This beauty showed up today after three weeks or so in transit. It’s the Czech edition of The Road to the Dark Tower. The signed edition comes in a case (not a slipcase, sort of clamshell, I’d guess). The inside of the case is lavishly illustrated, and the package includes a bookmark and an envelope containing cards of the illustrations that are also in the book itself. The dustjacket is a lavish wraparound, and beneath it on the front cover is a very cool illustration of Roland.
The endpapers are rose-ish, and there are color illustrations on the dust jacket flaps as well. In addition to the full color plates—one per chapter—there are spot illustrations at the head of each chapter, too. And on the back of the case, a rose.
Such a beautiful production, and I can’t read a word of it! Oh, yeah, it has a brand new introduction by me, and an afterword by Kealan Patrick Burke. Illustrations are by Jiří Dvorský. They have done a lovely job of translating and illuminating my first book. I am well pleased. Check out the slideshow below! You can right-click on the images and open in a new tab to see larger versions of the pictures if you want.
(If you’re a Stan Rogers fan, you might catch the reference!)
I’m just back from a wonderful vacation to eastern Canada, the first time I’ve been in that neck of the woods since 2014.
My daughter and I both went to Dalhousie University for undergrad and grad school, although in different decades. Different centuries or millennia, if you will. That means that we lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for some important, formative years. Last April she sent me a text suggesting a trip to visit the old haunts. I’m not sure she expected me to get on board as quickly as I did, but within a week or so we had our calendars compared, itineraries settled and tickets purchased.
I flew to Halifax via Montreal and she went via Toronto. She was supposed to arrive after me but she was able to make an earlier connection at Pearson and ended up getting there before I even took off from Montreal. This was only my second time flying since the pandemic and my first international flight in six years. Technology has made things like customs much easier, and there were no hitches for either of us getting into Canada. (I still have a Canadian passport, so that helps a little.)
It was late when we arrived, so we stayed at the airport hotel and headed off to southern New Brunswick the next morning, where we spent a couple of days visiting my sister’s and brother’s families. Then on Wednesday morning we set out for Halifax again, stopping at Masstown for fish and chips when we refueled. We reached Halifax around noon, staying right downtown, which meant we could do all our sight-seeing on foot.
And, boy, did we walk. My phone recorded 9000 steps on Wednesday, 15,000 on Thursday and almost 25,000 on Friday, for a grand total of 18 miles. The busker festival was happening on the waterfront, so that made things lively down there. We had to have breakfast at Tim Hortons at least once, and there were a number of other restaurants we wanted to revisit, including Maxwell’s Plum, which had been a pub favorite for both of us.
I’d arranged with the author of the Nova Scotia story in Not the Same Road Out to have a book signing at Block Shop Books in Lunenburg on Thursday evening. The connective fiber of the anthology is the Trans Canada Trail, which I wrote about in my story but have never been on. (Thanks to YouTube, I was able to travel the Goose River Trail several times without ever leaving Texas!) However, that morning my daughter and I decided to take the $3 CDN tour of Dartmouth by going across Halifax harbour on the ferry. Our plan was to walk from the Woodside terminal to the Alderney landing and catch the ferry back from there. Little did we know—and much to our surprise—that the path between the two terminals is part of the Trans Canada Trail. What a happy coincidence!
After a morning of walking that included an obligatory stop at King of Donair on Quinpool, we set out for Lunenburg mid-afternoon. The forecast had promised rain but there were only a few sprinkles. The last time we’d been out that way, on our 2014 trip to Chester to visit the set of Haven, it rained more. We met up with one my old college friends who I hadn’t seen since his wedding in the early 1990s and had dinner on the waterfront with him, where we saw the Bluenose II dock from Mahone Bay as we traded stories about our times at Dal. Then we went up the street for the book event, which was fairly well attended. Tricia Snell and I each read sections from our stories and then held a Q&A and signed books. An old friend from summer camp days (that would have been in the 1970s) came in from Halifax with her husband and I ran into another familiar face from northern NB afterward, so that was a real blast from the past.
We drove back to Halifax and then spent the next day walking around the Dalhousie campus and the Quinpool part of town, including the Halifax Public Gardens. We marveled at all the changes since we’d lived in the city, trying to figure out what used to be where that new building is now, etc. (There’s a joke about getting directions in eastern Canada where people say things like, “You go up the street and turn left where Richardson’s Store used to be.”) But we both agreed that the essential heart of Halifax, the part that continues to reach out and speak to us—and occasionally calls us back—is still there. Given the right circumstances, we could envision living there again. Granted, it’s been a while since we’ve been there during the winter!
And as important and nostalgic as the return to Halifax was, the best part of the trip was getting to spend so much time with my daughter. Hours together on the road between NB and NS and then walking all over the city together. It was absolutely wonderful. The only disappointment for my daughter was that she couldn’t find a single pub where anyone was playing Irish or Scottish music. The general trend was for 70s era music, which is probably a nod to the typical age of summer tourists. We heard a lot of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. No Stan Rogers cover bands.
The return trip was a bit of an adventure. Our flight out was at 5:00 am, which meant we had to be at the airport by 3:00 am, which was surprisingly lively at that time of day/night. Clear sailing to Toronto and a breeze through customs again (this time traveling on my US passport). My daughter’s flight was scheduled for an hour or more after mine, and we reached a point where I had to go right to gate 32 and she had to go left to gate 97, so we said our goodbyes. I only got as far as gate 55 when I had to wait because the gates from that point on were still servicing domestic flights. When the doors opened nearly an hour later and I finally made it to the gate, I discovered that I was now flying out of gate 95, right next to my daughter’s gate! So I trekked (more steps, although Saturday’s total was a modest 5700) across the airport and we got to hang out a while longer until I boarded.
And sat. And sat. They had what they called a “catering incident.” Perhaps on account of the gate change, the wrong things had been loaded in. It was only supposed to take 10 minutes to rectify, but our departure time kept getting pushed back in 10 and 15 and 20 minute increments. They didn’t even have any cups to give passengers a drink of water! By the time they had everything sorted out, the weather in Houston had worsened, so the pilot decided to take on some more fuel in case they needed to circle around the storm. In the meantime, my daughter–who I’d been texting with during the whole ordeal—had already boarded her flight and departed!
They weren’t kidding about the weather, though. This is what it looked like as we approached the airport in Houston. Things got pretty bumpy for a few minutes, but we must have had a Turbulence Expert on board because we made it down to the ground safe and sound.
Most of my signing activity lately has either been in the form of stacks of signature pages for limited editions or the occasional one-off at Village Books, where people can order my books and I’ll drop by to sign them upon request.
Next Thursday, July 31, at 6 pm, I will be joined by co-contributor Tricia Snell at Block Shop Books in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, to read from, discuss and sign the anthology Not the Same Road Out, which is a collection of stories—one from each province and territory—where the binding thread is that they take place near the Trans Canada Trail, the 17,000 mile trail which is the longest recreational, multi-use trail network in the world. My story is called “Adrift,” set in New Brunswick. Tricia’s tale is the Nova Scotia entry in the anthology. Here’s a little promo video put together by the publisher, Tidewater Books, that includes video shot by my wife.
If you happen to be in the vicinity, it would be great if you could drop by and say hello. I don’t often make it to that part of the world (the last time was eleven years ago, when I visited the set of the TV series Haven with my daughter for a day).
The second upcoming event is the local installment of the tour for The End of the World As We Know It, which features my story “Lockdown.” It’s an honor to be a part of this anthology based on master storyteller Stephen King’s classic The Stand, and the contributors and editors can’t wait to celebrate with you. Click for more info. Joe Lansdale and I will be appearing at Murder by the Book in Houston on Tuesday, August 19, at 6:30 pm. If you can’t make it to Houston, maybe you can check out one of the other events taking place across the country, as well as in Canada and the UK. And check out this interview at Library Journal with editors Brian Keene and Chris Golden, and this one at Grimdarkthat also includes contributors Chuck Wendig, Premee Mohamed, Meg Gardiner, Tim Lebbon, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, and me.
I have a couple of short story publications in the pipeline, including one with one of my “bucket list” magazines, and other bigger things on the horizon. However, announcing those will need to wait!
I’m expecting my copies of the Czech limited edition of The Road to the Dark Tower to arrive shortly. From all the photos I’ve seen so far, it looks like a beauty. I’ll be sure to post my own pictures when I receive the package, which I’m told is in a microwave box because that’s the only thing the publisher had of the proper shape and size!
I was supposed to have a review of Wreckage, Peter Straub’s final, incomplete novel, in the summer issue of Dead Reckonings, but that periodical ceased publication abruptly after many years. Some of the reviews have been migrated to another magazine, but mine was not included in that subset, so I will probably post it at Cemetery Dance Online. The book and its companion volume are now available for order from Subterranean Press.
My wife and I went to the theater to see The Life of Chuck when it came out. It was my wife’s first trip to the cinema since 2020. We both loved it and talked about it for days after. You can see my review here. Other films we’ve enjoyed recently include Bono: Stories of Surrender (Apple TV+), The Intern (Netflix), My Mom Jayne (HBO), and Billy Joel: And So It Goes (part 1).
For TV series, I really liked Murderbot (Apple TV+), which has a really snarky sense of humor and Ballard (Prime), the latest Michael Connelly adaptation. The Day of the Jackal (Peacock) was pretty good. I’m currently into Smoke (Apple TV+), created and written by Dennis Lehane, and Dexter: Resurrection (Prime), which sees Dexter back from the near-dead and driving a rideshare in New York City while he tries to clean up any evidence of the crime his son Harrison committed. My wife and I binged through all three seasons of Sullivan’s Crossing, which is set in Nova Scotia.
That’s all for now. I hope to see some of you at one of the signing events in the next month.
I have been interviewed quite a few times over the years. I’ve also had the good fortune to be able to interview a wide range of people as well including authors, movie directors, producers, film and TV actors, artists, publishers and musicians. Often, these interviews have been for print or online publication. On occasion, though, I’ve been invited to ask people questions in front of a live audience. Those situations are a little different because I’m not looking to get information for myself. I’m facilitating a discussion on behalf of the audience.
Yesterday, I interviewed author Martha Wells at the Books on the Green portion of the Woodlands Arts Festival. It was a beautiful afternoon, warm but not oppressively so, with a bit of a breeze, in a cozy venue in the heart of a vibrant arts event with booths by local artists. Quite well attended. The organizer of Books on the Green runs an independent bookstore in our community and she invited Martha Wells, author of numerous fantasy and science fiction novels and novella, to attend. Wells lives in College Station, which is about 80 miles away from here. The organizer was hopeful but not optimistic that her invitation would be accepted, but it was.
Then, Wells said she preferred to be interviewed rather than giving a talk, so the shop owner asked me if I’d conduct the interview, to which I agreed. Many of the people I’ve interviewed in a live setting in the past have been people about whom I know a fair amount already: Mick Garris and Joe Hill, to name a couple. Last fall I interviewed Daniel Kraus at the River Oaks Theater—I didn’t know much about him or his work previously, so I had to do a lot of prep. Similarly, I wasn’t all that familiar with overall Wells’ career, so I read a lot of her available interviews and articles about her career to put together enough questions to fill a 45-minute slot.
It helped greatly that the Apple TV+ adaptation of Wells’ first Murderbot novella launches next month. That was something people in the audience were very interested in hearing about. But we had a good talk, I think, about the ups and downs of her career and some of the other interesting things she’s done, like writing background stories for a Magic: The Gathering extension pack.
So, what else has been going on lately? We’re still four months out from the release of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, but the publicity engine should be gearing up for that soon. I’m doing one interview related to the project this month, and Joe Lansdale and I will be appearing together at Murder by the Book on release day. I still haven’t had the opportunity to read many of the other stories in the anthology, but I plan to rectify that very soon.
I have some other short stories in the pipeline, but don’t have the final details about them yet. Stay tuned!
The Czech limited edition of The Road to the Dark Tower was announced in March. It is lavishly illustrated by Jiří Dvorský, and I can’t wait to see the final product as I think it’s going to be a beauty. This edition features a new introduction by me and an afterword by Kealan Patrick Burke. I mean, look at that:
I was very pleased to learn that Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers’ Edition) made the following lists from the Children’s Book Council:
Teacher Favorites 9th to 12th grade
Librarian Favorites 9th to 12th grade
Young Adult Favorites 9th to 12th grade
Each year, children, teens, teachers, and librarians across 50 states read newly published K-12 grade books and vote for the ones they like best. Over 70 coordinators nationwide display hundreds of publisher-submitted titles in their schools and libraries so that every book can be read and voted on. The books with the most votes become the annual CBC Favorites Awards Lists, a group of 12 lists showcasing new books that young readers, teachers, and librarians loved reading. The CBC then promotes these lists nationally as resources for all educators and children’s book lovers. So that’s an honor.
I’m also awaiting the official announcement for another project about which I am beyond excited, but it’s just one of those things where I’m sworn to secrecy. A couple of things, actually, now that I think about it.
I have written a few book reviews lately. You can find them at Onyx Reviews, my long-running review site.
I’m currently rewatching The West Wing and wishing that reality wasn’t stranger than fiction. Oh, how we could do with a Bartlett in the White House instead of a “fill in the blank.” I also made it through to the end of my rewatch of Homicide: Life on the Street, including the two-hour movie following season 7.
I recently wrapped some excellent, truly excellent series, including season 2 of Severance, The Residence—which is a semi-jocular whodunit with a terrific cast—and The Pitt, which is the most gripping and accurate medical drama I’ve ever seen, bar none.
Paradise was quite good, too, as were Zero Day and Landman. I ran hot and cold on the current season of Yellowjackets, which just wrapped up its third season. Although they have a five-season plan, I think that’s stretching it and I wouldn’t mind at all if they found a way to bring it all home next season. The Rig is entertaining enough, although never of quite the same caliber as other series. I really disliked the main character in Prime Target, but it was a fun romp through the world of mathematics—although as someone with a minor in math I was never convinced that any of the equations we saw scribbled in notebooks or on whiteboards could do anything approaching what they’d have us believe.
Douglas is Cancelled was an unexpected, brief punch to the gut. I wasn’t quite as fond of Adolescence as others seemed to be. I thought the single-take trope was unnecessary, creating some very awkward staging, except in episode 3, where all the action takes place in one room.
Currently watching: Bosch Legacy, which is nearing its conclusion, and the quirky series Ludwig, wherein a man who is really good at puzzles pretends to be his missing brother, a homicide detective.
Recent reads include Wreckage, the unfinished novel by Peter Straub, and a companion book What Happens in Hello, Jack, which will be published by Subterranean Press this year. That led me back to a reread of his previous novel, A Dark Matter, and some of the associated novellas and stories. I enjoyed Scott Carson’s Departure 37 so much I read it twice, once for myself and once to my wife. The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami was pretty strange, and I have no idea what he had in mind when he wrote it. I’m currently reading Frankie by Graham Norton to my wife and am about to tackle Nightshade, the forthcoming Michael Connelly. I’ll reread Never Flinch by King soon, in preparation for writing my review.
Last night we saw A Complete Unknown, the Dylan biopic. Timothée Chalamet does an excellent job of channeling Dylan, who’s never been one of my favorite singers. My real introduction to him was when he released Slow Train Coming during my first year at university and I don’t need to hear “Gotta Serve Somebody” ever again. Watching this movie, I realized I’m not familiar with any song Joan Baez wrote, only the songs she covered. There’s one historical figure from that era who I’ve met in person, albeit briefly: I once kicked Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary out of a seat at the folk festival he runs in Kerrville, a story I’ve no doubt told before.
We also watched the documentary Merchant Ivory and were surprised to learn how many of their most famous films were done on shoestring budgets, a wish and prayers. It was a fascinating look at their creative process and lives.
We were disappointed with Section 31, which was a disaster in just about every way imaginable. However, I had a great time watching The Monkey with my friend Danel Olson and a bunch of students from his class. It’s the only film I’ve seen in a theater this year and it is totally bonkers. Over the top zany, but funny and fun. Of course, I think I’m in a minority in that I also enjoyed Longlegs.
There are some really promising King adaptations coming up this year, so I think I’ll be headed back to the cinema a few times before the year is over.
Craig Johnson has a home-and-away strategy to writing his novels featuring Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire, which means that alternating books take place in the county seat and some place farther afield. Return to Sender is an away novel, although it’s still set in Wyoming. The Red Desert is located in the south-central part of the state, home to the largest living dune system in the United States. It is also the location of the country’s longest mail route, over three hundred miles, served by the “loneliest mail carrier in the nation.”
That mail carrier, Blair McGowan, who has a reputation as a political activist, has been missing for almost four months. Walt’s late wife’s cousin, a postal inspector, asks him to go undercover as a contract carrier covering her route to see if he can figure out why. Accompanied by his faithful companion, Dog, Walt leaves the local policing duties in the hands of his under-sheriff and fiancé, Vic Moretti. One of the book’s most entertaining developments has Walt, for the first time ever, acquiring a cell phone, although its the most rudimentary flip phone he can find. (He still doesn’t own a credit card.)
His attempts at subterfuge don’t last long: he doesn’t resemble a postal worker and his stature makes him instantly recognizable. That doesn’t deter him from his appointed rounds. After buying the distinctive 1968 Travelall previously owned by McGowan (sold by her sketchy boyfriend a month after she vanished), he sets out into the desert to deliver mail and look for clues. He isn’t optimistic about finding McGowan—the search area is immense and she’s been missing too long.
He soon learns about a nomadic cult called The Order of the Red Gate, whose members have been living in the desert waiting to be taken away by aliens. McGowan had a special relationship with them, leaving their mail under painted rocks and picking up the outgoing post. Zeno Carruthers, their leader, is a charismatic former actor with a reputation as a grifter. McGowan herself has some cinematic experience, having once appeared on an episode of Mysteries from Beyond where she talks about being abducted by aliens. Two other members of the cult, though, have a less-than-stellar reputation: Bible-quoting Freebee Leland, who provides security and strongly resembles Charles Manson, and his partner Lowell Omman, who has no body hair and never utters a word.
There are several twists to the tale of the missing McGowan, who may have joined the cult voluntarily or may be held in their thrall. Any time Longmire ends up somewhere with a harsh environment, it’s pretty much guaranteed that he’s going to be stranded in conditions that would kill a lesser person. In previous adventures, he’s been caught in blizzards and abandoned in a Mexican desert. This time he isn’t alone, but that doesn’t make his circumstances any less dire.
The book is chock full of trivia about the postal service, state history, serial killers and the red desert, which Longmire recounts to anyone who will listen. When no one else is around, he talks to Dog. Otherwise, Longmire operates mostly on his own. There is one section that features the other regulars from the series, when he attends a banquet where his daughter expects to be announced as the next State Attorney General. However, Longmire’s past clouds this political appointment, and it is made clear to him that one of the conditions for it to happen is for him to retire and fade into the background.
Two subplots in Return to Sender are sure to reappear in subsequent installments of the series. First is the question of Longmire’s retirement. He’s been considering it for a while now, but he resists when someone else tries to make the decision for him. He wonders who would fill his extremely large shoes. The other is the matter of the disappearance of his childhood friend, Ruth One Heart, now an ATF agent, who was involved in the violent shootout at the end of The Longmire Defense. Longmire and Vic have a scene with the Soviet agent who was hired to kill him, and it’s pretty sure that we’ll see Maxim Sidarov again.
Amanda Knox has written at length about her experiences as a wrongfully convicted murderer in her previous memoir, a book she freely admits was written to help defray the crushing debt accrued by her family while mounting her defense against multiple prosecutions in Italy. However, gaining her freedom didn’t mean her ordeal was over. Her notoriety meant it was next to impossible to re-enter her previous life. For years, her name and face appeared in tabloids, newspapers, social media and news reports. Documentaries were made about her arrest and subsequent trials. Movies purported to tell her story and crime series episodes created fictionalized accounts of the case.
After four years in prison, Knox returned to America to a different type of incarceration. It was virtually impossible for her to do the kinds of things people do in everyday life. She would be recognized in a grocery store or a bookstore. How does a young woman go on a first date without the awkward discussion about her past, assuming the other person doesn’t already know her story and is attempting to exploit it? If she went to a night club, paparazzi snapped photos to sell to tabloids in which her behavior was seen as disrespectful to the memory of the murder victim (something she refers to as the “single victim fallacy”)? And who would hire her who wouldn’t also be attempting to exploit her name and reputation? How could she be simply Amanda Knox again without all the baggage attached to her name?
Knox frankly and eloquently discusses these ordeals and more in Free: My Search for Meaning. She puts her life under unblinking scrutiny, chronicling her struggles as a “free” woman, owning up to some of the mistakes she made after her liberation and her misadventures. She was an unwilling celebrity, someone who never asked to be notorious, but people believed they knew her, made assumptions about her, tried to befriend her or uttered threats against her.
One of the first people who extended a welcoming hand was a newspaper editor who offered her a minimum wage job writing reviews for the West Seattle Herald under a pseudonym. She could remain anonymous by screening movies in dark theaters, and on those occasions where she interviewed people in public, she presented herself as Emile Monte. (The story of how she created her pen name is reminiscent of Stephen King/Richard Bachman. She chose Emile because it was a character from one of her grandmother’s favorite childhood novels and Monte because of a can of Del Monte peas in her pantry. Many of those articles can still be found online.)
The book revisits some of her experience in prison, including the depths of her despair and the people who handed her a lifeline, including a prison priest with whom she could have philosophical discussions despite her disbelief in his religion. Section headings are drawn from Dante—over the course of the decade after she was found innocent she progressed from Inferno through Purgatory to Paradise and beyond. Now she is happily married with a couple of children and working for projects associated with wrongly accused/incarcerated people She has steadfastly reclaimed her personal identity and re-emerged into public life as an advocate.
The most fascinating section of his book is her account of how she reconnected with the man who doggedly prosecuted her, Giuliano Mignini. She decided that, although the man had never relented in his public claim that—regardless of the decisions handed down by higher courts—he believed her prosecution was justified. Still, she wondered what kind of man he might be in private, so she reached out to him, first by mail. Their exchanges, some of which Knox quotes in the book, are intriguing. No matter how hard she tried, she could never get Mignini to acknowledge her innocence or the damage he caused her, but they did form an interesting bond. They talked about her children and his grandchildren. They even met in person in 2019, a private encounter that Knox had never previously disclosed. Although she could never get precisely what she wanted or needed from him, the relationship they formed was important to her and, it seems, to the aging prosecutor. It’s a powerful testament to Knox’s drive to get past her past and create a new path forward for herself.
Anything that separates people can be bridged through empathy, she writes. Although her circumstances are unique, everyone has lived through their own worst moment. When people approach her to say, “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” her response is a single word: Try.
Ten years ago, Jeff VanderMeer released a trilogy known collectively as the Southern Reach or Area X novels. A mysterious, mostly impermeable boundary isolated a stretch of the Gulf Coast, killing almost everyone within its confines. The region was called Area X and the Southern Reach was a government agency created to keep the nature of the region hidden from the world at large and to determine its nature. Those books detailed various exploratory missions into this topsy-turvy region without getting to the bottom of what has happening there.
Now, VanderMeer returns with a longer book that is both prequel and something of a sequel. It has three distinctly different sections, so it is in some ways a trilogy. Most of the book is told from the point of view of a former spy who goes by Old Jim, although it’s not clear even to him what his real name is. Twenty years before the barrier appeared, he was asked to try to get a handle on an existential threat in the region, although his bosses at Control are stingy with information. He practically has to beg for things he believes will help him understand the situation. His handlers suspect foreign interference, but how foreign? Soviets? Aliens? Something from another dimension?
Old Jim works undercover as the owner of the only bar in a mostly abandoned town in the vicinity of a team of field biologists who tempt fate by meddling with the local ecosystem. Subsequently, these scientists make some fascinating and disturbing discoveries that indicate that the region that will become Area X was already shifting into a strange realm. They’re haunted by strange music and discover swarms of carnivorous rabbits equipped with cameras. Perhaps the place has always been altering, under the influence of some chaotic force, and the appearance of the border was only its announcement to the world.
In the second section, Old Jim is assigned an assistant “named” Cass who, at times, pretends to be his estranged daughter, even though no one is fooled by the ruse. Given Area X’s subsequently discovered proclivity for creating doppelgangers, the government’s actions here are ironic. The biologist’s experiments have caused—or, perhaps, accelerated—changes in the local ecosystem, and pseudo-Cass is there to help Old Jim, whether he likes it or not. This section leads to an explosive finale that puts an end to Old Jim’s investigation.
The book’s focus abruptly shifts in the final section to a foul-mouthed and drug-addled man named Lowry (previously seen in Acceptance) who is part of the first expedition into Area X four months after the border materialized, an expedition that readers of Annihilation will recall as a full-blown disaster, with only one person returning to the other side in possession of some deeply disturbing video footage. Lowry’s prime directive is to find the hypothetical “off switch” that will disable the barricade. Upon his return, Lowry was seen to be a terribly unlikable character. Here, we learn that he was equally loathsome before embarking on the expedition. His stream-of-consciousness pervasive use of the word “fuck” in all of its various forms can be off-putting, making the final part of the novel difficult to process.
Of course there are no answers, but Absolution provides a new way of looking at Area X. It’s not a necessary part of the Southern Reach series, but it is a welcome addition to the mythos for people who appreciated the mystifying and disturbing nature of the previous three books.
Former Inspector John Rebus finds himself in the same place where he put so many other people he investigated: Her (or is it His?) Majesty’s Prison Edinburgh. He’s been found guilty of attempted murder in the death of his longtime nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty. Although he’s been sentenced to life (which may not be long given his advanced age and health issues), his lawyers promise they’ll be able to successfully appeal his conviction, but they have been strangely and frustratingly incommunicative lately.
Rebus isn’t safe from crime behind bars, though; no one is. Another prisoner on his block is murdered after lights out, stabbed to death while his cellmate slept the sleep of the heavily drugged in an apparently locked cell. The murder weapon is nowhere to be found. Suspicion immediately falls on the prison guards. Who else would have been able to avoid the cameras and enter the cell and smuggle out the knife? When Rebus’s former colleagues arrive to investigate, he does his best to insinuate himself into the case, and DS Christine Esson is happy to have someone on the inside to help explain the lay of the land.
Out in the real world, Rebus’s former protégée, DI Siobhan Clarke, is working the case of a missing 14-year-old girl who has gotten herself wrapped up in the world of online pornography and exploitation. The third player in the novel is Malcolm Fox, who was once the lead in another Rankin novel but has more recently been relegated to the supporting cast. In his more recent appearances, Fox has become shiftier and less likable. The latest black mark on his career is that he recruited Siobhan to join his team in Professional Standards and she left quickly after discovering what it was like to work with him.
There’s a connection between Fox, now in Organized Crime, and the murdered prisoner that Fox would be happy to keep quiet. Fox had Jackie Simpson break in somewhere so he could use the subsequent investigation as an excuse to search a place that would otherwise have been off limits. His constant failure to reveal crucial details about both investigations will come back to bite him.
One of Rebus’s fellow prisoners, Darryl Christie, sees himself as Cafferty’s replacement. As a token of thanks to Rebus for getting the former kingpin out of the way, whether deliberately or not, Christie vouches for Rebus’s safety in HMP Edinburgh, an important consideration now that Rebus is out of isolation and in general population, where a few other prisoners wouldn’t mind doing him harm. Rebus also has an uneasy alliance with the prison guards and warden. In the past, they were both on the same side of the law, so they’re willing to provide Rebus with information, except when it seems like he might be investigating them.
The murder case and the missing girl seem to be unrelated, but Edinburgh is a small city and there’s a lot of overlap between its criminal population. Soon the tangled web Rankin has been weaving becomes clear. This is the twenty-fifth Rebus adventure but hopefully not the last, as Rebus’s future is still very much in question at the end of Midnight and Blue. There may be some life left in the old man yet.
I watched 55 movies, including documentaries, this year (full list here), and will probably rack up a few more in the coming week. Most of these were watched with my wife, although I watched some alone because they weren’t something that interested her. I only saw three of them in the theater; the rest were on streaming. Most were films I watched for the first time, although there were several older movies that I saw for a second time.
In the documentary category, again, in the order in which we saw them rather than in any order of preference:
M*A*S*H: The Comedy That Changed Television (Hulu)
The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix)
Elton John & Bernie Taupin: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song (PBS)
Jim Henson: The Idea Man (Disney+)
Brats (Hulu)
The Beach Boys (Disney+)
Will & Harper (Netflix)
Music by John Williams (Disney+)
Beatles ’64 (Disney+)
Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary (Max)
Never Too Late (Disney+)
For movies, here’s my top dozen, although there were a couple of others that might have made the list. I think I enjoyed Longlegs more than many of my friends and Barbie quite a bit less.
The Holdovers (Peacock)
Oppenheimer (OnDemand)
Godzilla Minus One (Netflix)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (in theater)
Hit Man (Netflix)
Under Paris (Netflix)
Fall Guy (On Demand)
Longlegs (in theater)
A Quiet Place: Day One (in theater)
Wolfs (Apple TV+)
My Old Ass (Amazon)
The Six Triple Eight (Netflix)
Television shows/streaming series is a lot harder to quantify. (See my full 2024 list here.) I watch a lot of them—some classic TV series like Blue Bloods, which just ended its 14-year run, for example. Now that it’s on Peacock, I went back and rewatched the first three seasons of Homicide: Life on the Streets and will probably pick up more of that one in 2025. My wife and I also completed our rewatch of M*A*S*H, burning through seasons eight through eleven and wishing we could see them all over again. I’m still a sucker for Survivor, watching two seasons this year. This just-completed season 47 was one of the best in recent years, especially the final run of episodes. I also rewatched all six seasons of Longmire and the first three seasons of Dexter. I haven’t dipped into the new Dexter series but probably will before long. In preparation for the new season of Severance, I tore through the first season last week.
There are a few series my wife likes to watch with me. This includes All Creatures Great and Small, Star Trek: Discovery, Elsbeth, Matlock, Doctor Who, The Midnight Club, The Sticky.
It’s really hard to pare the list down to fifteen series that I really enjoyed, but here’s my best crack at it:
Fargo S5 (Hulu)
Slow Horses S1-4 (Apple TV+)
Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV+)
True Detective: Night Country (Max)
Shogun (Hulu)
The Gentlemen (Netflix)
The Responder S1, S2 (Britbox)
Bad Monkey (Apple TV+)
Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
Shrinking S2 (Apple TV+)
The Devil’s Hour S1, S2 (Amazon)
A Man on the Inside (Netflix)
Cross (Amazon)
The Diplomat S2 (Netflix)
Black Doves (Netflix)
That leaves out quite a few really good shows. Such is the peril of making a list. I’d probably choose a few things differently if I made the selection tomorrow. Tracker is surprisingly good although a little formulaic. Season 1 of The Tourist was pretty terrific; Season 2 a little less so but still good. I’m a long-time Criminal Minds fan and glad to see that the characters can—and do—say “fuck” a lot. I get a lot of use out of my Britbox subscription and always on the look out for a good British crime series. The Jetty with Jenna Coleman was good. Apple TV+ continues to put out the best series, in my opinion.
Anyhow, that’s the wrap on 2024! See y’all next year. It’s bound to be…interesting. As in “Chinese curse” interesting.
Season’s greetings and happy holidays and all that! This is part one of my annual year-end review. As the title above suggests, this one is about writing/publishing and things I’ve read, which seem to go hand in hand.
This year has been a pretty good one for writing projects. My latest book Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers’ Edition) came out in September. As that title suggests, this one is geared toward teen readers who are beginning their journey into reading adult fiction. “A thrilling visual companion curated for young adults voraciously reading their way through Stephen King’s colossal corpus of creepy books” that Booklist called “catnip for King enthusiasts.”
I also had a chapbook called Lost (or Found) in Translation from Lividian Publications come out the same month. In this one, I tracked down all the foreign editions of King’s books and collated the titles used for the translations, reverse-engineering them into English as best I could. François Vaillancourt contributed the chapbook’s cover, along with ten full-color interiors depicting what these King books would look like if he had been hired to illustrate the translated editions.
I’ll have an essay called “High School Confidential” in Carrie’s Legacy: Revisiting Stephen King’s Girl with a Frightening Power, also from Lividian Publications, in the spring.
Related to writing, I was interviewed a few times this year:
The second one was interesting in that it related to a 1984 People magazine interview with Peter Straub and Stephen King about The Talisman. The fourth one was with a radio station in Australia which was done live during an overnight radio program, another first for me! And the first one was different in that it focused primarily on my short fiction, which was a nice change of pace.
Regarding short fiction, the following stories appeared in 2024:
I have a few more stories queued up for 2025. The most significant among them as far as I’m concerned is a little tale called “Lockdown,” which will appear in The End of the World As We Know It: Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, which will be published by Gallery in the US and Hodder and Stoughton in the UK next August, together with a German edition from Buchheim Verlag in December.
Other exciting news forthcoming for 2025, but I can’t say anything more about that yet.
I had a moderately good year reading, 37 books finished or will be finished very soon. (Full list here, if you’re interested.) If you’ve been following me on these year-end posts for a while, you’ll know that I’m crap at making best-of/top-10 lists, but I can probably narrow the list down to a dozen in the order in which I read them (with a few links to the ones I reviewed).
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Borderlands 5, Ice Cold, and The Blue Religion. Four of his stories were collected in When the Night Comes Down and another four in a CD Select eBook. His story "The Bank Job" won the Al Blanchard Award. "The Honey Trap" from Ice Cold was nominated for an ITW Thriller Award in 2015 and "Zombies on a Plane" was nominated for an Ignotus Award in 2020.
His non-fiction has appeared in diverse magazines, including The Poetry
Foundation, Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Screem, Pensacola
Magazine and Texas Gardener. He has been a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine since 2001 and is a former member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews. He has served as a judge for the Al Blanchard, Shirley Jackson and Edgar Awards.
His work has been translated into: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, HItalian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian
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