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[short work] [writing on king] [chart of darkness] [king comics] [essays] [interviews] [king audio] Last updated January 23, 2018 |
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News & Information January 23, 2018 Hall of Sound! Dept. I don't know how better to put this other than saying that THE HOLY GRAIL OF AUDIOBOOK RECORDINGS IS FINALLY IN SIGHT. (Sound?)
![]() Entertainment Weekly reports that the audio will be out on March 27th, and will be read by Dexter star Michael C. Hall. Says King: “Readers have been asking for this audiobook for a very long time ... I know the listening experience will be worth the wait with Michael as narrator.” Until now, no commercial audiobook of Pet Sematary has been available. In 1983, Merwin Smith did a recording for the Library of Congress, and in 1997, there was a dramatized version as a production of BBC Radio (neither were that successful). Part of the reason for the delay seems to have been that Doubleday, who owned the rights until recently, did not want to produce an audiobook. Now that Simon & Schuster has the rights to most of King's extensive back catalog, we're now getting stuff like this. It's all pretty exciting! January 19, 2018 On the Outside! Dept.: Guys. I've been away. Let's catch up:
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I am also going to be moving this site from the moribund halls of Tripod to the new and shiny world of Squarespace over the next few whenevers. I will have a new domain (charnelhouse.org) and hopefully it will look better and be easier to navigate. That's it for today! I'll let you know when the move is final! Here Comes the Avon Lady! Dept. Friends: Sleeping Beauties is now out! It's IMMENSE and already absorbing. A review to come! Hooray new King(s)! September 21, 2017 You Say It's Your Birthday! Dept STEPHEN KING IS 70 TODAY! HOORAY! Sometimes I think it's weird that I've been reading (and loving, and researching) Stephen King for 30 years. I read Pet Sematary in a dark attic during a thunderstorm when I was twelve. And to think that King was already publishing novels for fourteen years before then. It's been an amazing career, and with Sleeping Beauties, it absolutely continues. Thank you so much, Mr. King! Here's to another 70 years! September 8, 2017 Float On! Dept. I know we don't usually talk about films here in the House, but with It being my favorite novel of all time and the movie coming out to rave reviews and great box office, why not talk about it a little? This video essay I found by pop culture genius Kevin Maher takes a look at the motif of water in the original IT miniseries. It's pretty dang cool. Check it out at Daily Grind House! August 17, 2017 Stay Gold, Ponyboy! Dept. King recently revealed that there was A NEW NOVEL already completed that should be out next year. It's called THE OUTSIDER. King spills ... well, virtually nothing in USA Today
Anything you want to spill about The Outsider? More info as we get it! July 30, 2017 That Demon Life! Dept. My new article on the Dark Tower series, "Ka Like a Wheel, Time Like a Circle," is now up at Cemetery Dance Online. It's all part of Dark Tower Week! Check it out! We've Got Cover! Dept. We finally have cover art for Stephen King's second collaborative work this year, his first full novel written with his son, Owen. Sleeping Beauties hits online and brick and mortar stores on September 26! I'm pretty darn excited!
![]() March 15, 2017 RF Stands for Really Fantastic! Dept. My review of Gwendy's Button Box is up now! Heck yeah! I loved this story so much that I read it one sitting, something I've only ever done with one King book (Joyland) and two non-King books (the couldn't-be-more-different novels The Ratman's Notebooks and The Time-Traveler's Wife). This book is tops and you should pre-order it now! Button Button, King's Got the Button! Dept. BIG DAMN NEWS ALERT!!! Stephen King and Richard Chizmar's new novella, Gwendy's Button Box, is ready for preorder! Release date is May 30th, and before I get too deep into everything, here's the preorder link!!! Okay, so the specifics! Entertainment Weekly revealed all today with a lengthy and exciting news brief. If you don't want to click away, here it is in full:
Castle Rock has called Stephen King back home, but this time he’s bringing a friend.Whew! That's a lot to take in! I'm quite intrigued by the word "palaver" here, and the appearance of a man in all black. Could this be THE Man in Black, of Dark Tower fame? If so, what an interesting way to connect King's smaller Castle Rock stories to the larger mythos of the Dark Tower series. In any event, we're getting what amounts to a longish story (or shortish novel), published by itself by Cemetery Dance! If collaboration is what it takes to get new Stephen King work to us, I'm all for it. Gwendy's Button Box comes out in late May, Sleeping Beauties comes out in October, and the whole year is finally looking full of King. Here's a look at the whole dustjacket. Review, as always, to come. February 18, 2017 Castle Rock, Your Kind of Town! Dept. Holy heck, there's been some exciting news lately about the future of Castle Rock, King's fictional locus for books and stories as varied as The Dead Zone, Cujo, Needful Things, "The Body," "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," and more. First off: Cemetery Dance's publisher, Richard Chizmar, recently announced that he and King just completed a new novella with Stephen King ... and that it would be about Castle Rock. His original announcement via Facebook:
![]() Chizmar later clarified:
Regarding the novella I recently finished writing with Stephen King...As my friend Lilja recently commented, this appears to be the year of King collaboration, with this novella coming, and the Stephen King/Owen King novel Sleeping Beauties arriving this fall. If these are anything like King's other collaborations with Peter Straub, Joe Hill, and Stewart O'Nan, we're in luck. But that's not all! I got flooded with retweets and FB forwards yesterday about a new series coming to Hulu called Castle Rock. At first I thought it was a fan production, but further digging proved it the real deal: Stephen King and JJ Abrams are going to be collaborating on this new series that seems to connect King's many worlds into one cohesive narrative. There's a teaser trailer!
The nitpicker in me wants to say that Danny Torrance's and Annie Wilkes' stories focused in Colorado, not Maine, and that 'Salem's Lot is its own town, and that Pennywise is from Derry, and in fact most of the connections listed here aren't Castle Rock at all ... but that's because I'm a curmudgeon and I also don't know what they're doing here. Either way, I'm intrigued. More information to come! January 24, 2017 They're Creeping Up On You! Dept. Well, this is unexpected and fantastic news! It looks like Simon & Schuster now has the rights to Creepshow, and are bringing it back into print for the first time since the 1980s! HELL YES! From SimonAndSchuster.com: The graphic novel adaptation of the classic horror anthology film written by Stephen King, with art by Bernie Wrightson! This is THRILLING news! It looks like we don't have a cover image yet (new cover? Jack Kamen, EC Comics vet who did the original cover in 1982, died in 2008. Will it be an original Wrightson?), but we do have some interesting news from Stephen King Catalog about a brand new HARDCOVER edition!
CREEPSHOW: 2017 EDITION - Library-Bound Special Order Wow! A lot of information about this book, which I thought would be out of print forever! This is awesome! It looks like publication date will be May 9th, 2017, so even if we don't have any information about Sleeping Beauties yet, this will - heh heh - tide us over! December 15, 2016
Been Away Too Long! Dept. Okay, all, you caught me. I've been away from Charnel House for FAR too long. A lot of other stuff I hope you didn't miss King's two newest short stories, "Cookie Jar" (in the paperback edition of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams), and "The Music Room (in In Sunlight or In Shadow: Stories Inspired By the Paintings of Edward Hopper, edited by Lawrence Block..) I own this book, and it's fantastic, even beyond the King story (which is chilling in the best way). Lawrence Block is one of my other favorite writers, and I can't be rapturous enough about this collection.
On a (slightly) personal note, I want to alert you to the new anthology edited by my good friend, Hans-Ake Lilja. His website, Lilja's Library, has been around as long as Charnel House and covers all the news, not just the writing-related stuff that I tend toward. Recently, he Shining in the Dark is available in two states: signed limited hardcover and signed limited with slipcase. Both are available through Cemetery Dance, and both WILL sell out. Grab yours today for that special someone on the holidays! More to come. 2017 is going to be an interesting year for Charnel House, and I hope you're going to keep checking back to find out why! September 7, 2016 Cover Me! Dept. Here's something unique and interesting coming out of Dave Hinchberger's Stephen King Catalog: renowned fantasy/horror artist Glenn Chadbourne has been creating brand-new covers of Stephen King novels, along with amazing new dust jacket essays from King experts like Bev Vincent, Rocky Wood, and Hinchberger himself. From the Catalog site:
Glenn Chadbourne has been commissioned to create a complete line of covers for Stephen King's novels. Glenn Chadbourne, a major artist in the Stephen King world, is recognized by Stephen King readers from all over the world. His original art and books in association with Stephen King (The Dark Man, Secretary of Dreams volumes 1 & 2) are very popular. Check out the whole series so far at the StephenKingCatalog.com! These are awesome! July 25, 2016 The Stranger Things Keep Shining Through! Dept. Decider.com - the people who asked me to write reviews of the Hulu adaptation of 11.22.63 - asked me to write a Stranger Things "deep dive" through the eyes of a Stephen King fan. It's up now! Check it out!
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