Months go by in the blink of an eye. I could blog more. I should blog more. And yet there never seems enough time. It’s not like I don’t have news to share—there’s always something going on that I might consider newsworthy. And yet. And yet.
Like the fact that the German edition of my latest book, Stephen King: Sein Werk, sein Leben, seine Inspiration, published earlier this month, has already gone into a second printing. I have frequently heard from German fans of King’s work that books about King are rarely translated into German. This edition was done by a Swiss publisher and it is apparently selling quite well. The Czech, Polish, Spanish and Hungarian editions also came out recently, with the Japanese translation pending. I have the eight editions currently available lined up on a shelf and they make a handsome set, it must be said. I find it interesting that certain publishers have decided to put the title one way on the spine and others go for the reverse.
Some recent short story publications:
- “His Father’s Son” appeared in the July/August issue of EQMM.
- “Freya Goes Viral” is now available in the charity anthology Mirrors Reflecting Shadows
- “Grand-Père’s Last Transmission” was published in the anthology Rhapsody of the Spheres
- “Jurisdiction” is in the anthology A Perfectly Fine Neighborhood, out now.
My 2022 story “Death Sentence,” published in Black Cat Weekly #51 was one of the “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense” stories mentioned in the 2022 anthology The Best American Mystery and Suspense, edited by Jess Walter and Steph Cha.
My essay “Living in a Web of Mystery,” which appeared in the limited edition hardcover Reading Stephen King (2017) is becoming available again in a new value-priced trade paperback edition that will be out in November.
What else have I been working on lately? I turned in a draft of a short story to an anthology to which I was invited to submit. The anthology hasn’t been announced yet, but it’s really cool and I hope the editors like what I sent them. I currently have about a dozen other stories in submission, which is about the norm. I have a couple more I’d like to try to write before I turn my attention back to a novel I started a few months ago but have neglected in the interim. I’d also like to carve out some time to write a novella for Dissonant Harmonies II. Then, when I was working on an essay for a project that also hasn’t yet been announced, I stumbled upon a phrase that seems ideal as a short story title…all I have to do is figure out what the story is that goes with it!
We got our COVID shots on Friday afternoon, along with our flu shots. It was quite a mis-adventure. The closest pharmacy that had the Moderna vaccine was six miles away. That probably doesn’t sound far, but we’re used to going to the one that’s less than a mile away. We had a reservation for 4:15 pm but when we got there it seemed obvious that things weren’t going according to plan. There were a lot of people sitting around and standing around waiting. For some reason, my wife’s flu shot wasn’t in their system, so that required a lot of fussing around. Then, because of the unexpectedly high demand, they ran short of the Moderna vaccine and had to get more out of the fridge, which meant a long wait for it to come to room temperature. We finally got our shots done by 5:45.
It was a little difficult to sleep that night because both arms were sore at the injection sites, which made it hard to pick a side to sleep on. The flu shot arm recovered quickly, but the Moderna side remained quite sore all the following day. Now, about 36 hours after the shot, it’s only a little tender. My wife tends to react worse to these shots and felt achy most of yesterday.
We haven’t watched a lot of movies lately—mostly TV—but yesterday was a three-movie day as we lounged about in our post-vaccination malaise. First, I watched No One Will Save You on Hulu (my wife doesn’t care for scary movies). This one is an alien invasion film starring Kaitlyn Dever, who I first knew from Justified. She plays a young woman living alone in the family house, ostracized by her community for reasons. Then, one night, the aliens come and she has to fight for her life while some of her neighbors are possessed by X-Files-esque grays with awesome powers. The kind of aliens that Whitley Streiber wrote about. The film’s gimmick is that there is virtually no dialog, even in places where it would make sense for the character to say something, even to herself. I’m not sure that was necessary—the movie would have been just fine if people said things. Her character is feisty, ingenious and resilient. The ending has sparked some controversy and discussions—it took me a while to figure out exactly what it meant and whether or not I liked it. Ultimately, I think I do, but it sure does go in an oddball direction. All-in-all, definitely worth checking out.
Then we watched Moving On (also on Hulu) starring a virtually unrecognizable (to me, at least) Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Malcolm McDowell and Richard Roundtree. Fonda plays a woman who’s longtime friend has just passed away. At the viewing, she announces to the new widow that she’s going to kill him. She then tries to get her other friend (Tomlin) in on the plan. Tomlin, playing her usual pithy, sarcastic character, has most of the best lines. Roundtree plays Fonda’s first ex-husband. Of course, things don’t go as planned, and decades-old secrets are revealed. The humor is dark, but it’s always fun to see these legends on the screen.
Finally, we watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was every bit as fun as I hoped it would be. I’d avoided most of the spoilers (except for the cameo at the very end). I absolutely did not recognize Antonio Banderas. At all. But I did pick out Boyd Holbrook from the new Justified series. Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the first movies I purchased on VHS when it became available in late ’83. It cost something like $40, if I recall.
I took a one-month subscription to AMC+ which also got me Sundance/Now and access to a batch of interesting crime series, many of which I’d never heard of before. Dark Winds, based on the Tony Hillerman novels, was what got me there in the first place. A very good interpretation of his Leaphorn/Chee stories, set in the seventies. Glad to hear it’s been renewed. Then I stumbled on Wisting, a Finnish crime series that I quite liked. I knew about Des, starring David Tenant as a real-life serial killer, but this was the first time I got to see it. Also quite good. I found a couple of New Zealand crime series with multiple seasons: The Gulf, set on an island, and One Lane Bridge, which features a Maori cop who has special skills and a seemingly cursed bridge. The Light in the Hall is a good Welsh crime series about a decades-old murder, and The Cry, starring Jenna Colman, has plenty of twists and turns. I almost quit Deadloch after fifteen minutes because it was so crude and over-the-top, but I’m glad I stuck with it, as the characters grew on me and the story is well conceived.
I liked Hijack on Apple TV+ (hard to go wrong with Idris Elba). I rewatched season 1 of Yellowjackets as a preamble to the second season. It helped me eliminate a lot of my confusion about who was who in the different eras. Justified: City Primeval was a different creature from its predecessor and I think it suffered from the lack of those old, familiar faces, but I enjoyed it, and was amused to learn that the actress who played Raylan’s daughter was Olyphant’s daughter.
Currently watching: The Changeling on Apple TV+ and random episodes of early M*A*S*H.
Currently reading The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning by Peter J. Hotez and a forthcoming novel by Sarah Langan. Also reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin to my wife. Just finished Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie because the new Kenneth Branagh Poirot film is loosely based on it. Very loosely, it seems, based on the trailer. It’s not one of Christie’s finest, I have to say. It has an interesting germ of a story (a young girl announces to a large group of people that she once saw a murder, only she didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time. A few hours later, the girl is murdered) but it’s quite repetitive and Christie shoehorns in a lot of Greek mythology that seems forced. I do look forward to seeing A Haunting in Venice, though.
