Brian Keene and Christopher Golden announced (finally!) the anthology they are co-editing: The End of the World as We Know it – Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand. Brian has been hinting about this project for some time, under the code name Operation Walkabout. The list of invited contributors is quite impressive: Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Scott Ian, Joe R. Lansdale, Maurice Broaddus and Wayne Brady, Bryan Smith, Somer Canon, Hailey Piper, Jonathan Janz and others, including yours truly.
Last month, when my wife and I were on a working vacation at Surfside Beach, I reread The Stand for the first time in a number of years. While doing so, I prepared a detailed, day-by-day chronology of the events in that book. King does a really good job of keeping track of the passage of time. I wanted to make sure my story blended in with the known timeline. My tale has been written and is now in the hands of the editors, awaiting their feedback. I had to pitch them my idea and they seemed quite happy with it. Hopefully they are equally happy with the end result.
King isn’t contributing a story to the anthology—nor are the two editors—but there will be an introduction from King. For those who’ve asked, this is going to be released by one of the big publishers, probably late in 2024. I haven’t heard that there will be any special editions, but it’s early days, so stay tuned!
On October 1, I pulled out a new moleskine journal and began writing “The Dead of Night,” the follow-up novella to “The Dead of Winter,” which appears in Dissonant Harmonies, a two-story collection from Brian Keene and me. I’ve added to it every day—some days more than others—and I’m up to 75 hand-written pages, which means I should probably think about wrapping it up fairly soon. I can only guess the word count. I figure it’s somewhere around 20,000 words. True to my mandate, I have been listening exclusively to the playlist Brian prepared for me, which you can find here. I have to say, the story has taken me in some surprising directions. I’m just thankful that each day, when I sit down to write, more of the story rolls out from wherever these things come from.
Other publication news:
My story “Turning to Stone” appears in the new anthology Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 8. It’s a monstrous mosh of fallen angels, prepubescent prescience, tempestuous incest, intergalactic blues, a Gulliverian massacre, cynophile racists, murderous rodents, a prehistoric Devil Head, the return of Bram Stoker’s forgotten hero, and so much more…featuring stories from Joe R. Lansdale, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Bret McCormick, Madison Estes, Chris Miller, James H. Longmore, Jonathan Louis Duckworth, Robert Stahl, Matt Micheli, Elford Alley, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacob Austin, R. L. Olvitt, Lawrence Buentello, Tom Bont, and E. R. Bills. And me.
I was interviewed by Kayleigh Dobbs in conjunction with the publication of The Perfectly Fine Neighborhood anthology, which contains my story “Jurisdiction.”
Recent TV series: Dear Child, a German series on Netflix that reminded me a bit of the Brie Larson movie Room, but only a bit. I watched Rose Red, which I don’t think I’ve seen since it first aired. Some really fine performances, although the square aspect ratio really makes it seem creaky and old. I’ve been enjoying the French crime series Lupin on Netflix, too. My wife and I have been watching old M*A*S*H episodes. We’re up to season 3 now.
I almost passed on The Boogeyman, but now that it’s on Hulu I checked it out and I quite enjoyed it. I don’t know why it took such a critical drubbing. I couldn’t get into the Pet Sematary prequel, though. It just didn’t work for me at all. My wife and I watched Flora and Son (Apple TV+) and The Burial (Amazon) with Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx, both quite good. I took a trip down nostalgia lane to watch Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe (Amazon). He, Casey and Finnegan were omnipresent in my youth.
I finished A Better World by Sarah Langan and Thirteen At Dinner by Agatha Christie, and we’re almost to the end of The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson. I’m also reading The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, which I remember much better than the other Christies I’ve read lately.
