Reading for the Apocalypse

In a parallel life I would have been an epidemiologist. Ever since I read Guns, Germs, and Steel, I’ve been fascinated by the interaction of plagues and society. (Another book along the same lines that has been in my library for years is Plagues and Peoples, along with Ken Alibek’s book about the bio-weapons lab he ran. It’s called Biohazard and it will keep you up at night.) Laurie Garrett’s book The Coming Plague is a sobering, informative read. You might have seen her interviewed on The Rachel Maddow Show recently. She did not have good news about COVID-19. And the Band Played On, the monumental work about the AIDS epidemic by Randy Shilts (who died of AIDS at 42.) is a must-read.

I’ve been thinking of fictional plague books lately. I’ve read a lot of them, and am wondering what else is out there that I haven’t read. I subscribe to the service K-lytics, which tracks genres in books, and a few months ago dystopian books—particularly ones featuring disasters like plagues and EMP episodes—were all the rage. I’m wondering if people are still fascinated by those “what if” books now that we’re in a real-life plague crisis of our own. Would reading those books now allay anxiety or make it worse? Could anything be worse than refreshing news feeds every two minutes?

Stephen King Giveaway

Click here for your chance to win a paperback copy of The Gunslinger (first in the Dark Tower series) and a $10 Amazon gift certificate. I don't know about you, but I can do a LOT of damage with a $10 gift certificate.

Peng Shepherd's Book of M--a review

In a world where people are suddenly losing their shadows, the lives of a group of unrelated people are bound up in a hope for building a new world on the memory of the old.

This is an epic, apocalyptic quest along the lines of Stephen King’s THE STAND or Robert McCammon’s SWAN SONG, with a large dose of INCEPTION thrown in. It’s also a zombie story of sorts, particularly in scenes where the “shadowless” surround those who are still tethered to their ‘dark twins.” The story unfolds in a somewhat nonlinear fashion where events being recounted by various characters overlap, but there’s a good mix of adventure and intimate contact.

The unraveling of reality is incredibly visual, and no one will much quibble with the premise that memories are stored in our shadows (and not in a certain part of our brains). The writer tells the story from multiple points of view, with both first and third person being used. The author does a very good job of “opening out” the story with flashbacks to “before” and even to multiple events after the Forgetting hits.

Peng Shepherd's debut novel is a multi-faceted apocalyptic quest story told from multiple points of view. She plays with pov in a way that I haven't seen since Kevin Brooks' iBoy, and it's astonishing that this is her first book. 

Reading Road Trip ... Colorado

I have never been to Colorado except in movies and books. I read Isabella Bird's wonderful A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains when I was in middle school and it sent me off on a binge of reading 
about women explorers. And of course, since Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, I checked into the Overlook Hotel in Sidewinder, Colorado when I read The Shining, and later, Doctor Sleep.

Isabella Bird

But most of what I've read about Colorado has to do with the Columbine high school shooting. (Interestingly, the high school massacre is not the first massacre in Columbine's history. In 1927, a union action went bad when police and coal miners clashed in what's become known as the Columbine Mine Massacre.)

I don't read a lot of true crime books. I'm not an avis follower of lurid criminal cases on TV. I will admit that the JonBenet Ramsey case intrigues me and I wish someone would explain how she got that strange first name.) I like watching homicide hunter because I enjoy Joe Kenda's character but also because I know that the crimes depicted on the show were solved and the person (or persons) responsible were brought to justice. As Kenda would say, "Justice. It works for me."

But Columbine was a whole new level of crime and at the time, the narrative around it seemed familiar. Misfit kids. Outcsts. Yadda-yadda-yadda. Except...that's not how it happened. Dave Cullen's book Columbine (see an excellent review by Jesse Kornbluth here) tells the real story and it will chill you. Dylan Klebold's mother Sue has done a TED talk about her son and his friend Eric, and watching that in conjunction with reading Columbine will make you want to weep. She. Had. No. Idea.

A Writer Whose Work Scares Stephen King!

Stephen King is known to be generous in his blurbs, but even so, I'll take his recommendation of a writer any day. This is the newest book from Nick Cutter. (Doesn't his name just SOUND like a horror writer? Or maybe a thriller writer? It's from Simon and Schuster (which also publishes King), and here's the sales pitch:

An all-new epic tale of terror and redemption set in the hinterlands of midcentury New Mexico from the acclaimed author of The Troop—which Stephen King raved “scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t put it down...old-school horror at its best.”

From electrifying horror author Nick Cutter comes a haunting new novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Stephen King’s It, in which a trio of mismatched mercenaries is hired by a young woman for a deceptively simple task: check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called Little Heaven. Shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous. Stirrings in the woods and over the treetops—the brooding shape of a monolith known as the Black Rock casts its terrible pall. Paranoia and distrust grips the settlement. The escape routes are gradually cut off as events spiral towards madness. Hell—or the closest thing to it—invades Little Heaven. The remaining occupants are forced to take a stand and fight back, but whatever has cast its dark eye on Little Heaven is now marshaling its powers...and it wants them all.

Sounds good, doesn't it?  The book was published this week. Check it out.

In Sunlight or in Shadow

A few years ago I participated in Brian Lindemuth's "Short Story a Day" challenge for a year. I discovered a lot of new writers that way and it also gave me an excuse to re-read short stories that I'd always loved. I'd like to read more short stories in the coming year and I'm going to start with this colleciton. I'm intrigued by the concept but look at the lineup of writers--Stephen King, Megan Abbot, Joyce Carol Oates, Craig Ferguson!!!  In Sunlight or in Shadow is currently available in both digital and hard cover here.

Stephen King...

I couldn't have said it better myself. But then, I can rarely say anything better than Stephen King.

Cover Comparison The Stephen King edition

I love short story collections and continue to buy them even as my friends and colleagues bemoan the way short story markets have dried up. Paying markets that is. I started out writing short stories and it's still my favorite length. Some ideas are just short story ideas.
Somehow, in the middle of writing longer works and doing good works and just living his life, Stephen King still finds time to write short stories. The most recent collection of these is Bazaar of Bad Dreams, a title I love. But when the book came out, I didn't love the cover. Honestly, it looked like one of those photoshopped numbers that indie authors get slammed for. That's it on the left. The combination of black and white and red just doesn't say "Dreams" to me.

But since today is King's birthday, everyone is offering special deals on his books (Simon and Schuster, his long-time publisher, is wishing him a "Happy Birthday" with all kinds of offers on his backlist.) And so I saw an offer with the UK cover of Bazaar of Bad Dreams and for me, it's a winner. I'm drawn to covers with splotches of color anyway, and I like the typography and the whole "concept" just so much better. Which one would you rather pick up?

Happy Birthday Stephen King!

The first writer I sought out because I loved her books and wanted to read everything she wrote was Beverly Cleary, who just turned 100 in April. (Live long and prosper Bev!)  And then it was Carolyn Keene "who" wrote the Nancy Drew books but she wasn't really one person, so "she" doesn't count. And then it was Stephen King.
I didn't start with Carrie; my gateway to the Kingdom was a collection of his short stories. Back then, he wasn't writing six or seven books a year like an indie author, but he'd been writing for a couple of years by the time I discovered him and so it took me a while to work through the backlog. (Well, it probably took me a week. I read fast and back then, I still had a lot of free time.)
I was moved by The Dead Zone and scared by Pet Sematary and blown away by The Stand. To this day, the only epic apocalyptic novel that even comes close to it in terms of Dickensian breadth of characters is Robert McCammon's Swan Song.
So I've been reading along all these years and love that he's writing like his life depends on it.

Wait, maybe it does? Maybe the reason he's so prolific is that in the terrible accident that nearly killed him, he did die? And he made a bargain with the devil to come back. But if he doesn't write 10 books a year, he has to return.
Happy Birthday Stephen King.
Thank you for the books!

New Orleans, Prohibition, and a mystical speakeasy. I'm there!

I've only visited New Orleans once and it was before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. But it really is one of those places that isn't like any other. I'm a sucker for stories set in the big easy, and this one, V.R. McCoy's The Merchant, looks like it's right up my alley. The author cites Walter Mosley, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy as his inspirations, and just reading the blurbs of the other two books he's published, I believe his work has "commercial" encoded in its bookly DNA.

This is how The Merchant begins:  It was the year 1187 after his death. It had been raining fire for most of the night ..."  I don't know about you, but there's no way I'm going to stop reading after that. Kindle "look inside" tool--you just made a sale!

A message from the King--Stephen King, that is

Some Thoughts on Historical Fiction

From now until the end of the month, enter the March Mayhem contest sponsored by Joanne Renaud, Kat Laurange, Donna Thorland, Lynne Connelly and Kat Parrish. Details and entry form here.

I've always been an omnivorous reader. I've always read a lot of nonfiction--I loved biographies when I was in elementary school and these days I'm a sucker for books like Bowling Alone, The Collapse and Revival of American Community and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. I also love reading travel memoirs, from Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence to Video Night in Kathmandu. When I worked at Warner Bros. there was a travel bookstore just down the street and I probably bought two books a week there. So many places to visit! And I think my fascination with other places has carried over into my fascination with other times. Fatherland and The Years of Rice and Salt.
And alternate versions of time. (Loved Robert Harris'

Even as a kid when I read fiction, I read widely and without a lot of discrimination. I loved mysteries and they were my go-to books of choice, but I lived in a neighborhood with a small library and after I'd read all the mysteries, I started reading everything else. My library had two sections--fiction and nonfiction, plus a shelf of LARGE PRINT books for the grannies and a little cubby hole of children's books for the little ones. And that was it. You had Agatha Christies novels shelved next to Bernard Cornwell's and Arthur C. Clarke. It was like the literary equivalent of the iPod Shuffle. I'd just pick up books that looked interesting.

A Vampire a Day: They Thirst by Robert McCammon

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Stephen King fan. I think The Stand is a monumental book. I first read it while home sick from school with a horrible case of the flu and believe me, the chapters covering the spread of the plague scared the bejesus out of me.
But as much as I love The Stand, I think Robert McCammon's post-apocalyptic novel Swan Song is even better. I first read that while staying in a series of really awful motels during my first cross-country drive. I'd drive for 10-12 hours and then read until I couldn't read any more. I pulled into L.A. with a bad sunburn on my left arm--I didn't have air conditioning in my car--and about 100 pages left of the book.
They Thirst was the first of McCammon's books I ever read. Then I read Wolf's Hour, which is a Nazi/werewolf thing. I liked both of them. They were pulpy fun, the sort of horror novels you could read in a single sitting.
Like King, McCammon defies categorization. He writes horror, yes, but other things as well. I'm a big fan of his short stories, particularly one called "Night Calls the Green Falcon," which Birdman reminded me of a bit.
McCammon disappeared from publishing for nearly 20 years, and that's a shame. He has a new novel out as of last year and it's on the ever-growing TBR pile. 

A Vampire a Day: Salem's Lot by Stephen King

I'm pretty sure this was the first book I read by Stephen King. I never read Carrie, but I picked up Salem's Lot at the Westover Hills Public Library in Richmond and was completely hooked. I am an unabashed fan of King, and think he's a master at crafting character. (I believe he is the Charles Dickens of our generation. He is superb at characters. And even on his worst days--Desperation, Rose Madder, I'm looking at you--he's better than most people.)

I loved the way he played with the tropes of the vampire myth in this book, especially the way he did the "stake through the heart" thing. I liked the pairing of the kid and the writer who has come back to his home town. (SPOILER ALERT) He has written about killing the love interest in the book and he's absolutely right about the way that unsettled the reader. Because if he killed her off, what might he do next???

I also really liked the first television adaptation of this. David Soul, Lance Kerwin, James Mason and a scary, Nosferatu-type vampire. The scene where a vampire Geoffrey Lewis floats outside the young hero's window was damn scary. (Geoffrey Lewiswas one of my favorite character actors. I saw him in a spoken word performance years ago and he just killed it.) James Mason was perfect.  (And another example of the "all the villains are Brits" idea.)

Salem's Lot was written when King was only 28.

A Vampire a Day: Bent Steeple by G. Wells Taylor

Horror writer G. Wells Taylor (his new book, The Night Once More is a genre-bending, phantasmagorical noir-horror-thriller), hit an absolute home run with Bent Steeple, a stand-alone vampire book set in the Canadian north woods. If you like Stephen King (and I do, a lot), you will LOVE this book. The characterizations are absolutely first rate, from a doctor who sees what's happening before anyone else, to a disabled kid. (Fergus will break your heart.) this is another vampire book that is for readers who prefer their horror to be just that--horrific. Taylor is also the author of the Dracula of the Apes trilogy, a masterful mashup of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Bram Stoker. (You'll never look at Tarzan the same way again.)

Bonus:  I love this cover. Stark. Graphic. Eerie-looking. So much subtler than the usual black and red  with creatures.

A Vampire a Day: Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark

Remember when vampire books were horror stories? Me too. (I still get chills thinking about Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot.) Vampyrrhic, which is free today, is a throw-back to the days before sparkly vampires and alpha-hole blood-drinkers. The vampires in this book are Nosferatu and they're damn scary. The tale unfolds in a small town in Northern England and like all horror stories that take place in small towns, the isolation and the vulnerability of the town play a part. Clark is a writer to watch in the horror-thriller genre and if you like your vampires to be monsters, you will like this book.

Master classes all around!

I have mentioned my enthusiasm for the James Patterson masterclass video learning experience and now it seems Writer's Digest books has taken note of it as well. They're offering a fantastic deal on 14 of their books and recordings on every aspect of writing. The bundle is currently selling for $50, which is a little more than $4 per item. The item that caught my eye was a recording of this: Thrillers, Killers, and Fanboys: How to Succeed as a Writer by Knowing What Not to Do: Writer's Digest Conference Session Recording

It's really exciting to me to know that I have such great tools available. Add Stephen King's On Writing and you're good to go.

Tanith Lee 1947-2015

One of the people reviewing my book Bride of the Midnight King compared my prose to Tanith Lee's. I could not have asked for higher praise. I discovered her through the Science Fiction/Fantasy book club, picking up the two novella book--Sabella, or the Blood Stone and Companions on the Road as one of my freebie choices.
I LOVED her writing.
So I immediately went in search f other books she'd written. Even then, she had a slew of titles in her backlist and by the time I'd gone through them, she'd written about ten more. (With Stephen King and Tanith Lee on my list of go-to authors, I never had to worry about not having anything to read.)
Except, now she's dead at 67 and there won't ever be any more of her gorgeous dark fantasies, the words piled up on each other like oil pigments, so thick and luscious it was a multi-sensual experience reading her books.
RIP Tanith.

did Shakespeare ever get writer's block?

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and maybe more, if scholars are right about his authorships of plays like Edward III and Thomas More.  That's a lot, and I find myself wondering how he would have fared in today's fast-paced publishing world. It used to be that only writers like Stephen King published a novel (or more) a year, but nowadays it seems like everyone from Amanda Hocking to the novelist next door is writing at a blistering pace. that doesn't apply to stageplays of course, unless you're talking about a community playhouse where the players are creating new material for each season, but still. Could Will have kept up?  I suspect the answer is yes. 
True, not every Shakespeare play is a Hamlet (seriously, does anyone ever go see King John except out of curiosity?) but if your other work includes Richard III and Romeo & Juliet, and Othello, you really don't have to write Hamlet every time.

K is for King, Stephen

There are people (usually people who haven't read much of his work) who get snarky about Stephen King. They like to pigeon-hole him in genre categories (because they think people who write horror or any other genre fiction aren't really very good writers).  These people are missing out. 

I believe that King is the Charles Dickens of our time and I especially admire him for his amazing characters. I could list dozens of memorable characters but I think anyone who wants to understand the art of making an unsympathetic character sympathetic should read Green Mile. If you know the story, you know that one of the characters is a child murderer (and worse). And yet by the time he suffers his terrible fate, I was crying. Yes, Stephen King made me cry.

I'm glad I started reading him when I did because his body of work is now so large that I'm not sure I could ever catch up. And when he announced his retirement a few years back, I was one of those who raised a chorus of "OH NO!!"  He really is the hardest working man in fiction. And speaking of, his book about writing (On Writing) is a must-have, but the notes he writes in his short-story collections are really fascinating.

Silly as it is, I always kind of liked the idea that his birthday (September 21) was like mine, only backwards (September 12).