THE END is near

One of the signs of the apocalypse: the actual production of a movie based on the King/Straub collaboration, The Talisman. Steven Spielberg acquired the rights to this book over twenty years ago. Today, TNT announced they were going to produce (with DreamWorks) a six-hour miniseries adaptation that will air on their cable channel in the summer of 2008. Ehren Kruger will write the script. During the inevitable casting discussions, I used to joke that they should cast an embryo as Jack so he’d be the right age when the cameras finally started rolling.

While I wasn’t a big fan of what TNT did with the story in the ‘Salem’s Lot remake, I love their production work, and liked many of the Nightmares and Dreamscapes installments. Six hours boils down to about 4.5 after commercials and credits are stripped, which seems about right for this story. Six hours was about two too many for The Shining, but there’s a lot more plot to tell with The Talisman.

However, the apocalypse isn’t what I’m referring to in my subject line. I’m getting very close to finishing the rough first draft of Ghost Inn. A few more days, a week at most, and I’ll be there. I know the rest—it’s just a matter of writing it down. Of course, I may change my mind about certain things during the process, but I can see the general form of the final chapters, so I think I’m in pretty good shape.

There must be statistics somewhere—I could even Google ’em up if so inclined—about the relative number of automobile accidents in December compared to other months. However, based on the way things have been around here for the past week or so, I gotta think that people are simply worse drivers during the approach to Christmas. They have too much on their minds to concentrate on driving. Even the people pushing carts in the grocery stores are daft these days. After a very near miss last Saturday, I’m strongly tempted to park the car in the garage and not go anywhere for the next 20-some days.