommyknockers, mysterious organization The Shop invades Haven to control the alien presence.

11. The Shop is responsible for the Lot Six experiments, which gave Charlie McGee her powers in Firestarter.

12. And The Shop was involved in the Arrowhead Project, which resulted in the titular supernatural disaster of The Mist.

13. The organization is also mentioned in “The Langoliers.”

14. The same evil forces run throughout many Stephen King works. Take Randall Flagg, for example. He’s the major antagonist in The Stand.

15. But he also pursues Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower series. More on that in a bit.

 

16. Randall Flagg gets namechecked in ‘Salem’s Lot.

17. And he may be the demonic entity in the Stephen King short story “Children of the Corn.”

18. But Randall Flagg actually serves The Crimson King, who is another major adversary in The Dark Tower.

Hitchcock and King sharing the art

Alfred Hitchock was the the master of suspense.  He had the ability to draw you deep into a story, watching every detail with breathless anticipation.  When he was at the top of his game, that is!  Like any artist, some of his work does not holdup.  Stephen King, when he is swinging home runs, also is a master of suspense. I find that stories like Dolores Claiborne and Joyland give me that same level of frantic anticipation that a good Hitchock film does.

I see online a lot essays comparing the two, asking who is the true master of suspense.  That's really subjective, and a little childish.  Not that this blog is beyond childish!  However, they worked in different story telling mediums.  If comparing apples to apples -- King movies verses Hitchcock movies, then the answer is hands down Mr. Hitchcock is the master of suspense.  King's art is with words, and in that realm, he is -- well -- king.

Watching a Hitchcock is a real treat.  In movie like Rear Window, Psycho, Vertigo and The Birds, each scene is like an incredible painting.  Hitchcock didn't like filming on locations because so much was out of his control.  However, some of the most awesome outdoor scenes brought to film are from Mr. Hitchcock.  He would choose every car, and in what order, that would drive by in a scene.  Nothing was left to chance!

It is natural to compare the two.  Though using different mediums, they often use similar approaches.

Limitation:

I got The Alfred Hitchcock collection on Blu Ray the other night.  On the Rear Window DVD, Peter Bogdanovich notes how Hitchcock really liked to limit himself.  In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart has a broken leg and the entire movie is shot looking out his window!  Rope also takes place in one apartment.  And Lifeboat also is set completely on the boat.  Interesting, as there is little scene change, yet the story is so gripping it holds the viewers interest.

Limitation is an art Stephen King has honed and refined.

Some particular limitations:
1. In Cujo most of the action took place trapped in a car.
2. Gerald's Game cent`ered completely on a woman tied to a bed.  Small efforts -- like trying to get water -- become monumental feats in which the reader roots for her.
3. Susannah in the Dark Tower is crippled.  So is the boy in Silver Bullet.
4. Of course, in Under The Dome the characters are locked together under a giant Dome.  I sure would love it if King went back and finished Cannibals, which was an early attempt at Under The Dome.  In Cannibals, the people were trapped inside an apartment building.  I LOVED the drafts King released.
5. In The Mist the characters are trapped inside a Grocery store.

Cameos.
Not only did Alfred Hitchcock introduce each Hitchcock was known to appear briefly in his own works.  It's kind of fun to spot him!  I think the  most obvious is in The Birds.  Hitchcock did this early because he did not want the audience to spend the entire movie looking for him and miss the  other elements of his story telling.

It is unusual for an author to do Cameo's in their own work, but Stephen King has made quite a few.  Most of the time, it is simply references to his work.  Such is the case in The  Library Policeman.  But in The Dark Tower, King personally appears as himself in The Song of Suzanna.

Ordinary Dangers
In The Birds, Hitchcock took something very ordinary -- birds -- and terrified America.  Before the birds, horror movies usually created monstrosities, such as Frankenstein's monster.  Or, Hollywood was known to take ordinary animals and make them huge, like gigantisized ants.  With the birds, Hitchcock took an ordinary small animal and made it scary.  King does this all the time with rats!

Janet Lea, who took that famous shower in Psycho, said that Hitchcock made it so she could never take a shower again!  After all, think how vulnerable you are in a shower.  (Ask Travis Alexander how dangerous a shower is)  King didn't make the shower dangerous, but he did cause an awful lot  of people to hate clowns.

Here are some ordinary things King has made scary: 1. Cars.  2. Rats.  3. Dogs.  4. Libraries.  5. A Prom.  6. Clowns.  7. Blow torch.  (Misery)

Marriage

Hitchcock's wife Alma was deeply involved in each film he made.  From the work of scripting the story to choosing wardrobe and actors, she had a hand in it.  When Hitchcock recieved the AFI Life Achievement Award, he thanked one person:  Alma.

King has spoken often of the importance of his wife's support and input.  He continues to seek her approval -- even if he might deny it a little.  I like the story King tells of driving with his wife as she sat in the passenger seat reading part of a book.  He asked how it was, and she told him to stop being so needy!

Hitchcock didn't like to spend the evening on the set, but was always home promptly to be with his wife, with whom he often cooked dinner.  King has done his fair share of cooking, and has even contributed to a cookbook titled, "Man with a Pan."

GENRE
Though both deal in the art of suspense,  Hitchcock and King actually deal in very different genres.  King  is quick to use the supernatural as a story telling device.   It is fair to expect ghosts, vampires, possessed cars and even a few haunted houses in a Stephen King story.  In a Hitchcock film there are not ghosts, there are murders and Natzi spies!  But the tension is real  in both.

I discussed in my short essay, What King Book Would Hitchcock Film, a list of stories I thought would suit the famous director.  One person offered  the addition of The Ledge to my list, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Some people, my family included, have seen the use  of supernatural as a weakness in King's writing.  I love it!  From Bag of Bones to IT, the creepy stuff is the best when Stephen King is narrating.

Prolific
Hitchock hosted multiple series, as well as making over fifty feature films.  In fact, as I read The Art of Alfred Hitchock, I'm surprised by just how many of Hitch's films I haven't seen.  There are several I'd like to see.  The Lodger is one, and Under Capricorn is another.  Hitchcock started in the silent era in 1925.

King, likewise, has amassed quite a body of work, and he shows no signs of slowing.

Did you know that there is one film that Alfred Hitchcock filmed twice?  It's The Man Who Knew Too Much.  1934 and then in 1956.  Hitchcock said, "Let's say that the first version was the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional."  Of course, King hasn't produced the same book twice -- exactly.  There was a first attempt at Under The Dome, called Cannibals.  But they are essentially different stories.  But when you look at The Gunslinger and the revision, I think you see two very different stories.  I prefer the revised version.  The same can be true of The Stand, which exists in two distinct versions.  Again, I like the one that was recut and retold.  The storyteller gets better at his craft with each telling.

Though King has never gone back and rewritten a book quite the way Hitchcock returned to The Man Who Knew Too Much, there is a book I wish he would rewrite -- The Tommyknockers.  I find parts of the novel difficult to read, yet the story itself quite engaging.

Years ago, my wife and I went out on a rainy night and watched the remake of Psycho.  As rain poured outside, and the well known story of murder played out on screen, my wife leaned in and said, "This is really scary!"  And it was.  But no one could reproduce what Hitchcock had done, even when trying to translate the film scene  by scene and frame by frame.  Actually, that remake doesn't make any sense to me!  Why did they remake it if they were going to use the same script and direction Hitchcock had  done?  Just to get new actors and do it in color?  Hitchcock did Psycho in black and white because by choice.

FAVORITES!

What's your favorite Hitchcock?  I find I like Hitchcock's later career -- but not the last of the last!  The films of the 60's --  Marnie, Torn Cuartian, Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot all fail to grab me. My all time favorites are Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo.

Here's a few of my favorites:
Mr. and Mrs Smith, 1940
Shadow of a Doubt, 1943
Lifeboat, 1944
Spellbound, 1945
Strangers on a Train, 1951 (Which has to be paired with Throw Mamma From The Train)
Dial M for Murder, 1954
Rear Window, 1954
The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1955
Vertigo, 1958
North by Northwest, 1959
Psycho, 1960
The Birds, 1963

And favorite episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is Final Escape.

HITCHCOCK AT Talk Stephen King:
Check out my short article What King Book Would Hitchcock Film?
And Stephen Rebello's article 6 Great Reasons Hitchcock Is Still The Master Of Suspense
And Rebello's youtube discussion of Psycho
And Stephen Rebello's article 5 Things You Didn't Know About Psycho

NBC Developing TOMMYKNOCKERS

NBC has announced that Tommyknockers is being developed as a "limited" series.

The Hollywood Reporter notes:

King's Tommyknockers is based on the author's 1987 novel about the residents of a small Maine town and how they deal with what they perceive to be an alien spacecraft that has landed nearby. Frank Konigsberg and Larry Sanitsky will executive produce, while Emmy winner Yves Simoneau (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) will direct.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

I think this is very exciting.  The mini-series and the book both failed to live up to the stories full potential.  It seems like with a series, the room can be given to flesh out the story itself.

MSN Looks At Stephen King TV The Good And The Really Bad

MSN Entertainment reports that  Under The Dome came out swinging, coming out as the second-highest rated drama debut this year (per Nielsen).  

The article, by Barbara Card Atkinson, goes on to discuss the good and the bad of Stephen King TV.

I found this note on The Dead Zone series interesting:

They did this one right, too -- at least for a while. The series starred Anthony Michael Hall as a psychic loner, and the series premiere broke records for the USA Network at the time, attracting 6.4 million viewers. The series ran six seasons, but viewer numbers had dropped enough that a seventh season was abandoned with no series finale. 

Reading the lists of Good and Worst -- I found out I like a lot of Stephen King TV that no one else does.  I thought both the Tommyknockers  and The Shining were great.  The Tommyknockers felt a bit soap operish at times and too closed in -- things Under  The Dome has avoided thus far -- but I still  like the story.  Oh, and the spaceship in Tommyknockers was a disappointment.  But that moment when the kid does a magic trick and makes his brother disappear. . . and then can't bring him back! -- that was great television.

I also liked the 2002 Carrie a lot. I thought it managed to bring new ideas to the story while remaining pretty faithful to the book.

I do think this note  on Bag of Bones was insightful on Atkinson's part:

"This miniseries ran three hours, which might have been an hour too long, or several hours too short. More time would have allowed for better character development; less time might have forced a much-needed pace tightening."

And also Atkinson gives this interesting explanation to the mediocre  response to The Shining miniseries, "it was another case where the novel was so dense with backstory and internal experiences (and audiences missing those creepy twins and bloody elevators) that it couldn't be roundly brought to the screen."

When it comes to The Shining, I've hoped for a directors cut that would restore some scenes that Garris cut out.

Even with a love  for bad Stephen King television -- I cannot offer and defense for The Langoliers.

THE GOOD:
IT
THE STAND
SALEM'S LOT
THE DEAD ZONE

THE WORST:
THE SHINING.
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS
STORM OF THE CENTURY
CARRIE
SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK
ROSE RED
THE LANGOLIERS
NIGHTMARES & DREAMSCAPES
BAG OF BONES

TOMMYKNOCKERS QUIZ

Hey, check  out shortlist.com for a fun Tommyknockers Quiz.

The Tommyknockers, published in 1987, saw Stephen King diversify into science fiction, away from his usual horror style; of course, this being King, it still contains more than its fair share of sinister events. 

A story of stumbling upon a long-buried alien spacecraft, which begins to gradually transform people into alien beings, it soon becomes clear to one man - immune from the effects - that something needs to be done to save the town, and the world outside.
See how much you remember from the book by taking our quiz.

(I saw this first at Fans of Stephen King)

After you take the quiz post your score here.  No fibbing, or the Library police will come.

This Guy Is Full of Green Light: Bryant Burnette's Review of "Golden Years" Episode 5

This is the FIFTH PART of an article by Bryant Burnette summarizing the Golden Years television show.  As Bryant pointed out in the first post, we should not confuse the television series with the 3 hour hashed movie.

This was originally posted at Burnette's blog, thetruthinsidethelie.blogspot.com\

Episode 5 (airdate 08/08/1991)

This was the final episode that King scripted personally, for those of you who may be interested in such things; you may also be interested to know that another Stephen (Stephen Tolkin) directed it. Then again, you may not.

As the episode opens, Ohio State Troopers have found the stolen police cruiser, and are coordinating their plan of attack with Jude Andrews (who is still at Falco Plains). This scene goes on for what feels like ten minutes, and if you as a viewer do not figure out that the car is empty about nine minutes and forty-five second before the State Troopers do, then you, sir (or madam, as the case may be), are an idiot. Jude Andrews is not an idiot, so I'm not sure what his excuse is for not immediately realizing that Terry and her lambs would hardly be sitting in a stolen police cruiser in the middle of a field, waiting to be found. Let's not blame Jude; let's -- again -- blame Stephen King, whose writing has not been tip-top in these episodes.

Finally, though, somebody has at least half a good idea: Gina and Terry get on a bus (which conveniently stops in the middle of nowhere) to head for Chicago, and Harlan splits apart from them to hitch-hike his way there. Going to Chicago isn't a good idea, of course; it's bound to be only a matter of time before Andrews figures out that Harland Gina's lone daughter might need to be observed, but since it took King five episodes to figure that out, it took all of the characters the same length of time.

But boy, they all seem to have figured out at once that looking into the Williamses personal life is in order. Crewes has Moreland bring him Harlan's file; he shreds it, then browbeats Moreland into hacking into the government's Central Records computer to delete the digital version. Andrews has been thinking after the cockup with the State Troopers, and is trying real hard to figure out his next move; he eventually comes up with "Moreland!" and then we're off to the races. He calls one of his goons, Burton (played by the same actor who played Doakes on Dexter decades later), and tells him to get into Central Records and get Williams's file. Unfortunately, Moreland is a few steps ahead of him.

Now, let's pause for a moment and give King some credit where it is due. Doing so requires going on a tangent, so here goes: there is a scene in the 1994 film Clear and Present Danger that involves two opposing characters trying to simultaneously gain access to files on a computer. I remember that when the movie came out, this scene in particular was hailed for being a new type of on-screen suspense, and I also remember thinking, "Hey, Golden Years did that three years ago!" Granted, the novel Clear and Present Danger came out in 1989, so maybe King was cribbing from Clancy; given how voracious a reader he is, it seems likely that he would have read the Clancy novel.

Either way, considering how relatively obscure computers were in pop culture circa 1991, you've got to admire King for placing a scene like this in this series. It seems laughably dated now, but it didn't seem that way at the time, and regardless of whether Clancy beat him to the punch, King deserves credit for being as forward-thinking as he was here.

Speaking of being forward-thinking, Terry apparently isn't; she's only now, in episode five, gotten around to explaining to Gina that what's happening to Harlan is the result of a scientific experiment into regeneration. Really? This has been going on for days and days, and Gina is just now finding out that it's all about regeneration? That strains credulity a bit.

So does the scene in which Toddhunter is preparing to conduct a new experiment of some sort, only to realize that he needs some patch cable to finish hooking his system up. We get not one, but TWO scenes in which Toddhunter tries to get his cables in order. What the fuck?!? Is he settig up a surround-sound system, or working on a government experiment? Both of these scenes are played for laughs, but elicit none; no intentional ones, at least.

The episode ends with a scene in which Harlan, having successfully gotten a ride from a long-haul trucker, falls asleep in the truck's cab while the trucker natters on. Harlan's eyes begin glowing green; the trucker doesn't notice, because he's busy freaking out over how the truck's electrical systems are going haywire, Close Encounters-style. He pulls the truck over, and then, suddenly, the sun rises; time has apparently gone haywire, too, almost certainly as a result of something harlan is unconsciously doing. Everyone else on the road pulls over and gets out of their cars, understandably freaked out. The truck driver finally notices Harlan; "This guy is full of green light!", he hollers at everyone around him.

Sure enough, he is.

The green light, by the way, cannot help but make me think of The Tommyknockers. It's probably coincidental; but then again, The Shop did show up at the end of that novel...

This is a decent episode, certainly better than the previous one. There are some bad scenes, and the plot by King is really rather poor. However, the final scene ends things on an intriguing note; it's a big right-hand turn, and an effective one. Most of the acting continues to be good, too. I was especially impressed here by R.D. Call, who does a good job of making Andrews a compelling figure even when King is saddling him with out-of-character moments of stupidity. I'd say much the same for Felicity Huffman, too.

Interview With Bev Vincent part 1

Do you read Cemetery Dance?  I do!  And the first place I turn is to Bev Vincnt's column.  Even when there's a Stephen King story.  I was absolutely thrilled when Mr. Vincen allowed me the opportunity to ask him a series of interview questions.  This was really a gift of time on his part and I am supremely thankful.

On a personal note, this was exciting for me for two reasons.  First, Mr. Vincent is one of my favorite authors about Stephen King.  I've been using his book The Road to the Dark Tower as I read through the series again and have found it very helpful.  His book The Stephen King Companion is all out fun!

Second, this gave me an opportunity to ask some questions about the Dark Tower and the Stephen King Universe that I've thinking about ever since I read The Dark Tower 7.

Bev Vincent's The Stephen King Illustrated Companion was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award as well as  the 2009 Bram Stoker Award.

THE INTERVIEW

Talk Stephen King: Tell me a little about yourself. Do you focus primarily on King, or do you also write fiction? 

Bev Vincent: I’m originally from eastern Canada, though I’ve been living in Texas since 1989. In 2012, I became a dual citizen.

I write just about everything: non-fiction, book reviews, essays, blogs, short stories and novels. After a long hiatus from writing, I started working on short stories in 1999 and had my first one published the following year. In 2001, Rich Chizmar at Cemetery Dance asked me if I would consider writing the Stephen King news column that appears in each issue of the magazine, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I’ve written three books to date and edited one (The Stephen King Illustrated Trivia Book). I’ve published over 70 short stories, hundreds of book reviews and dozens of essays.

Talk Stephen King: You have a doctorate in chemistry – which suggests you do a lot more than just write books about Stephen King! What else do you do?

Bev Vincent: I have a Ph. D. in chemistry from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. My specialty is a type of analysis known as X-ray diffraction—specifically, X-ray crystallography. We shoot X-ray beams at crystals and analyze the scattering pattern to determine the molecular structure of the compound and how the molecules pack together to make the crystal. This type of analysis has many uses, and may practitioners have won Nobel Prizes for determining the structures of biologically interesting molecules using the method. The company I work for manufactures and sells the equipment and software used for a wide range of X-ray analysis techniques. That’s my so-called day job. I’ve worked for the same company for 23 years.

Talk Stephen King: I’ve been reading The Road to the Dark Tower as I read through the Dark Tower novels. I saw you have a new companion book to the Dark Tower coming out (The Dark Tower Companion). How is it different from The Road to the Dark Tower?

Bev Vincent: When King published an eighth Dark Tower novel, The Wind Through the Keyhole, people asked me if I was going to update The Road to the Dark Tower to incorporate the new volume. I thought that sounded like a good idea, but my agent suggested that a completely new book would be even better. The Road to the Dark Tower is intended for people who have read (or are reading) the series. It looks at the series as a whole and explores it in detail. I liken my role to that of a tour guide escorting someone through the series, pointing out all the links, details, connections and references that a casual reader might otherwise have missed, especially on a first reading. The spoilers come early—only Chapter 1 is spoiler free. That was the only way I could see to do it at the time. You can’t talk about what happens at the Way Station after Jake and Roland leave, for example, without referring forward to Wolves of the Calla.

The impetus for The Dark Tower Companion was the news of a possible film adaptation of the series, together with the Marvel graphic novel adaptations. It seemed to me that there might be people who came to the series from sources outside the series books themselves. People who’ve read Insomnia or Hearts in Atlantis, too, who might be curious about who the Crimson King is, or what Breakers are. The new book is less analytical in some ways, although there are several chapters at the end where I wax philosophical about what it all means.

However, it starts off generally. What is Mid-World? What is the Dark Tower? Who is Roland? What is the nature of his quest? Questions of that sort. The chapters on the individual books are more self-contained, without much by way of forward-reaching spoilers.

The book has a comprehensive glossary of people, places and things, separated by those that are part of “our world” and those from Mid-World. It isn’t a Concordance (like Robin Furth’s). It doesn’t tell you on what pages you can find every mention of a character, although it does list the books in which a character (or place or thing) appears. The glossary tells you everything you might want to know about these entries, though.

This is the first book to address the Marvel adaptations and their place in the canon (or not). I look at each graphic novel series and underline the places where it provides new scenes or material, and the places where it diverges from or contradicts King’s novels. I also provide summaries of the extra material found in each issue for people who haven’t read the graphic novels.

I interviewed a lot of people for the book. Stephen King told me a few things about the series that he’s never said before. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman explained in detail how they plan to adapt the books to film and television if they can find a partner willing to fund the project. Brian Stark discusses the Discordia interactive game on King’s website. I also interviewed Robin Furth about the Marvel adaptation, as well as most of the major artistic contributors: illustrator Jae Lee, colorist Richard Isanove, scripter Peter David and several artists who stepped in after Jae Lee left the project.

There’s a chapter on the history of Mid-World and another on its geography. I tried my hand at creating a map of the parts of Mid-World that we know from the books, and I was surprised at how neatly it came together. Information from The Wind Through the Keyhole helped place a lot of it in context (the relative location of Gilead, for example) and, despite some contradictions within the text and the variable nature of direction and distance in Mid-World, it all came together nicely. I’m nobody’s cartographer, but I think people will be interested by the map. I also created a Dark Tower tour guide to Manhattan, which points out as many of the places in the city that are mentioned in the series as I could, along with a second map.

The book is 50% longer than The Road to the Dark Tower and, unlike the first book, is completely footnote-free! And it’s all new text.

Talk Stephen King: My favorite Stephen King companion book is The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. Not only is the text great, but it is full of reproductions of first drafts and early copies of the manuscripts. How did that book come together?

Bev Vincent: That was a fascinating and fun project that came to me out of the blue.  The book chain Barnes & Noble had published reader’s companions to Poe and Jane Austen and decided they wanted to do one on King. They reached out to the same book packager who had done the previous books, a company called becker&mayer! that specializes in design-heavy books. Their editor contacted me on the strength of The Road to the Dark Tower and asked if I would be interested in writing the book’s text.

The challenge was to write something meaningful that combined the concepts of biography and light literary analysis. Given the limited page count, I clearly couldn’t cover King’s entire bibliography (nor would I have wanted to—that would be a person’s life work!). I worked from a few governing principles: I wanted to focus on books that almost everyone has heard of, even if they aren’t King fans. I needed to pick books that spanned his writing career to that point (otherwise I could have gotten bogged down with the famous books from the 1970s and never made it to the 2000s). And I wanted books that either had a significant autobiographical or semi-autobiographical aspect to them, or ones that were written when there was something interesting going on in King’s life.

Once I chose the books and had my outline approved by the editor and Barnes & Noble, it was simply a matter of writing the text, which took about six weeks. I finished ahead of schedule, which meant that the documents specialist had the full text to work from when selecting the photographs and other accompanying materials that are a hallmark of their reader’s companions. These books aren’t simply read—they’re experienced. You can spend hours with one and never read a word of the text! We obtained King’s permission to search his archives at the University of Maine and reproduce anything we wanted. King had veto power, but he never employed it. He also provided access to a personal photo album. The book became a real treasure trove of never-before-seen material. The fact that it was so handsomely produced and inexpensive means that it was available to anyone who wanted it. It sold so well, there was a second printing within about a year. Sadly, it’s now out of print, but I have hopes that B&N will bring it back out again in the future.

One interesting spin-off from the book is that I was interviewed extensively for an updated version of the King profile for the Biography Channel. The person who interviewed me for it drew a lot of material from the book. Her copy was full of post-it notes and book marks. This version is only available internationally—it never airs in the US.

Talk Stephen King: Do you have some favorite non-King writers?
Bev Vincent: Indeed I have many. So many that my mind freezes whenever I’m asked the question. I read a lot of crime fiction by authors like Ian Rankin, Jonathan Kellerman, Lawrence Block, Michael Connelly, Kate Atkinson, George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane. I read Alexander McCall Smith’s novels to my wife, along with the humorous essays of fellow Canadian Stuart McLean. I don’t read a lot of horror and very little science fiction and fantasy these days, though I once did.

I’ll read anything Peter Straub, Dan Simmons, Ian McEwen and Graham Joyce publish. I’ve lately become fond of foreign crime writers like Jo Nesbo, Steig Larsson, Natsuo Kirino and Keigo Higashino. I’m currently reading NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, and I really liked Owen King’s debut novel, Double Feature, which will be out in April. I’ve been enjoying Justin Cronin’s trilogy, am a fan of Stephen R. Donaldson’s fantasy series, and am challenged by the novels of Umberto Eco. To get an idea of what I’ve read over the past several years, check out my review page: www.onyxreviews.com

Talk Stephen King: Do you have a favorite Dark Tower book? 
Bev Vincent: I have a hard time making top ten lists or picking favorites. My mind doesn’t work that way. However, that said, I would have to choose The Gunslinger as my favorite.

Talk Stephen King: Why?
Bev Vincent: I know that wouldn’t be the obvious choice—a lot of people haven’t gotten into the Dark Tower series because that can be a difficult book—but I love it for the overall mood it casts. I first read it in 1984 and for a number of years it was the only Dark Tower book. I’ve read it many times over the years. It’s compact and dense, the protagonist isn’t terribly likable, but it has this haunting aura that charmed me.

Talk Stephen King: A favorite non-Tower King book? 
Bev Vincent: When I’m asked this question, I almost always think of Bag of Bones, his first book with Scribner, and its bookend partner, Lisey’s Story. I consider them a matching set. The writer without his wife; the wife without the writer. There’s a lot going on in Bag of Bones that makes it feel like a highly personal novel. I was also impressed by the writing process—how King wove in a crucial subplot that wasn’t present in the first draft. It becomes one of the most important facets of the story, but King put it in like an artist painting highlights on a nearly finished works. Little daubs of paint here and there. It was a lesson in the craft of writing.

Talk Stephen King: Is there any Stephen King book you just don’t like or couldn’t make it through? 
Bev Vincent: None that I couldn’t make it through, but a few that I dislike. I enjoyed the opening section of The Tommyknockers. I liked Bobbi and Gard a lot and was frustrated when King abandoned them for hundreds of pages to tell us about all these other people about whom I cared not a whit. I kept wanting to get back to Bobbi and Gard, which made it feel like I was just flipping pages. King thinks people missed the point on Needful Things, but my problem with the book is that it was missing the key element present in the rest of his work: likable characters. I hardly liked anyone in that book. And the wonky pseudoscience in Cell wrecked the book for me. It’s fine to have wibbly wobbly bits in a book so long as the story doesn’t rely on them. The whole “save to disk and reboot” concept didn’t hold water, so I couldn’t enjoy the book.

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PART TWO WILL POST JANUARY 2, 2013

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Check out Bev Vincent's website at www.bevvincent.com

The Tommyknockers 25 Years Later

PostBulletin listed a "this day in history" that included the Tommyknockers.  

1987 — 25 years ago
Dr. Robert Waller has been named president and chief executive officer of the Mayo Foundation. He succeeds Dr. W. Eugene Mayberry.
Brian LaPlante popped in a 12-foot jump shot from the baseline with a second left to give the Chatfield Gophers a 60-58 basketball victory over Wykoff.
Best seller novels this week include "The Tommyknockers" by Stephen King and "Kaleidoscope" by Danielle Steel.

What do you think of The Tommyknockers?

I have not read the book yet, but I look forward to it.  I saw, and enjoyed, the miniseries.  In particular,t he scene where the kid makes his brother disappear. . . but can't bring him back!  that's great!  The disappointment for me in the mini-series was that the spaceship they dug up was not very interesting.  The idea, though, of a buried spaceship that causes the townspeople to change -- AWESOME!

What King Book Would Thomas Kinkade Illustrate ?

As far as I know Stephen King and Thomas Kinkade never collaborated.  I could imagine the painting above being a cover to a Stephen King novel. With the passing of the painter of light, I am left wondering what book would have best fit Kinkade.  Think book covers in particular.

My list:

1. The Body.
2. Duma Key.  A set of houses beautifully sit along the Florida Keys.
3. Bag of Bones.  A small cottage by the lake – you can see it, right?
4. Needful Things.  Small town where everything looks “all right.”  But imagine a dark, bluish glow coming from a certain shop on Main Street.
5. The Tommyknockers.  So, I don’t know if Kinkade is really such a great nominee here. . . but anything would be better than the green glow that the original novel had.  That was it!  Black, with a green streak of light.  What were they thnking over at Viking?  The idea session goes like this:

Viking exec #1, “Let’s put a lady digging up a buried spaceship.”
Exec. #2, “No!  It’s about a town.  Let’s have a picture of a town with a strange green glow in the background.”
Chief Exec: “That’s it!  Green glow.  We’ll go with that.”
Exec #2: “What about the town?”
Chief Exec: “Nope, just green glow.”
Exec #1: “But we’re going to have a spaceship, right?”
Chief Exec, “No way.  That ruins everything.  All we want is green glow.  That will sell books, inspire readers and . . .” whatever.  Same guys probably worked on The Talisman and Insomnia.  Oh, they had the same conversation about The Dark Half, but this time it was a blue gob instead of a green glow.  Brilliant, I say, brilliant!

6. How about this for The Dark Tower. . . Roland finally finds the thing on a fishing trip.

photo credit: fark.com

Anyone ever notice that Bachman got better book covers!  Until Thinner. . . which outed him as a King novel.

Kinkade gave us America the way we want it to be. I think of Kinkade as a modern Norman Rockwell.  He wasn't always beloved in the art community, but the American people adored him.   King gives us a dose of America the way it is. . . or, sometimes, worse!  He drudges up our worst fears.  But, so often he starts with something like a Kinkade painting.  All is nice and well – but trouble is brewing!

Both Kinkade and King got criticized by the upper-crust of their professions for not being artsy enough.  But they each gave people what they wanted.  I have read several quotes that go along the lines of, "What Stephen King is to writing, Thomas Kinkade was to painting."

Finally. . . one more. . .

I Don't Even Remember Writing The Tommyknockers

Okay. . . this is from The Onion.  News is a lot more fun when it's really just creative writing. 

I Don't Even Remember Writing The Tommyknockers

By Stephen King

May 5, 1999
ISSUE 35•17
THE ONION
 

So, I'm doing this book signing for The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon at the Barnes & Noble on Manhattan's Upper West Side last week, and this woman comes up to me, gushing about how The Tommyknockers is her "absolute, all-time favorite book." The name really didn't ring a bell, but I figured I must have written it, seeing as this woman is bothering to tell me how it's her all-time favorite, so I just kind of play along like I know what the heck she's talking about.




"What Bobbi Anderson and the other people of Haven went through, well, that was just the ultimate in horror fiction," this woman said to me as I nodded along, clueless. "I must have read it at least 50 times, and I swear, not once has it failed to scare the living daylights out of me."


Anyway, when I got home, I looked up The Tommyknockers in this literature reference book I have and, sure enough, I wrote it in 1987. Apparently, it's the story of this woman in this small town in Maine who discovers a metal object that was buried for millennia, and the thing gives all the townspeople super-powers. But then there's this deadly evil that's unleashed by the object, and the town becomes a death trap for all outsiders.


After reading the plot synopsis, I sort of remembered it, but, then again, maybe it just sounded like something else I wrote. After your 50 or 60th one, it's all kind of a blur. But if I had to venture a guess, I'd say I probably did write The Tommyknockers. It sounds like my kind of thing, what with this invisible evil being unleashed on a town full of innocent people and all.


To be honest, that wouldn't be the first time I'd forgotten one of my books. I'm usually pretty good about remembering the early stuff, like Carrie and The Stand and so forth. And I never forget my most recent one. It's those middle-period ones, though, that always seem to slip my mind. Like, what's that one about the writer who uses a pen name, and then the pen name develops into this evil, Mr. Hyde-type alter ego and commits a brutal murder? The Dark Tower? The Dark Zone? I'm pretty sure it's the "Dark" something, but I could be wrong.


Oh, and then there was that one about the werewolf. I honestly don't remember anything about that one, except that there was some kind of killer werewolf attacking a whole bunch of people. Hopefully, no one will ever mention that one at a book signing, because I don't think I could fake it for even a minute. Like I said, it's all a big blur after a while.

Good Tommyknockers Review

Steve Brandt has a neat review of Tommyknockers. 

The Tommyknockers is often overlooked or disregarded as a failed novel.  That is not at all Brandt's take!  After giving the customary plot overview, Brant says, "On the surface, The Tommyknockers is a pretty good science fiction tale, and pretty creepy too." 

Brant "gets" King!  He understands that for Stephen King, it's always about the characters.  He writes, "Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll find something that's a little more down to Earth, although no less terrifying. There are all kinds of horrors in the world; sometimes they lurk beneath the surface of the earth, and sometimes they lurk beneath the surface of a human being. Both of Stephen King's main characters, Bobbie and Gard, have terrors hidden within them. For Bobbie, it's an over-bearing sister who wants to run her life. For Gard, it's the bottle."

The Tommyknockers is a big story.  One of the early works where an entire town is involved.  Later we would have Needful Things and Under The Dome.  Unlike The Stand, Tommyknockers has a closed enviroment -- meaning characters can't as easily just wander off stage.  They have to be dealt with! 

Brant gives this energetic endorsement: "Yes, Stephen King knows about personal demons, and I can see where The Tommyknockers might have been difficult for him to write, but I'm glad he did. This is one of my favorite King books."

Here is Brant's review: http://www.sfsite.com/07a/tk347.htm
Here is Brant's audiobook review site: http://www.audiobook-heaven.com/
Check out my post "The Tommyknockers Redeemed": http://talkstephenking.blogspot.com/2009/11/tommyknockers-redeemed.html

THE SHOP

Fire Starter has peaked my interest in the mysterious government institution "The Shop." The Shop is headed up by Captain James Hollister, better known as Cap. The Shop is a heavily guarded scientific institution backed up by a few not-so-nice hit men. Of course, the first handful of hit men turn out to be completely incompetent! (Namely, my already mentioned, a killer named O.J. go figure!)

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The Stephen King Universe has an entire section that looks at stories that incorporate The Shop. The book notes, "Two observations can be made. First, though operating in the prime reality, the Shop seems to share certain facets with the low men in yellow coats from Rolands reality (Hearts in Atlantis). Second, if there are thinnies between the prime reality and any of the others, the shop is almost certainly aware of them." (SK Universe 248)

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Formal Name: The Department of Scientific Intelligence

Location: Longmont, Virginia

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King says this about Shop headquarters in Fire Starter:

Two handsome Southern plantation homes faced each other across a long and rolling grass lawn that was crisscrossed by a few gracefully looping bike paths and a two lane crushed-gravel drive that came over the hill from the main road. Off to one side of one of these houses was the hill from the main road. off to one side of one of these houses was a large barn, painted bright red and trimmed spotless white. Near the other was a long stable, done in the same handsome red with white trim. Some of the best horseflesh in the South was quartered here. between the barn and the stable was a wide, shallow duckpond, calmly reflecting the sky.

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In the 1860's, the original owners of these two homes had gone off and got themselves killed in the war, and all survivors of both families were dead now. The two estates had been consolidated into one piece of government property in 1954. It was Shop headquarters. (Fire Starter, p.63)

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The Shop appears in:

Firestarter

The Tommyknockers

Golden eyars

The langoliers

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The Shop Crossovers:

This is from http://www.malakoff.com/sklnklst.htm.

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THE LANGOLIERS (Four Past Midnight)—FIRESTARTER“The Shop” is mentioned in The Langoliers. Presumably the same “Shop” as in Firestarter.

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THE TALISMAN—FIRESTARTER The Rainbird Towers, a New York condominium complex, is mentioned in "The Talisman." Rainbird is the name of The Shop operative assigned to Charlie McGee in "Firestarter."

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THE TOMMYKNOCKERS—FIRESTARTERAfter all the excitement was over in The Tommyknockers, “The Shop” came to Haven to investigate.