In a couple of weeks—on March 2nd, to be specific—Hard Case Crime will publish their third Stephen King novel, Later. Although King is generally thought of as a horror writer, he has written numerous crime short stories, novellas and novels, giving them a unique twist. In Part 1 of a three-part series, I look at King’s earliest involvement with crime fiction. Next week, I’ll explore his more recent writings in the genre, including his previous two books with Hard Case Crime and the Mercedes series. Then, on publication day, I’ll review Later and look ahead to King’s next crime novel, Billy Summers.
So, as you may have heard, Texas (and other states) was hit by a massive winter storm that knocked out the power for millions of people in the midst of record-breaking cold temperatures. We received maybe two inches of snow/ice pellets overnight Sunday, and much of it will stick around for a couple of days, I think. The temperature got as low as 14° yesterday morning and, at a little after 5 AM, the power went out. And stayed out. For us, it was only out for 12 hours, but many people still haven’t gotten power back.
Fortunately, we have a gas fireplace. It doesn’t radiate its heat very far, but when we sat on the hearth we could get warm. We also have a Coleman stove that we used to make some meals, including one batch of killer burritos that used up all the things in the fridge we thought wouldn’t last the outage. To pass the time, we played half a dozen games of Yahtzee! (evenly split, three wins apiece) and did Sudoko and other puzzles.
I have a hand-crank radio that was sent to me as part of a publicity kit for the TV series Colony a number of years ago and we kept it fully cranked while listening to classic rock and then NPR. Good exercise. The little gadget has proven useful a number of times over the years.
The power came back at around 4:30 PM, just in time to save us from having to do a massive load of dishes by hand. The temperature inside the house had dropped to 55° by then.
Overnight it got colder still. It was a chilly 9F when I got up this morning. Our heating system has been battling all day to get the house up to 68°. We had one pipe freeze but it resolved itself shortly after noon without any apparent damage. We hope. We made it back to 32° by mid-afternoon, and some of the snow is melting from trees that are getting direct sunlight, but it’s still a winter wonderland out there.
Another storm is coming in this evening. It’s not going to be nearly as cold (overnight: 28°), but freezing rain will likely wreak havoc with the trees and, of more concern, might put another strain on the already fragile electric grid. We’ve got a few more cold days ahead, with below-freezing overnight temperatures but daytime highs in the upper thirties and lower forties. We just have to make it to the weekend–then we’ll be up in the sixties and seventies.
