New England bound

Tomorrow morning–so early that it can almost be considered tonight–I’m off to Portland, Maine for my second signing. I’m hoping for some decent autumn weather and at least a few lingering colorful leaves. I have most of the afternoon to wander around the countryside until I meet up with a bunch of Dark Tower fans for dinner. My signing is on Sunday afternoon, and then I head straight for the airport. (See: Whirlwind trip)

I received the page proofs for The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book last night. Wow, what a beauty. It is lavishly illustrated by several dozen of Glenn Chadbourne’s intricate pen drawings and the book layout is mighty impressive. I’m taking the pages with me on my flight to proof en route.

I submitted an essay to a French collection called Stephen King’s Book of Books (Actually LE LIVRE DES LIVRES DE STEPHEN KING, which will contain individual book reviews on King’s novels, novellas, etc. According to the invitation I received, the following writers will also contribute: Sean Williams, Douglas Winter, Edo Van Belkom, Thomas F. Monteleone, Stanley Wiater, Stephen Dedman, Michael Marshall Smith, Brian Stableford, Edward Bryant, Steve Rasnic Tem, Kim Newman, Peter Crowther, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Jones, Stephen Spignesi, Pat Cadigan, Ian Watson, Tim Lebbon, Jack Ketchum, Christopher Golden, SP Somtow, F. Paul Wilson, John Skipp. Here is the publisher’s web page. “En bonus : une interview de Stephen King!” Of course, the whole thing will be in French, so it might not be your tasse de the’.

I also dug out an old essay I wrote several years ago and submitted it to CBC Radio’s Literary Awards contest. I spent a day or two revising it–I had to trim about 200 words to get it under their maximum of 2500–and away it went. I had to set the spell checker on Word to flag the Canadian spellings. The “-our” endings looked familiar to me, but I’d forgotten about the “-re” endings on words like “centre.” Terre de nos aieux…