This has been a busy week at Stephen King Revisited. A couple of days ago, my Historical Context essay about The Gunslinger went up: Five Easy Pieces. Then Rich Chizmar posted his reminiscences about the book. Finally, today, my Guest Essay about the first Dark Tower book went live: Stephen King crossed the desert and I followed.
I also posted a review of Christopher Golden’s excellent new horror novel, Dead Ringers, at Onyx Reviews yesterday.
I completed a long interview for a magazine appearance early next year in which I was asked some fascinating questions. It ran long (I guess I ran long!) so it might not all get published in that venue and the interviewer is exploring alternate venues for any parts that might get edited out. There’s a chance that a new short story might run with the interview, too, but that remains to be seen.
With season 2 of The Returned under way, I introduced my wife to the first season of the French series last night and we’ll stack up the second season for later. It’s a genuinely creepy show, especially the little boy Victor, beautifully filmed in idyllic surroundings. I also like the fact that the French speakers enunciate very clearly, so I can pick up a lot of the dialog, which can be at times subtly different from the subtitles. I’m pretty sure that character didn’t just say, “Get lost.”
We’re keeping up with The Blacklist and Doctor Who, and we’re eagerly awaiting the return of The Americans, which I hope will be back in January or February. Last weekend, we watched Back In Time, the Back to the Future documentary, which was interesting for a while but then it got tedious when it focused so much on some of the obsessed fans. It had its moments, but it wasn’t nearly as good as some of the other documentaries we’ve seen lately. Possibly because I wasn’t all that into Back to the Future. I saw each of the movies once, and that’s it.
