I’m participating in a podcast tomorrow morning. I’m not sure when it will air, but I’ll be sure to post a link when I do. The topic is the recent Bag of Bones miniseries.

We watched the first part of the final series of Prime Suspect  last night. Jane is nearly 60, a month away from enforced retirement, and she’s in bad shape. Drinking so much that she can’t even remember taking phone calls from her subordinates in the evening, and showing up in the interrogation room reeking of drink. She tries out AA and runs into her old nemesis Bill Otley, who’s been in the program for six years. The main case involves a missing 14 year old who later turns up dead. She was pregnant when someone stuck a knife into her belly. Her father is a nutjob, but so much fun to watch. I think he’s a red herring, but you can never be too sure.

Over halfway through The Litigators and the story has finally shown up, though I don’t think it’s the one we’re meant to believe. A bit of legerdemain. Look at this nice big pharmaceutical class action over here while I prepare a quiet little lead-in-toys case back here. Skimpy on the characterization and with a jauntier tone than the typical Grisham legal thriller.

My short story “The View from the Top” is reprinted in fund-raising anthology Rage Against the Night, edited by Shane Jiraiya Cummings. Blurb: Under the onslaught of supernatural evil, the acts of good people can seem insignificant, but a courageous few stand apart. These brave men and women stand up to the darkness, stare it right in the eye, and give it the finger. These are the stories of those who rage against the night, stories of triumph, sacrifice, and bravery in the face of overwhelming evil.

The lineup of contributors is impressive, and includes Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell and Peter Straub. All proceeds will be donated to Rocky Wood, author and President of the Horror Writers Association, who is battling motor neurone disease.

The eBook version (only $3.99) is now available, with the print copy to follow in January. You can get it for Kindle at Amazon or in a variety of eBook formats at Smashwords.

The full table of contents (in order of appearance) is:

• The Gunner’s Love Song—Joe McKinney
• Keeping Watch—Nate Kenyon
• Like Part of the Family—Jonathan Maberry
• The Edge of Seventeen—Alexandra Sokoloff
• The View from the Top—Bev Vincent
• Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway—Gary A. Braunbeck
• Following Marla—John R. Little
• Magic Numbers—Gene O’Neill
• Tail the Barney—Stephen M. Irwin
• The Nightmare Dimension—David Conyers
• Roadside Memorials—Joseph Nassise
• Dat Tay Vao—F. Paul Wilson
• Constitution—Scott Nicholson
• Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle—Peter Straub
• Agatha’s Ghost—Ramsey Campbell
• Blue Heeler—Weston Ochse
• Sarah’s Visions—Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
• More Than Words—David Niall Wilson
• Chillers—Lisa Morton
• Changed—Nancy Holder
• Dead Air—Gary Kemble
• Two Fish to Feed the Masses—Daniel G. Keohane
• Fenstad’s End—Sarah Langan
• Fair Extension—Stephen King
• Rocky Wood, Skeleton Killer—Jeff Strand

I mention this because I had a close encounter with piracy last week. Google Alerts brought a page to my attention where someone was “generously” offering one of my chapbooks as a download. I posted a follow-up message on the person’s blog asking them to take it down, but so far there’s been no response. However, the file-sharing service the person used was very responsive and had the file deleted from their server the following morning. Kudos to them.

I turned in my column for Cemetery Dance #67 this morning. I have no idea when that one will be out, as we’re still awaiting #65. We’re doing something different with the column starting with #67 so we’ll see if there’s any reaction to that.

Next up: I’m prepping my three-part interview with Mick Garris for FEARNet. We’ll release one part a week for the next three weeks, starting in a few days. On the fourth week I expect to have a review of Bag of Bones, assuming I get the screener on time. That will make it a few days before the miniseries airs on 12/11-12/12. I received a copy of a beautiful photo essay book A&E put together featuring the pictures from the Dark Score Stories website. What a handsome volume. Has a foreword by Mick Garris. Published by Zenith House—does that mean anything to you?

I was in Dallas on Thursday and Friday for Stephen King’s appearances. I drove up on Thursday afternoon. Some places between Houston and Dallas have really been hit hard by the drought. They looked dessicated. And then the leaves were changing color in other places, which is unusual for Texas. A few bright yellow trees.

I’m growing increasingly dependent on the mapping function on my iPhone. I don’t have a GPS, but this is the next best thing. There’s a little blue dot that tells you exactly where you are. It’s very useful. I especially liked the way it got me out of downtown Dallas at night.

Thursday night was King’s appearance at The Majestic, several blocks up Elm Street from the Texas Book Depository. I wrangled a pass into the VIP reception before the event started. About 100 people attended for wine, canapes, and a chance to shake King’s hand and get a photo taken with him. I met up with my friend Bob Jackson, who contributed a lot of documents to The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, and his wife beforehand. His wife was the first to notice that King had arrived on the scene. Most of the people were still outside of the suite getting their parking validated, so we had a chance to go up to him before the crowds arrived. I introduced Bob and his wife to King and then stepped away. As the number of people in attendance increased, the more claustrophobic it got for King. I met up with Russ Dorr, who has done research for King as far back as The Stand and was instrumental on Under the Dome and 11/22/63. Enjoyed chatting with him until someone enlisted him to go over and help build a protective barrier around King, who was surrounded and backed up against the hors d’oeuvres table. Dorr is about my height but has broad shoulders, so he was a good line of defense. Here are some pictures Bob Jackson took.

At one point I heard King calling my name. I turned around and he asked me how far I came to get there. “About 200 miles,” I said. “Ah, he’s talking miles,” King said and turned away. “Okay. 300 kilometers,” I said. Later I found out that he got a kick out of the fact that just about everyone he asked responded in hours instead of miles.

Afterward we went down to the theater, where we had preferred seating in the first several rows. King was interviewed by journalist Lee Cullum for an hour.

On Friday, I spent a couple of hours at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. This is the place where Oswald built his sniper’s nest and assassinated the president. Well worth a trip if you’re in Dallas. The rest of the building serves other purposes, but the entire sixth floor is a museum. An audio guide takes you through the place in about two hours, coupled with video presentations and displays. It covers everything from the political climate in the country and in Dallas at the time, to Kennedy’s trip to Texas and the assassination and aftermath. There’s something awe-inspiring about standing at a window near the one Oswald used. The corner of the room is glassed off so you can see the stack of book boxes he hid behind but can’t actually stand in the same place he did. Even so, you have a pretty clear vision of what he would have seen, looking down on Elm Street and the grassy knoll. It’s all a lot smaller than I expected it to be. The “knoll” is just a patch of grass between two roads. The stretch of Elm Street visible from the 6th floor, extending to a series of three underpasses, is quite short. A comprehensive exhibit. They also have a cell phone tour that takes you outside to some of the major venues in the vicinity but I didn’t have time for that.

Outside, I passed an older couple pointing up at a building, trying to figure out where Oswald had been. I stopped and told them they had the wrong building and pointed out the right one. “God damned architects,” the man grumbled. “All the buildings look the same.” The woman turned and asked, “Do you think he did it all by himself?” I nodded my head and said that I thought so. She didn’t seem convinced.

Later that evening, I went to McKinney North High School for the second event. Got to the venue at 4 p.m. and stood in line until it opened at 5 o’clock. Met a writer from Oklahoma and his wife and chatted with them for the rest of the evening. We ended up sitting as close to the front as I had the night before with “preferred seating” tickets. A brass trio from Louisiana entertained for a while and then the high school band played. They were impressive, especially the solo saxophone player. One of my friends on Facebook told me that one of his friends was sitting in the front row and I should go over and say hi. I couldn’t see myself doing that. Social media conjures up some novel new possibilities, though.

King came out at 7 p.m. and talked for about 20 minutes. He could have a second career as a stand-up comic. He had everyone rolling in the aisles with stories about his early brushes with celebrity. Then he read several pages from 11/22/63 and answered a batch of pre-selected questions. He said that Dr. Sleep was finished (the sequel to The Shining). He said the critics were being kind to him on 11/22/63 and were wondering if he was finally away from all that horror stuff. “They won’t know what hit them when they read Dr. Sleep,” he said. “It’s a god damn scary book.”

250 signed books were blended in with 750 unsigned copies, so attendees had a 1 in 4 chance of getting one. I didn’t (I had one from the night before), and neither did the three people sitting around me.

I got bitten by the time change last weekend. I was diligent about resetting every clock I could think of. The one I missed was the one on my desk at work. Didn’t think about it when I went to work on Monday morning. I thought the morning flew past faster than ever. I ate my lunch at the “usual time,” except I realized a couple of hours later that I’d actually eaten an hour early. Oh, well. No harm done.

Twitter is fun. I tweeted about the new Dark Score Stories site promoting Bag of Bones on A&E and someone replied saying that they had used my books a lot during their photo shoot. Turns out the guy is with the marketing agency that is working on the project. You just never know where your tweets will end up.

I’m off to Dallas tomorrow to the VIP reception for Stephen King prior to his appearance at the Majestic Theater. It’s a fundraiser for the the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Should be fun. Even though Dallas is close (200 miles is close in Texas), I’ve only been to the city twice, both times for Peter Straub signings, so I don’t know it at all. I’ve been through DFW a bunch of times (though not for several years). I plan to do a little sightseeing when I’m up there this time.

I deleted Two and a Half Men from the DVR. It’s still funny on occasion but I seem to have lost patience with it. Still digging American Horror Story and shaking my head with what’s going on with Clay on Sons of Anarchy. I haven’t seen all of last night’s episode, but it’s hard to imagine how they’re going to remediate his character. He’s burning bridges left and right. The Walking Dead is spinning its wheels. The zombie in the well was a neat effect, but took up a lot of screen time for little benefit. And how long is that little girl going to be missing? I know things have to change when they find her (back on the road again?), assuming they find her, but it’s beginning to strain credibility, and patience.

We have a great horned owl somewhere on our street. My wife says she hears it when she’s up working late at night and I heard it for the first time the other night when I was getting ready for bed. The call is distinctive (Listen here!) and I really like listening to it, especially at night. The only other owl I’ve seen around here was one we encountered while walking along the bike path at night in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Our power was still out, I think, but one of the nearby restaurants was open so we walked over to it. The owl was sitting up in a tree over the path as plain as day. It was shocking how big it was. However, we saw it again a couple of days later, dead on the street. Must have been hit by a car. Made us sad to see it.

The cool weather has arrived, at long last. Down to the forties overnight, sixties and seventies in the daytime, mostly.

My third article is now up at FEARNet. It’s called A Doorway to 1963, being a review of Stephen King’s new book, 11/22/63 prefaced by a brief observation about the appearance of magical doors in King’s work.

Michael Matheson at Innsmouth Review posted a lengthy and detailed review of Evolve Two yesterday. I was pleased by his comments about my story, “Red Planet.” He obviously gave it a lot of thought.

Brian Freeman writes about the 2012 Stephen King Library calendar on his blog. The cover is stunning, and photos simply won’t do it justice.

I’ve been conducting and transcribing interviews lately. My work in progress is now up to something in the vicinity of 57000 words. I received an extension through April 1, 2012, which is a great relief. The book is going to be so much better given the extra time to whip it into shape.

We watched the second half of the first season of the original Prime Suspect the other night. To be honest, I was surprised by how it turned out. I kept thinking it was going to turn out to be someone else. There were so many potential red herrings but some of the evidence was the real deal.

I checked my e-mail en route to the airport and had a glowing acceptance letter from WJ Rosser, one of the editors. I read the contract and digitally signed a copy all before we got to the airport. Ain’t technology grand?

Mr. Rosser blogged about my story today at the Literary Landmark Press blog.

Here’s what he had to say:

We have received remarkable submissions for the anthology, and we’ll have a contributor list by Sunday. I want to highlight one, though.

There’s a little bit of comedy in almost all great horror, but it takes a wonderful writer to satirize Poe while still treating him respectfully. Thankfully, a wonderful writer undertook to do that. Bev Vincent wrote a remarkable and very funny story called The Case of the Tell-tale Black Cat of Amontillado (with Zombies and an Ourang-Outang), and although he offered up “profound apologies to EAP” he needn’t have. The story is wonderful, and we’re lucky to have it. The story has so many references to Poe’s work that we lost count! Look for a contest later on that challenges you to recognize them all. I’ll give you a little taste, though:

“Dupin is my name. You may have heard of me.”

The man didn’t respond. He retreated into the house as if expecting Dupin to follow, so Dupin did. The front room was large and lofty, but even after the man threw open the heavy curtains, light struggled to render distinct the adornments within. Several musty, overstuffed chairs were scattered haphazardly around the perimeter. The bust of a Roman deity, Pallas perhaps, stood on a pedestal next to a desk littered with manuscripts and papers. The room had an overall atmosphere of sorrow and gloom.

Dupin’s host produced a pair of wooden chairs that he placed carefully in the middle of the room, as if by some design. He paid special attention to the location and position of his own chair, and smiled to himself once he was satisfied.

How many so far? No fair counting all three Dupin stories as individual references!

We have other great works here as well, including poetry selected some time ago by the museum for a museum-sponsored time capsule. We have stories from five countries and three continents. We still have some submissions to get to as well.

Help us out, now. We would like thirty more pre-orders to ensure that every expense is covered prior to the book’s release. Pick one up for yourself or for a friend. Thanks again for all of the support.

While in Paris last week and the week before we walked. A lot. Occasionally we took the Metro. We never took a single taxi the whole time. We used the Air France airbus to get into the city from Charles de Gaulle and a shuttle service to get back to the airport at the end of the trip.

We also climbed a lot of things. Everything we could. We walked to the top of the towers of Notre Dame, up narrow, windy stone stairs for our first great view of the city. We climbed more stairs to get to the top of l’arc de triomphe for a view of the Champs Elysees and l’etoile. We took the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower and walked from the second level down to street level on the return trip. (We also toasted the heights with champagne at the top of the tower.) We took the escalator through the madhouse that is Galeries Lafayette to the seventh floor where we got our closest look at Sacre Couer and enjoyed the relative calm compared to the chaos in the department store below.

One of the things my wife wanted to do in Paris was go to a revue. She suggest the Moulin Rouge and we also found out about the Lido on the Champs Elysees. However, when we read the online reviews of these places, we weren’t encouraged. They were quite expensive and most of the reviews called them tourist traps, cramped places with poor vantage points, cheap-o champagne and bad food, and performers who were just going through the paces. We read about another one, Paradis, in the Latin Quarter that was much better reviewed. However, on Saturday, after our trip to the top of Galeries Lafayette, we went to La Madeleine church and found out there was going to be a classical concert there that evening. Les Violons de Paris were going to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, along with some other pieces. The admission price was about 1/6th of what we would have paid for a revue show, and it was fantastic. First of all, the venue was terrific — this old cathedral that looks like a Greek temple from the outside. Then there were the musicians, four violins, two violas and two cellos. An opera singer did Ave Maria (two versions). And then the virtuoso violinist Frederic Moreau came on stage for the Vivaldi. Absolutely wonderful. We bought one of his CDs afterward.

The only thing that might have made it more amazing would have been if it had been in Sainte-Chappelle (picture above). Apparently they are going to be performing there in October. If you’re in Paris, check them out. I’ve always wanted to see Sainte-Chappelle (inside the Palais de Justice near Notre Dame), having heard raves about its stained glass windows, and this trip we finally managed to get there. When you walk through the door you see a few windows, nothing spectacular. Then you see these little staircases in the corner and you go up to the second level and…wow.

We had a great time on our recent 10-day trip to Paris, make no mistake about it. It was relaxing, adventurous, rejuvenating, invigorating, educational and fun.

We did have a couple of quibbles, though. The first was the fact that just about everyone in the city smokes. They don’t seem to have gotten the message that has been delivered with so much conviction on this side of the Atlantic. Most restaurants allowed smoking. In some cases they did have smoking and non-smoking sections, but there wasn’t much to separate them. For example, people sitting outside on the sidewalk could smoke and those inside couldn’t, but since these places usually had the windows open facing the streets, that didn’t isolate us from secondhand smoke very much. I jokingly twisted the city’s nickname into the City of Lighters and that stuck. We grew more tolerant of it as the week went on, but it still baffled us how the smoking rate could be so high.

The other thing that astonished us but didn’t affect us directly most of time was the pandemonium that is Paris driving (and the subset of this, Paris parking). While drivers were generally observant of crosswalks, they often dashed right up to them and slammed on the brakes at the last moment, which was a tad worrying. How far does a person trust their brakes or their reaction times? As the days passed, we grew bolder in crossing streets, learning when it was safe to jaywalk. There were also a couple of fairly large intersections–one near the Trocadero, for example–that didn’t have any crosswalk lights, so you had to edge out into the street and trust that drivers would eventually stop when you got far enough into the pavement. There, too, we grew bolder and more aggressive.

The most astonishing scene was the roundabout at l’arc de triomphe, part of which is pictured above from atop the arc. Twelve major roads run into the roundabout forming l’etoile (the star). There are no lane markers once vehicles enter the roundabout. Traffic entering the circle have the right of way, it seems, which means that cars going around have to stop to let them in. It was a little like watching ants crawling over a syrup spill. Cars went in every direction possible, darting across each other’s bumpers (front and back), stopping and starting. Amazingly, we never saw an accident there. It’s hard to believe that it works, but it seems to.

Most travel guides recommend tourists not to drive in the city, in part because of the manic traffic and in part because parking is so difficult to find. There are a lot of very small cars (SmartCars, little Fiats, Cooper Minis) and they are parked nose-to-butt along every street. Parallel parking skills are a must. We did see a lot of drivers using their senses of touch to park, by which I mean bumping into the cars parked on either side of the vacancy. Some of the SmartCars chose perpendicular parking instead: they’re small enough that they can pull in perpendicular to the sidewalk in a very narrow space and not jut out onto the street.

One of the best things we did shortly after arriving in Paris was to buy a Paris Museum Pass. These cards are good for admission for about 60 venues in and around the city (including Versailles), and having one means that you don’t have to wait in the queue to buy tickets at most places. The only exceptions are the tower tour of Notre Dame and Saint-Chapelle. Skipping the line to buy tickets at the Louvre was worth the price alone, but we used it two or three times most days and it paid for itself quickly. Plus we went into museums we might not otherwise have visited–and really enjoyed them, including the architecture museum in Trocadero that had reproductions of ancient façades and city gates from all across the country.

On Wednesday we went to the Louvre for the first of two trips. We spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon in the Richelieu where the French paintings are kept. We then planned to go over to Sully to see the Mona Lisa. We went up the escalator to that wing but we were turned away and told to go up to Danon and across. The Louvre is a bit of a maze, but we eventually found the alternate route, but when we reached the final doorway, we were again turned away. Apparently there was some sort of security issue in that part of the museum. They cordoned it off and told us that they didn’t know when it would be open again. We waited around for a while, then decided to explore the Greek and Egyptian antiquities section, ending up in the basement where you can see the old foundation of the original castle that was located on the spot.

We never did find out what happened. I kept checking the news, but there were no reports of anything happening. Another of life’s little mysteries.

We went back again a few days later and made it straight in. You can no longer get very close to the painting and the crowd that gathers around it is apparently a favorite place for pickpockets to ply their trade. We paid our respects and moved on.

My wife was more interested in finding a painting she’d seen on her last trip to Paris many years ago, but she couldn’t remember the artist. She had the impression that it was French, possibly 18th century. It featured a woman, clutching a baby, being swept away by water, clutching a branch that seems about to break. I tried image searches but couldn’t turn anything up that seemed a likely candidate. Is this familiar to anyone?