Today marks my 29th year working for the same company. Granted it’s gone through a couple of name and regime changes over the years, but it’s still much the same place and there are a few people who were here when I joined up in 1989 who are also still here now.
I was pleasantly surprised on Friday when I received a Google alert to the Publishers Weekly hardcover nonfiction listing, where Flight or Fright appears in the #17 position. Some interesting details about that appearance. First, the book was published by a small press, so it’s fairly rare for one of them to appear on any kind of list like this. Back in the day, the Donald M. Grant edition of Wizard and Glass made it into some brick-and-mortar stores and it became the first-ever small press edition to appear on the NY Times list. Also, this is only for hardcover sales, not for audiobook or ebook sales. And, more importantly, this is only for sales from retail stores that report to PW. The entry pictured here shows about 3300 copies sold. However, Cemetery Dance reported advanced orders of over 30,000 copies several weeks ago. If those had been taken into account, the book would probably have appeared in the #1 position. The J.D. Robb novel in that position sold 28000 copies for the week.
I had a nice, wide-ranging 90-minute chat with Jeremy Lloyd of the Dark Tower Radio podcast on Saturday afternoon. Here is his description of the broadcast, which you can listen to here:
On this episode Jeremy is joined by author of The Dark Tower Companion, The Road to the Dark Tower, The Stephen King Illustrated Companion and the co-editor of the new anthology Flight or Fright the one and only Bev Vincent. They discuss Bev’s history with the works of Stephen King, the new King renaissance and the new anthology he worked on with Stephen King, Flight or Fright. So hunker down fasten your seat belt and return your seat and tray tables to their upright positions and tune your dial to Dark Tower Radio and enjoy the palaver.
We watched The Children Act on the weekend, based on the Ian McEwan novel of the same name. It stars Emma Thompson as a judge who must decide whether a 17-year-old (who is only a few months from 18) can be forced to accept a life-saving blood transfusion despite his Jehovah’s Witness belief that it will pollute and damn him. Stanley Tucci plays her husband. There’s one thing in the story that isn’t well explained: she decides to visit the boy in the hospital before making her decision. Everyone agrees it’s highly unusual, and it sets the rest of the story in motion, but in retrospect we couldn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation for why she might have done it. Except for that puzzler, it’s a good film.
