Life is an adventure, an interesting one at that. I’ve been very fortunate. My wife says I live a charmed life, and I can’t argue with that.
This week, I flew over two thousand miles (each way) for dinner and a movie!
The destination: Bangor, Maine, a city I have visited numerous times over the years. I grew up in New Brunswick, Canada, and Bangor was a regular destination, either for camping or shopping. I’ve also passed through a number of times on my way back to visit family.
I went up on Monday because it takes a long time to get there from Texas and I was worried that a delayed or missed connection would mean I wouldn’t get to attend the main event on Tuesday afternoon/evening. That gave me plenty of time to wander around town. I visited Gerald Winters and Son on Main Street, the relatively new store devoted to King books. I’d met Gerald previously at NECON, but I’d never been to his store. He has some amazing stuff. In addition to a full-scale reproduction of the crate from Creepshow, he has the original stamp used to print the text on the spine of The Eyes of the Dragon. Stuff like that. I chatted with him for a while before visiting a couple of sites that I’d never managed to get to before: the Standpipe and the Paul Bunyan statue, which will be familiar to readers of It. I was bemused to discover that the standpipe has a WiFi network. How different would that make the story, were it told today?
Unbeknownst to me, Columbia Pictures had brought a “gaggle of movie writers, bloggers, podcasters” to town on a private jet and they were following a similar itinerary to mine. Our paths never crossed. #19hoursinbangor brings film writers to Bangor for an exclusive Stephen King tour.
We had a large group dinner before the main event, which was an advanced screening of The Dark Tower, sponsored by Zone Radio. After dinner, we headed over to the cinemas at the Bangor Mall. I missed the entrance and went into the mall ring road, where I proceeded to drive my phone’s GPS system insane. Turn right, turn left, make a U-turn. By the time I got back to where I needed to go, the voice was no longer speaking in complete sentences, and when I got back in my car after the movie, it still wasn’t very happy with me.
The radio station gave away some Dark Tower books and audiobooks, t-shirts and a few signed galleys of Dark Tower novels as door prizes before the movie, as well as movie posters and stickers. The woman who was “handing out” the t-shirts lobbed them into the audience like a quarterback. One of them spiraled right at me and hit me in the chest surprisingly hard! It was a small, so I passed it on to someone else who’d be able to wear it.
Then Stephen King appeared and made a brief speech before the movie started. I posted my review of The Dark Tower at Cemetery Dance Online earlier today. Also check out an excerpt from my interview with screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, conducted in 2012.
After the movie, a gang of us decamped to the nearest Denny’s to discuss the movie and have desert. It was a great excursion. I enjoyed myself immensely. I also have to say that Bangor airport is one of the most chill airports I’ve been through. The TSA people were so friendly and amiable. It may have to do with the fact that I was there at 6:30 am and they hadn’t had to deal with travelers for hours, but their friendliness impressed me.
Then, last night I spent about 45 minutes talking about all things King with the geeks who produce The Geek Cast Live Podcast. I’ll let you know when that episode airs. It was a lot of fun talking with them.
This is cool, too: I was interviewed by Tony Tremblay and Matt Bechtel at NECON for The Taco Society Presents on YouTube. The focus of the episode was Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, the charity anthology that contains my short story “Truth or Dare?” My bit starts at 29:15. After we chat for a couple of minutes, I read an excerpt from the story. Note my flashy Hawaiian shirt, purchased specifically for the convention.
