It’s been one of those days…and I swear the day has lasted forever. I’m sitting here, head hurting, thinking about my son – who is at his dad’s house -, thinking about my daughter – who is…I don’t know where, expressing her independence -, and thinking about the one I love – who is probably playing with his own kiddos right about now. 

I rearranged my bedroom very early this morning and I hoped it’d make me feel…something…but it doesn’t really. I’d put it all back but Mellie and Laura would probably yell at me. 

Anyway…I’m supposed to focus on the positive when it gets this way, so here’s me, trying. 

I love the smell in the air after it’s been hot and dry for ages and we get the first rain. 

I love peanut butter toast.

I love avacados – though, I promise, I don’t use knives anymore. 

I love mangoes.

I love my kids…my son is brilliant and always bombarding me with ideas he has; he’s going to create video games someday. My daughter…she’s beautiful and smart and funny and a hard worker and I miss her so much; but I’m proud of her. 

I love him. His smile that only I ever see. His ears. That freckle under his eye. His salt and pepperish hair. His voice. His scent. His laughter. His arms. The way he cares for and loves me like no one ever has. The list is too long to go on here. 

I love horror movies. Not too picky. Good, bad, amazing. I’ll watch them. His Netflix is proof of that. 

I love The Trailer Park Boys. Never thought I would. But he introduced me to it and I’m hooked. So much awesome in that show. 

I love van Gogh’s Starry Night. 

I love music. 

I love the sound of his fan as we fall asleep – my fan pales in comparison. 

I love the color blue in all it shades. 

I love turkey legs and beer. 

I love my momma; even if we don’t always see eye to eye. 

I love pizza – bbq bacon from 3rd StPizza  and sausage, onions and broccoli from Nick’s (hold the onions, broccoli on my half only). 

I love Stephen King. 

I love little Sam from Trick or Treat. 

I love…a lot of things, but then looking back, some of these things I only like. I think my like list is longer. And to be quite honest, some of the things I truly love on this list are making me even more depressed. 

This looking on the brightside thing kinda sucks rocks. 

I love them. They’re so much more honest than a conversation you might have with some people in the daylight hours. I don’t know why that is. There’s just something more open at night.

And last night my 12-year-old son comes into my room just as I’m about to go to sleep and starts talking to me about horror movies and books and games and what are my favorites (for the record, movies: the classic slashers, but also some of the newer stuff, You’re Next, Oculus, Trick r Treat; books: Stephen King’s Cell; games: Left 4 Dead, which we play together often), and he looks around my room at my bookcases (yeah, I’ve got a lot of books), and tells me, “I’ve never read a scary book before.”

Yeah, I got a tad excited. I’m going to give him the same book I gave my daughter when she expressed this same interest, King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It’s short, not too scary, and a great book. I think he wants to read Pet Sematary though…he knew the synopsis, and expressed interest in it. This was my first King book, borrowed from my Nana, who then bought me my next King book, Firestarter.

We watched our first horror movie together recently, Oculus, which he says is his favorite so far (after we watched it, he got out his tablet and researched the hell out of that movie, days later telling me everything he’d learned). But can we watch another? he asked. Nothing too gory (I had to explain the use of the word to him, when he asked about movies that had so much blood), he said. I’m gonna go with The Conjuring.

An hour later, I’m yawning, as he points out it’s almost 11, and he’s sorry he kept me up so late.

But man, that hour was worth the world.

And oh man, why was the world so hard? Why were there so many spokes hungry for your fingers, so many gears eager to grab for your guts?

–Stephen King, Dreamcatcher

He’s always been my favorite author (he’s #1 on my list of favorite things…and the only one I’ve blogged about…my bad). And I re-read his books so much they’re worn through. And every time I re-read one, something different catches my eye, my heart, my soul, and speaks to me.

This quote, from Dreamcatcher, one of Jonesy’s thoughts as he and the Beav wait for Henry and Pete – and McCarthy in the bedroom, waiting himself…this quote is so fucking true. And the thing is, there’s no answer. It’s just life.

Just fucking life.

It’s not at all the book I expected it to be. Joe Hill is as brilliant a writer as his father, Stephen King…and he just broke my fucking heart. And I’m not even done with the book! I don’t even have words…this book is not as straightforward as it seems…the shocker, the heart wrenching chapter I just finished…my gods, it hits home, and it tears you apart. Well, me anyway. I don’t even know if I can go on reading anymore tonight. I haven’t had a book affect me like this since his fathers book, Full Dark, No Stars. Though it’s for a different reason altogether, if you read my blog on that book.

Please, ‘verse, don’t let them fuck up the book with the movie.

My best friend Ange knows I’m a Stephen King fan, and a couple of weeks ago she asked me if I had his book Full Dark, No Stars, and if not did I want it? My answer was a resounding YES (see my favorite thing #1, and please, forgive the fact that that is my only fave thing thus far; I’ve had writing issues.). She said her husband had been reading it and it was “too dark” for him.

Stephen King? Too Dark? As a seasoned King reader, my immediate response was, “Not possible.”

I was wrong.

Very.

Very.

Wrong.

I love to read. I can read a book in a day. If I’ve got a really good book (and yes, mother, I tried to find a picture to insert here of Steve from Blue’s Clues, holding A Really Good Book; alas, I came up empty, save for the image of how Steve has changed and am now scarred for life…but that’s another story), every spare minute I have, I’m reading it. When King’s Cell came out, I read it cover to cover in a handful of hours. So you can understand my surprise to find that it took me two weeks to read this book.

I had to make myself read the first story – 1922, the story of a man, Wilfred, and his confession of the murder of his wife (set in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, home of Mother Abigail, for those King fan’s who recognize it). I won’t reveal why he killed his wife, or how, or the events that transpired after. But I will tell you that rats creep me the hell out. I think that’s what made this harder for me to read – not the murder, but the appearance of rats. I never realized my fear of rats until I read Graveyard Shift, another King story that featured rats. I had hoped after reading that, that he’d be done with rats. I guess he wasn’t.

The second story in this novella, is Big Driver. Wow. Again, I struggled through this, reading only in the daylight hours. It scared me, because there are people like Big Driver in this world. Things like this really happen. And that’s what scared me; not so much what the main character, Tess, did in retribution, but what was done to her, and to many others. In fact, once it was clear what Tess was going to do, reading it became easier. I was cheering her on, feeling as if she were saving me just as she was saving herself, and that’s what made me able to finish the story.

Fair Extension came next, and this third story was my favorite and a fast read as well. Dark? Eh, yes. But not as much as the first two, and once I began to understand the character of Dave Streeter, and I was introduced to his friend, Tom Goodhugh, I was rooting for Dave and okay with the choices he made. Tom was a major douche, and the first time we meet him, he rubs his good fortune into Dave’s face, as if Dave needs reminding. I think my favorite part was the interaction between Dave and George Elvid, the man who gave Dave his fair extension, and to me, that set the story up perfect so it had a lighter feel to it.

The last story in the novella is A Good Marriage, and it tells the tale of Darcy Anderson, and her discovery that her good marriage maybe isn’t what it seems to be at all. It was both heartbreaking and frightening, and proved that you never really know anyone, no matter how long you’ve known them, or how close you are. It was more foreboding than the previous story, but it matched the first two in their sinister nature, so much so, that it still took me days to finish.

Now, this isn’t to say it wasn’t a good book. It was excellent, as expected; I’ve never met a Stephen King book I didn’t like. I’ve just discovered that I prefer a few thousand stars in my dark, please…and that this book will go on the back of the shelf, in the dark where it was created, and where I think it wants to live.

my hero

Writer. Actor. Musician. Master. Hero.

Well, he’s my hero at least. Which is why when I think of my favorite things, he pops into my head first thing. It helps, too, that I’m re-reading one of his books (Dreamcatcher) for the umpteenth time (seriously; I’ve read it almost three times in two weeks. I love that book). Sure, he’s had some flukes (the movie version of The Langoliers and Desperation come to the forefront of my mind). But come on, not everyone is perfect.

My earliest memory of Stephen is from when I was six or seven years old. It was night time and I was watching TV, watching Creepshow in fact, though at the time I didn’t know what it was. I got through three stories in the movie (Father’s Day, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, and Something To Tide You Over) before anyone knew I was watching it. I recall my dad walking in the room and turning it off, telling me I shouldn’t watch it and that I should be in bed. And maybe he was right. The image from Father’s Day of the father banging on the table demanding his cake right before his daughter bashed his head in with an ashtray was one that replayed itself in my head randomly throughout my younger years, and it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I watched Creepshow again and realized where that scene was from, and that Stephen King wrote it.

My second run in with Mr. King was actually a twofer: Silver Bullet and Stand By Me, two movies that would spark my crush on the two Corey’s. Silver Bullet introduced me not only to Corey #1, but to werewolves and the man who would one day become John Locke.

Stand By Me introduced me to the bonds of teenage friendships, leeches, why I will never enter or watch a pie eating contest, and not just Corey #2, but Kiefer Sutherland (who doesn’t love a good bad boy?).

(I figured pictures of leeches and pie puke could be omitted. You’re welcome.)

Anyway, I was hooked. And, on my next visit to my Nana’s house, I discovered he wrote novels as well. Nana had a bookcase hanging on her closet door, filled with the works of King, along with Dean Koontz and Peter Straub. I was only ten, but I was in heaven. Firestarter (the first King novel I ever owned, a gift from Nana), Cujo, Pet Semetery, IT, Misery…I ate them up, and as soon as I knew there were movies of the same titles, I watched them (admittedly, IT scared me the most. It wasn’t just Pennywise the clown, it was the balloons of blood that popped in the library). Different Seasons was the first book I re-read multiple times, The Body being my favorite, but Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and The Breathing Method were close.

He weaves his stories like a web…like a dreamcatcher…creating intricate towns, filling them with incredible and vibrant characters that bring the books to life. I grieved with Sheriff Alan Pangborn in Needful Things, and hoped he could find love with Polly Chalmers. I shared anger and sadness with Clay, Tom, and Jordan when Alice is killed in Cell (and when my cell phone rang while I was reading it, I considered never answering it ever again). When Gard suffered from headaches in The Tommyknockers, I found myself plagued with headaches as well. I worried for Trisha when she was lost in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I crossed my fingers that Ted Brautigan would not be caught by the Low Men in Hearts in Atlantis, and I was relieved to see him alive when he reappeared in The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower to assist Roland of Gilead.

In everything I read or watched, I cared about the characters that sprung from King’s mind, perhaps as much as he did, for just because a book has ended, doesn’t mean that is the end of the story in King’s world. He has entwined his characters so intricately in his dreamcatcher, that they pop up in other stories – Ace Merrill from The Body returns in Needful Things; the story from IT is mentioned in several books; the events from Dolores Claiborne are mentioned in the mini series The Storm Of The Century; the town of Haven is the setting for The TommyKnockers, and the new Syfy series, Haven (based on The Colorado Kid); The Dark Tower series is tied into almost everything he’s written. What thought must be put into doing something on so grand a scale! I can’t even begin to fathom the process…and yet I try, because he is who I, as a writer, aspire to be like.

As my Nana and my mother shared Stephen King with me, I am passing him along to my own daughter, who’s first King novel was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Like me with my first, she was hooked. And like me, when reading King’s work, she lives for awhile among his characters, crying with them, laughing with them, loving with them, and yes, being frightened with them – but then that’s when you know that King has done his job, and done it well.