Hey all - some very sad news today. Kathi Kamen Goldmark, who formed the Rock Bottom Remainders (the band in which Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan and others - including Goldmark herself - perform in) lost her battle with cancer yesterday The Rock Bottom Remainders were a weird, amazing concept, and Kathi was at the heart of it all. I consulted with her last year to clear up some facts on my book Blood In Your Ears. She sounded so full of life; I had no idea she had cancer. Kathi was a boon to the Stephen King community, the literature community, and, yes, the rock and roll community. She will be greatly missed.
My 2000 Interview with Goldmark, out of date but still terrific.
May 22, 2012
Breaking: The new Stephen King/Joe Hill story in Esquire magazine will be titled "In the Tall Grass." It's a two-parter; the first part comes out in the June/July issue, and the story concludes in the August issue. Hooray! New story! New long story!
May 22, 2012
We have cover:
Still waiting on a release date and a title! As soon as I know, you'll know!
May 21, 2012
Breaking: Esquire Magazine will be publishing a brand new collaborative story by Stephen King and Joe Hill, as part of an ongoing effort to publish "men's fiction." Editor-in-chief David Granger states
“It’s a struggle, because especially during the recession, we lost so many pages,” he said. “Fiction begins to feel a little bit of a luxury.”
His definition of men’s fiction? Work that is “plot-driven and exciting, where one thing happens after another,” he said. “And also at the same time, dealing with passages in a man’s life that seem common.”
The June/July issue of Esquire will contain three stories: one by King/Hill, one by Lee Child (the Jack Reacher novels), and one by Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin). The works will be available only in the print and iPad editions of the magazine - not online.
No title or length on the King story yet, but keep checking back here! We'll report details as soon as possible!
May 16, 2012
King to speak at Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell! King is doing a rare speaking appearance in Lowell, Massachusetts this December. The event page states:
King’s appearance marks the debut of the new UMass Lowell Chancellor’s Speaker Series. Tickets to the Dec. 7 event go on sale to the public Friday, June 1 and are $30 (plus $2 facility fee) for general admission and $50 ($2 facility fee) for reserved floor seating. Tickets will be sold at the Tsongas Center box office, www.tsongascenter.com and 866-722-8780. Admission is free for UMass Lowell students with valid ID who obtain tickets in advance at the Tsongas Center box office.
For more information, click here!
May 15, 2012
For whatever reasons, this little bit of awesome passed me by last week. On May 13, 2012, The Wind Through the Keyhole became Stephen King's 33rd #1 New York Times hardcover bestseller. The book is the third Dark Tower novel to hit the #1 spot, after Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower. Check out my Chart of Darkness for a list of King's other charted books, and some fun facts about Stephen King and chart history.
Unfortunately, unlike 11/22/63, which proved to have remarkable longevity and staying power, Keyhole was overtaken in its second week on the charts by Charlaine Harris's Deadlocked. We'll see if it bounces back up! Congrats on #33, Mr. King!
May 14, 2012
In an awesome new interview with Talk Stephen King, one of the best King sites out there, author/expert/superhero Stephen Spignesi talks about Stephen King, his own fiction, and, of course, The Shape Under the Sheet. Spignesi also generously mentions my books with Cemetery Dance, sure to delight and excite any fan of Stephen King. Check out the interview, and if you haven't read my chapbooks, all are now available on ebook! Fun times!
May 8, 2012
BREAKING: Doctor Sleep set to arrive January 15, 2013. From StephenKing.com:
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
Awesome stuff! I can't wait!
May 7, 2012
Check out my new FEARnet.com article, "Listening to the Wind: Stephen King, the Dark Tower, and The Wind Through the Keyhole on Audio". In it, I talk about King's involvement with the Dark Tower audiobooks - why he read them, why he stopped, and why he's returned. Check it out, and remember, hit "Like" at the bottom if you dug it! Thanks!
April 30, 2012
Wow. IMDB just picked up my FEARnet.com review of Rocky Wood's book, Uncollected, Unpublished. This might be the biggest national exposure I've ever had, aside from that one interview I did in Newsweek about "Riding the Bullet." WOW! Click! Read! LOVE!
April 27, 2012 
My review of Rocky Wood's book, Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished is now available for purchase, and folks, it's such an amazing book. Check out my review at FEARnet.com and pick up the book at the Overlook Connection Press. In addition to getting a great book that Stephen King had direct involvement in, you'll be helping Rocky Wood immeasurably: all proceeds go to help his ALS treatment.
Thanks, all, and remember, if you like my review, click "Like" at the bottom!
April 24, 2012
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole is in stores EVERYWHERE today! It's a terrific novel, one of the best of the Dark Tower books yet. Grab it, read it (or listen to the audio read by King himself; it includes a preview of his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep), and then check out my review! Hooray Tower day!
April 17, 2012
Some unexpected ebook news: For the first time ever, Stephen King and Joe Hill's story Throttle is available as a standalone ebook. It's got a great minimalist cover, some terrific Nelson Daniel concept art, and you can get it at literally oodles of ebook marketplaces. OODLES! Find yours here and grab this awesome story!
April 17, 2012
Check out this fantastic review of the 25th Anniversary edition of It from Cemetery Dance by preeminent King scholar Tony Magistrale. I love reading his reviews, and while I disagree with some of his particulars (Tony and I have rarely seen eye to eye on King's take on homosexuality) this was no exception. (BTW: there are still some copies of the book available through Cemetery Dance. I have one of these and it's AWESOME. So check it!)
April 11, 2012
The official word on Joyland: King's official site commented on Neil Gaiman's reporting that King had a new novel in the works. Says StephenKing.com:
Following up on Neil Gaimain's interview in the (UK) Sunday Times mentioning a new novel to be titled Joyland about an amusement park serial killer, Stephen has given the thumbs up to officially report that this is indeed a work in progress that has been completed but will need to be edited. There is no official publisher or publication date set at this time. We will update you as more official news becomes available.
Here's the cool thing about King. Literally on Sunday, we heard that he was still writing it. Today, it's complete and needs editing. Now, who knows if King was almost done writing it when Gaiman reported it, and we all know that King takes the editing process very seriously, so it's likely to be somewhat lengthy. We probably won't see Joyland for a while, but I continue to be astounded at the man's drive and pace.
April 9, 2012
The recent Neil Gaiman interview with Stephen King is tantalizing, and not simply because King briefly mentions Joyland, his newest (and as-yet incomplete) novel about an amusement park serial killer. (Thoughts on that: the original Shining was initially going to be about a young boy with psychic powers at an amusement park; one wonders if the writing of Doctor Sleep rekindled those ideas.)
Some other interesting bits in the article: King may or may not write himself out of future editions of Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah. While many people didn't like the meta-commentary of King appearing in his own work so forcefully (I was somewhat neutral on it), much of the entire purpose of the final three books is about the nature of storytelling in general and the nature of King's involvement with storytelling. I'm not saying it can't be done, and I'd certainly be interested to read a fresh take on the final Dark Tower books (especially in the wake of the wonderful Wind Through the Keyhole), but we'll see. A long time ago, King said he was going to rewrite The Drawing of the Three to bring it more in line with the new version of The Gunslinger, and that never quite happened.
King's take on writing Doctor Sleep is interesting yet basic: he wanted to see if he could make the sequel as good as the original. Seemingly tired of people saying that the sequel is never as good, he set himself a challenge. I'm intrigued.
Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall. You can buy the Sunday Times App for iOs for free here, and purchase the April 8th issue through that.
April 8, 2012
NEW NOVEL ALERT!!! In his interview with author Neil Gaiman in the Sunday Times, King revealed he is working on a new novel about an amusement park serial killer. The new book is called Joyland, though we don't know much more about it now. Exciting stuff! The second I know more, you'll know more. Keep checking back!
April 3, 2012
The cover art for The Wind Through the Keyhole has been revealed! While we know King is reading this excerpt from the upcoming Doctor Sleep, we're unsure if he's reading the whole thing when it's released next year. I hope so!
Also note that this audio midquel set in Mid-World features a preview of a sequel. Fun with prefixes, everyone!
April 1, 2012
"Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" has won a Stoker Award for best short fiction. This is huge news in more ways than one. Since the inauguration of the Bram Stoker awards in 1987, King has been nominated for this category a grand total of twice - for "Autopsy Room Four" in 1998 and for "Harvey's Dream" in 2003. This marks his very first win for short fiction. It's a well-deserved win, too - "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" is a terrific, bleak story, and hopefully this win will give it a larger audience. You can read the story here, and read my review of it here.
In King-related Stoker news, author Rocky Wood won for his achievement in non-fiction writing for Stephen King: A Literary Companion. You can pick that book up here.
Unfortunately, 'Salem's Lot lost out on Vampire Novel of the Century. Fittingly, though, it lost to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, so the sting can't hurt too badly. If you've never read I Am Legend, or have just seen the movie adaptations, you are missing out on a really terrific book. Check it out here.
You can see all the Stoker Award winners right here!
