Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 18

Issue #159 : To And Fro

 

The rain was a reawakening, each time bringing Adeline back to the moment when she entered this world, fleeing from a hell of blazing heat. Here, she had found the coolest, most fragrant mist she had ever experienced. From that day forward, each rainfall brought her back to that first moment and renewed her gratitude.

It also ignited the unspoken fears within her, that one day someone would finally venture out and try to follow her into this realm, capture her and drag her back for punishment. It was likely only a matter of time before they found her. Crimes as great as hers were not simply forgotten or ignored.

It made no difference. She would fight to keep from being taken back to that place, just as fiercely as she had fought to flee from it. The more aware she was of the warnings around her, the more prepared she would be.

As she flitted from one leaf to the next, she felt the electricity running up through her body. This place was so vibrant with life it was like bathing in it with each waking moment. It forever baffled her how so many could take this world for granted, and all of its gifts within. It was not like this where she had fled from, where every morsel of hope and goodness came at the price of sacrifice and blood. She had earned her place in this paradise and she would forever fight for it, even if doing so would mean her death.

Thunder began to roll overhead and she shivered at the prickling of her nerve endings which suggested the near onset of lightning. It would be a magnificent storm.

Her new form allowed her more freedom than she had ever thought possible, squeezing into the tiniest grooves and spaces in the world. The wings she now used to coast the upper most winds of the highest points granted her such perspective that she felt nearly like a god. If any of her pursuers were to actually find their way, bumbling from the previous world into this one, she would be ready.

From off to the east, she felt the sensation in the air of the others. She had to take care not to veer too close to their colony. The Queen was aware of Adeline’s entry, if for no other reason that there was now another worker flying around her hive that she could not account for. They would go to any means to capture Adeline and bring her before the Queen, to make account and pay tribute.

It was wise and prudent to steer clear.

It would all work out. There was plenty for all of them, even accounting for all the other species plundering around and leaving their mark on the skin of the world. She had faced much worse than this. She still remembered struggling to recite the final words of the incantation that would spark the jump between worlds as the infinite demon hoards charged down on her. The fact that she had proven herself true would hold for every moment that came after.

The swollen embrace of the thunder was so overpowering that she almost didn’t hear the sound of the soldier descending down on her. It was one of the Queen’s, and he had found her. And in the instant of a dewdrop shattering on a tree branch, she was in the fight for her life. The larger frame of her opponent beat down on her, causing the two of them to dip towards the ground. Their wings beat against each other frantically, each desperately trying to achieve differing ends, one desperate to kill, the other desperate to live. They twisted and rolled as the underbrush careened up towards them.

Adeline realized the only option, the only choice she had left to make. As the soldier grabbed at her and beat at her with his great wingspan, she twisted in his grip. Lifting up her torso, she produced the only weapon available to her and as they continued to roll trough the air, she placed the tip of her stinger against his skin and quickly thrust into him.

The universe around her exploded in starlight. Her weapon withdrew from him and at the same time, pulled free from her as well, brilliantly colored blood dripping after it. As the stinger ripped from her body, every muscle she had ever known tensed and tremored, sending a thrill of ecstasy up through her entire body.

She was on the ground, the soldier dead beside her, dying herself as her life’s blood oozed from her severed torso. In those waning moments she was just able to utter the words again, and departed.

Before her eyes opened, she knew the mistake she had made. The burning smell around her was enough to know where she had inadvertently returned, to the very moment from which she had originally escaped. She opened her eyes to see the demons charging her down, spears raised. This time there was no chance for escape as the penetrating blows took her off her feet and pinned her to the rock wall behind her.

No longer able to speak, Adeline let her head roll down as her second death commenced. The air flowed slowly from her and as darkness swirled in, she embraced herself in the sound of mid-afternoon thunderstorms and the taste of dew on her lips.

Ramblings On The Craft : Is It All In The Details?

 

DISCLAIMER : I consider myself to be a life-long writer but I am still an aspiring author. What’s the difference? Essentially, to me anyway, it means that while I have devoted a great deal of time to my words and my art, the amount of money I have made as a professional writer to date could maybe be used to purchase a nice steak dinner for two. So while I have a deep and devoted passion for writing, I do not claim in any way to be an expert or authority figure. What you will find in these essays represent my personal thoughts and feelings about various issues related to writing. I think that in any endeavor, it is essential to have the mindset that there is always something to learn, something you don’t know. As soon as you start to think that you are an authority on anything (besides how to eat a hot dog or perhaps, spelling your name) there might be a problem. With that in mind, I am fully cognizant and comfortable with the fact that on any and all of these issues, I could be completely wrong.

Put another way, I recognize and admit that I could be full of shit.

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One of the easiest things to lose track of as a writer is what is happening around your characters. I’m talking about not just the dialogue, emotions and conflicts that you put your characters through but the environment through which they are moving. One big subset under the umbrella of description in your writing would be that of technical details. Your characters inevitably use tools of some kind to accomplish their goals, what are those tools? What do they look like? How do they affect the story?

How much is too much? How much isn’t enough? Is it sufficient to say that the character is driving her car? Or do I need to specify that it is a 2016 Honda Accord Hybrid EX-L with the one touch power moon-roof? Is it enough for me to say that the character is holding a pistol? Or do I need to specify that she’s carrying a 1911 traditional two tone SIG Sauer with 25LPI checking and mainspring housing?

I’m going to come clean here and admit that I don’t generally do a ton of research for my stories. And I suppose that some would interpret that as laziness or not being willing to lend an air of credibility to the universe of my stories. But my problem is I think that if you emphasize the research too much, you run the risk of feeling obligated to include all of these things. When you put in all of the time to compile a huge amount of material, it becomes harder and harder to resist the need to shoehorn all of that work into the book somehow. No one wants to think that they have to spend hours upon hours reading through intellectual texts just in order to support maybe a few pages out of the entire book.

And I think that this issue changes quite a bit depending on which genre you are writing in and what the devoted readers of that particular genre are going to expect. If you are writing a historical drama about a barrister in 19th century London, obviously you are going to need to be able to talk the talk somewhat in terms of the life that person would have led as well as some details about their profession. If you are writing a Western, it certainly is going to be more important to understand historically what that lifestyle was like. Procedural detective stories require a whole different mountain of understanding in terms of procedures and criminal behavior.

I suppose it’s possible that I unconsciously choose the subject matter of my writing to be such that there isn’t such a burden in terms of research, but this isn’t necessarily because I’m not willing to do the work. The main issue for me is that I don’t feel like I would ever reach a point where I would feel entirely comfortable that my writing was coming across as legitimate. 

I have suffered from a fair amount of insecurities when it comes to these issues in my writing. Specifically, I often have scenes in my books involving gun play or fighting and I am constantly paranoid about being called out as a phony as I write the scenes in question. Why? Other than one or two incidents of rolling around on the ground in grade school, I’ve never been in a fight. I’ve held a gun before but I’ve never fired one. So am I really a credible person to write content involving those things? I’ve actually considered going to a shooting range just so I can get a feel of the physical experience of shooting a gun.

In the end, I made the decision that going beyond the realm of providing just some basic details often ends up going too far. This is just my personal decision in terms of what feels correct for my writing. I think that the story needs to be what rules the airwaves, as opposed to the props that happen to be used within it. And there will likely be some who will argue that taking the time to provide specific details is important in order to give your story a feel of realism and credibility.

But my question is, credibility for whom?

Let’s say I’m writing a scene involving a shootout between two characters. I spend weeks researching the types of guns they are using, the weight and feel of the weapons in their hands, the physical effect of firing those weapons and what kind of rounds are being used. I research medical journals to find out more about gunshot wounds and the effects they have on the human body and I work extremely hard to present that scene in a way that I think is authentic and real.

The way I see it, most readers are going to fall into two categories. One, they’re the kind of reader who just blurs past all of that detail. They couldn’t care one way or the other and therefore, all of the work and sweat and tears I have shed over that chapter goes right past them. worse than this, the second group would be the ones who really do have knowledge in this particular area. These are the ones that I have no hope of convincing, no matter how much work I do. There’s a reason why they don’t let you do brain surgery after having only read a few textbooks. As complete as research materials can be, it will never be a substitute for real learning and experience. For that second group, I will always stand out as a phony who is trying to trick the readers into believing that I know what I am writing about.

In either scenario, all of my work was wasted time. Either it accomplished nothing, or it succeeded in jarring the reader out of the story, forcing them to focus on details they know to be incorrect. I also think that there is something to be said for giving the reader some room in order to visualize the story for themselves. I think that how we see a story in our heads is greatly affected by our own personalities and experiences and the more, as writers, we try to game that or manipulate it arbitrarily, I think the more likely we are to fail.

In the end, compelling conflict is what drives a story more than anything else. The details are exactly that, details. If they don’t come along with characters who we care about, there isn’t going to be any reason to hang with it as a reader. Realistic details do not make a story more compelling. One of my favorite graphic novels has always been Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller. What’s the relevance to this conversation? I have always thought the actual artwork in the book to be kind of shitty. I actually hate the vague, blocky look to everything but I’m willing to overlook that because the story and the writing is so good.

Worry about building your house in the first place. Then you can start picking out paint colors and decorative moldings for the bedroom.

Baked Scribe Flashback : Infection

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The house had stood at the top of the hill for as long as any of the locals could recall. It had been built over a period of several years, the original owner taking great pains to make sure that every detail of the home was perfect and the gossip in town was that the rich doctor had gone out of his mind, sinking so much money into the house in such frivolous fashion. As far as the people in town were concerned, it was just another person, determined to hold sway over them with the power of his money. The house had no way of knowing, it was only tasked with protecting the family that lived within its walls.

The family would reside in the house for several generations, They were personable enough, or at least they tried to be. But eventually, the barely shielded hostility of the town drove them progressively further away from the local populace. Before long, they were living out the majority of their lives in the serene privacy of their hilltop home.

As the weather steered into winter, the family would huddle together to take what warmth they could from each other and pray that this year they would be able to last until the spring. Their loyalty to each other was as strong as had ever been seen and the house did all it could to help preserve them. It was a relationship that stayed strong for more years than anyone could keep track of.

Then, the pestilence began to seep into the house’s world.

The drifter had shown up one night, wandering in from the forests outside of town, and while the family had taken him in, the house didn’t trust him. There was a darkness that seemed to follow him, one that the house had not experienced before. The stranger was a restless sleeper, talking amidst his dreams of such violence and anger, but no one in the family ever heard him. The house could do nothing but sit back and hope for the best.

It was one week to the day, after his arrival that the world crumbled into pieces.

Everything that the house had come to depend on took approximately one hour to bring to an end. The four generations for which it had taken on the role of caretaker ended in one, sudden night of violence. The drifter moved on after killing everyone, was never caught or identified. Still, a vital essence of himself was left behind. It was as if a physical taint was left behind on the walls and floors and windows of the house. Standing there on the hill as a vessel for the newly dead, the house found itself starting to decay from the inside. There was no way to completely recover, as it had been just as much a victim of the random act of violence as the family.

For years after, the house remained vacant, a ghost itself, observing the world constantly changing around it but living with nothing but the same sorrow within. The stains of the violence had not even been completely washed away, and served as constant reminders of how violently those it had cared about were ripped away. The harsh winters became the most desirable time of the year as that was when the desolation and death of the world around it came the closest to matching the darkness within.

A decade passed before a new family finally came to visit the house, to consider the possibility of purchasing it. As much as the house had despised being alone, it proved to be worse to see this impostor of a family traipsing around, making whatever absurd changes they felt like.There was nothing to be done, however, and before long it found itself having to grow accustomed to new people, new sounds and voices and laughter. There was a time when all of that would make the house feel warm, with it’s own worth and value. Now it just felt like a shell in which it now held the worthless dregs of society. It missed the ones it loved, the ones that had been so cruelly ripped away from it.

It was a year later when the house realized that the darkness which had been brought by the violent stranger was still present, just under the surface of everything. All it took was some work before that dark entity could be released and deposited into one of the members of the family. Once this was accomplished, the house would have the luxury of sitting back and watching it all unfold within its walls. Death found its way into the house again, this time by design, instead of random happening of chance.

In the end, it took the death of yet one more family before the house was left alone, standing atop the hill in disrepair and discontent. Those that it had once cared so deeply for seemed like a long forgotten memory, never achievable again. Each day seemed like another step towards the darkness below that it would soon merge with forever.

A cool, stark wind blew through the shattered windows, moaning as it made its way through the halls and crevices of the house. Few would dare to even gaze up at the house on the hill as it stood, bathed in scorn and wrath. The house would never be able to break free from the spite, from the desire to take in anyone it saw and show them the pain and suffering it had experienced at those hands so many years ago.

It had become a vessel of destruction and pain. Anyone who made the mistake of entering through those now tattered doors would learn well enough the extent of the tarnished legacy of this place.

This house had become.

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Baled Scribe Flashback : For A Drive

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Ravi pressed his foot to the accelerator and watched out of the corner of his eye as the darkened roadside blurred past. There was little or no other traffic out that night, but he would have welcomed it, especially the sight of a trooper as the car behind him continued to follow and draw slowly closer. At first, he had taken the trailing headlights as a coincidence, an amusement on a late night drive, but when the car behind him continued to match him, turn after turn, it started to edge out beyond the realm of strange and into that of unsettling. He rarely saw anyone take this back road before, especially at this time of night. There were two other houses besides his in the five mile stretch before it dead-ended at the river and in both cases, the elderly couples living there rarely left their home.

Still, the car behind him remained in position, never getting too close or letting him get too far ahead. He could make out the billowing smoke behind the car in the bright moonlight and seemed to notice every time the car back there fishtailed on some loose gravel. Each time, he prayed for the thing to run off the road but it never happened. He wished he could call ahead to the house for someone to help but even if his phone hadn’t died, coverage out here was rarely reliable enough to count on.

Last fall, Ravi and his father had plowed a rough path from the road which led to the back-side of the property. It was the kind of thing that you would miss unless you knew to look for it. He looked at the car in the mirror and braced himself, waiting as long as he could before slamming on the brakes and swinging the car onto the path, fishtailing severely. One side lifted up off the ground for just a moment before it leveled out and found purchase. Ravi looked up into the mirror and saw nothing but darkness behind him. Maybe he had managed to shake the guy loose. Or maybe, the person hadn’t been following him in the first place and he had just made himself look like an idiot.

He slowed down and tried to focus on their make-shift road, which had been intended more for tractors. Every few seconds, the car would slip from side to side as the tires lost their grip on the soft ground. As he reached the center of the tree-line and turned left, towards the house the lights behind him flipped on again and he heard the other engine revving over the sound of his own. Whoever it was back there and whatever he had done to piss them off, they weren’t giving up so easily.

Ravi accelerated towards the house, hoping that maybe the noise would cause someone to look out the window and call the police at the sight of the two cars racing around on the property. His moment of possibility dashed against his triggered memory that his parents and brother were out of town for the weekend, up at auction to scout out some new equipment. Whatever was going on here, he was going to have to deal with it himself and the looming, darkened house ahead of him seemed to look down in amusement at the situation he had somehow managed to find himself in.

Before he could articulate any other thought, he was rocked forward against the steering wheel as the car behind him sped up and collided with his bumper. He lost his grip on the steering wheel and the car swerved off into the grass, throwing dirt and debris behind it in a wide fan. Ravi pumped the brakes and grabbed hold of the wheel, steering into the spin, and after a few over-corrections managed to get back onto the path. He raced past the house, onto the proper driveway and back out onto the road. Maybe he could outrun this guy back to the highway and get help elsewhere.

The car behind sped up, and again collided with him, this time rocking the car forward. He slipped forward on the seat but managed to keep his grip, swerving a little as he did so. Still, he didn’t know how much more his car was going to take. The problem was that until they got to the highway, there wasn’t anywhere else to go, no avenue of escape other than simply driving faster. Ravi accelerated, burying the needle on the speedometer as the other car began to fall further behind. He maintained the high speed, risking the gravel surface and saw that he had gotten significantly farther ahead. He didn’t let up, needed to get as far away from the thing as possible. Who the hell was it? He knew that he tended to be somewhat loose with the booze on the weekends but it was hard to imagine what he could have possibly said to warrant something like this.

His heart sank as he topped the next hill and realized that he still had several miles before getting to the paved highway. He was starting to wonder if he could even make it before he saw the headlights behind him start to shift from side to side, first lazily and then violently as it whipped around, spun and then blinked out completely.

Ravi stopped and turned to look out the rear window.

The headlights did not reappear.

Every sense in his being screamed at him to go on, to get out of here and to try and call the police. Still, he couldn’t shake the need to know. Who the hell had been chasing him? He had to find out. He backed up until he reached the point where he thought he had seen the crash happen. It didn’t take long as he spotted one of the taillights, now blinking as they cast a dim red light up into the air. He stepped out of the car and eased his way down. As he reached the car, he put his hands out to brace himself against the frame as he made his way to the passenger window to peek inside.

There was no one there.

Nobody.

There was no way that anyone could have walked away from this. There had been so little time that he would have spotted anyone shambling away from the accident.

Ravi frowned and looked around again. There had to be someone who had been driving the car, he must have just missed them. It’s not like the car could have driven itself.

In a moment of clarity, he saw the person hiding out, just out of sight and then sneaking past him to try and steal his car. He rushed back up to the road but it was still there, engine running smoothly. He could have sworn he had turned it off as he stepped out to investigate the scene.

As he eased behind the wheel, something was jabbing into his leg and he reached down into his pocket to find out what it was. Frowning he reached into his pocket and at the familiar weight and jingling sound, his heart went cold. His hand came out clutching his car keys. The car shouldn’t be still running.

Ravi looked up at the dashboard in a panic as all four door locked around him and the engine revved up, taking him up to an even higher speed than he had been driving before. The back wheels started to lose their grip on the road and he felt the back end starting to come around. The pedals moved out from underneath his feet, operated by a forces unseen and the steering wheel moved from side to side, under its own power. He thought about the car that had been following, seemingly driving itself, a notion he had thought was so absurd. Now his car, as if something had passed between the two.

As his stomach lurched from a partial lift off the ground, the stereo came on in a burst of static. In the background he could just hear some kind of music playing but mostly what he heard was the static as it bellowed out through the car’s speakers.

It sounded like the car was laughing at him.

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BREAKING NEWS!!!!

It gives me no small amount of pride and satisfaction to announce to you that the release date for Behind Our Walls has been set for Tuesday, July 19th. Follow the link below to pre-order the book for your Kindle. Otherwise, the book will be released in eBook and paperback editions on the nineteenth.

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Thank you very much for your support and I am very excited to be able to share this book with you, finally. It has been a long road for this one so thank you for standing there while I traveled it.

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Click here to pre-order today.

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Issue #158 : Grim Feedback

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Angela picked the book up off the table, gazing at the cover before shaking her head and stuffing it back into the box. No engagement from anyone on any of the sites she had posted on. She knew the book had been downloaded during the free promotion. It was out there in the ether, but from the lack of reviews or sales, you would never know it.

And this was going to be the one that everyone was supposed to love. A fictionalized history of reapers through the years. Everyone she described it to loved the idea. She lost track of how many times she saw the post on Facebook, “Tell me when this is out. I will definitely buy this!”

Really? There must be a delay in those sales numbers.

She shook her head as she slammed the laptop closed. The rational part of her brain knew that she shouldn’t look at the numbers, that she was driving herself to madness but she also couldn’t stop herself. You might as well sit an alcoholic down in front of a row of bourbon shots and just wag your finger before you turn your back on them.

Oh well. Another slow sales week. Things had to pick up. Eventually people would start finding their way to the book. A few ad campaigns combined with some on-line events and she would start bringing them in. Besides, who didn’t like reapers? Who wouldn’t love a book like that? Reapers, through the ages! That was the kind of history book she wanted to get her hands on. Even though it was pretty much all bull-shit.

Angela pushed back from the table. She would come back down in the morning for her things after check-out The upside to all of this was that she had splurged on the expense of staying at the convention hotel. She could treat herself to an elevator ride to her room, instead of a long walk or taxi ride. Of course, the price tag on that convenience was that she was now just barely breaking even for the night, but breaking even was still better than losing it all. She did have fewer books then when she had arrived. That was something to hold onto.

Her floor was unusually cold as she stepped out of the elevator, so much that she was surprised she didn’t see her breath in the air. There would have to be a phone call to the front desk if her room was as cold as this.

The curtains were shut as she entered the room which gave her pause, stopping as the door closed behind her. She knew that the curtains had been open. The last thing she had done before leaving that afternoon was to look out over the skyline, wondering what the city was going to look like at night.

As she stepped forward to pull them back, she caught a whiff of a foul smell, as if some food have been left out in the room and not put away. Maybe something stuffed in one of the dresser drawers that housekeeping had missed. 

The front desk was definitely getting a call. But as she reached for the phone, she began to sense a presence, many sets of eyes burning into her. She could hear the sound of hissing, like a gas being released. As she looked up into the window, she could now see the reflection in the glass of the multitude of black robed figures staring out at her.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder, stark white bones of fingers protruding from the frayed black sleeve. The voice was low and sonorous as it spoke gently to her.

“We would like to speak to you about some inaccuracies in your current book.”

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Tracing The Trails Of The King : The Talisman

Where do I even begin with the Talisman? What can I say about this amazing epic of a story from the writer so many people associate with ghouls and goblins?

The Talisman (along with the later sequel) are, to date, the only books which King has collaborated with another author. This will be changing soon as he has recently announced a project which he participated in with his younger son, Owen. It is a process that I have always been fascinated with just in terms of how the book comes about. I haven’t read very much of Peter Straub’s individual books so I have always been very curious to know where in the book King stops and Straub begins. According to an old article in Fangoria, evidently neither one of them can really remember who wrote what. And to compound the problem even more, apparently each one of them tried to mimic the other’s style in an effort to trick the readers.

Talisman is a masterful book. It is the epic quest of Jack Sawyer, who is drawn into a cross country journey, between worlds in an attempt to save his mother from a fatal illness. Along the way, he enlists the help of several friends, new and old, who he comes across in the course of his quest.

I love how the book uses the notion of separate realities to represent the idea of dualities within our own natures. I think it is incredibly clever to be able to represent two separate personifications of the same villain and how the version we meet from the other universe is actually more sinister and terrifying than on Earth. King and Straub create some amazingly disturbing and dark imagery and monsters in this book, whether it be the opportunistic uncle Sloat or his twin, Morgan of Orris. I actually was the most terrified of the character of Sunlight Gardner as well as his shrill, maniacal double, Osmond.

I think it would be interesting to see how a book like this would be received now, in the current social and political climate. Even more interesting would be to see what the authors’ vision would be if they were to write it now. While it is certainly nothing new to write a story about a young character on a heroic quest, King and Straub brought a unique element of hard realism to go along with the more fantastical elements. Jack is certainly on a magical quest, but while he is a child, this is not a children’s story. He bears witness to and is the victim of quite a bit of violence and abuse. His isolation and the imminent danger he walks along is palpable. Jack’s travels seem to skirt along the dark underbelly of America, existing in a state of exposed vulnerability. There seems to be a constant presence of wrong-minded adults, lurking just off stage and waiting to pounce on our unsuspecting hero. It seems to me that these elements would be even more amplified if it were to be written now, as opposed to thirty years ago. Like King became fond of saying in the context of another epic series, the world has moved on.

On that note, I would like to discuss one fairly specific issue, namely being this book’s alleged connection with the Dark Tower. There are many who argue for The Talisman as being a part of the Tower universe and while I don’t want to tell people how to interpret the books, my personal opinion is that there is very little, if any connection.

One of the reasons why I think Talisman gets wrapped up into Tower lore is because of the sequel, Black House. There’s no question about Black House being a part of that universe so it would stand to reason that the first book would as well.

My personal opinion is that The Talisman suffers frequently from a certain amount of over-interpretation. One example is the phenomenon of Twinners throughout the book. The idea is that most people have a twin that exists in the other world. Hard-core King fans often make arguments for characters in different King books being Twinners for each other. In this book specifically, I have seen some argue that Jack Sawyer is a twinner for Jake Chambers, he of Dark Tower.

My issue with this is that I don’t feel like it has any basis in the books themselves, that they are connections that are largely fan made. And while this is fine, personally I don’t give it much thought. To the best of my recollection, King doesn’t talk about Twinners anywhere else. My opinion is that this is something that he intended to only exist in the universe of this book, not as a global concept. I think that The Talisman has a certain atmosphere that makes it feel like a Dark Tower book. The notion of alternate worlds that intertwine with each other is one that he would certainly explore further in the Dark Tower. Also, towards the end of the book when Jack and Richard have to travel through the Blasted Lands, it certainly has a similar feel to a trip aboard a certain train through the Waste Lands that exist beyond the shattered city of Lud. For me though, while it can be fun to find connections like this, it is also important to remember that King is not above the notion of repeating or re-using some ideas or concepts. When you write more than seventy books over the course of your life, it’s bound to happen to some extent.

But as I said, this is just my interpretation and my opinion. One of the greatest parts about reading, and this is not just related to King, is that everyone has the privilege to see the story how they want. If you want to see The Talisman as a part of the Dark Tower story, I’m certainly not going to tell you to stop. I have always been a big proponent of the notion that a story begins in the mind of the writer and ends in the mind of the reader.

One last thing, there has been speculation over the years about the possibility of another Talisman book. In 2001, King and Straub joined up again to publish Black House, the first sequel to The Talisman. Ever since, fans of Jack Sawyer have definitely put out the call for one more installment. There have been rumors that this might be happening and that the two authors were trying to make time in their respective schedules.

I recently had the honor of seeing Stephen King speak on his tour for End Of Watch and this was one question that came up. Obviously there has been no official announcement and he didn’t give any details, but King himself did say that he thinks there needs to be a third book and to keep an eye out for that in the future. So while work hasn’t actually begun, I’m taking it as a positive sign that the man himself is willing to speak about it like this in a public forum. It makes me believe that we are closer than we might think to a conclusion to the trilogy.

Speaking for myself, I’m pretty excited about the possibility of seeing King and Straub cross the streams, one more time.

My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Hard Born

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Josiah squinted out over the hard packed desert, into the blasting wind. It felt like putting his face directly into an open fire. There was no life out here that he could see, but he knew that the people he sought were out there, just beyond the ridge at the edge of the horizon. The people in that valley would pay for their insolence, for their arrogance and failure to show proper respect for the divine allowances which had brought them into being. He gripped the hilt of the sword, letting the tip leave a trail in the sand behind him as he resumed his slow pace forward.

Above him, the sky looked like an unmarked canvas. The midday sun blazed down through the complete absence of clouds and made the searing heat even more unpleasant. He squinted again, wiping the sweat from his brow and then flinging the moisture off of his hand. The objective was close enough that he needed to stay alert, had to be ready. Any minute now, he would probably start coming across scouts or people of the city, out and about in their normal day to day routines. He would expel the vermin in whatever order they happened to show themselves.

No one had sent him on this quest, given him the divine instructions to do what was needed. He had seen the danger, all on his own and realized that he had been given the divine sight in order to take it upon himself to do whatever he could to save everyone. The job would be performed, even if it required his own life for the giving. It was the rarest of moments, where one stood true and put steel to whatever threat may be approaching.

He felt the sound before he heard it. It was a deep rumbling in the ground, as if a massive unit of troops was moving, possibly already aligned and attacking for a battle that Josiah feared could never truly be won. If that ended up being the case, he felt like he would rather meet his maker, standing on his own two feet, instead of having to experience the heartbreak of defeat. And if he fell, but the battle was won, those left behind would remember him as standing tall, facing down the oncoming enemy with no thought to his own safety.

Now he was hearing the noise, metallic as it crunched its way across the sand. There was another noise accompanying it that he did not understand. Something that sounded odd, but for reasons he couldn’t place. He made his way up the hill, using the blade to support himself and peer down from the hilltop.

Down below, there was a great cloud of dust and sand, thrown up from whatever approached. It sounded like some kind of mechanical animal, howling over the wind and increasing in intensity as it drew closer. Josiah hefted the sword and renewed his grip. Whoever was unlucky enough to be at the head of the pack would be the first to feel the bite of his steel.

As he peered past the blade of the sword he noticed with some confusion, the rust that now covered the blade. The metal which had just been gleaming in the sunlight now looked ancient, like a weapon of old that had not seen use in many milennia. As he took this in, the all-terrain vehicle topped the hill ahead of him and raced down into the next valley before rushing up towards him. It slowed as it drew near, and through the windshield, Josiah could make out two people pointing at him, expressions of bewilderment as they took in this person, standing atop the hill and brandishing an ancient broadsword.

Josiah shook his head violently. He could not explain this trance that the enemy had clearly placed him in, but it made no difference, did not matter when he was here to complete his life’s path. Lifting the sword, he charged, stepping into the path of his imminent destiny.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : In Frame

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“Shhhh!”

Shelton spun around in his crouched position and glared back at Tyler. They needed to keep quiet, but the one thing he hated likely than anything in the world was to be shushed. He put a hand up, jabbing one finger through the air at his friend, close to smacking him in the process.

“Shut up!” he hissed at him. “You’re making more noise than I was. Keep it the fuck down!”

Likely, he was being too harsh, but he wasn’t going to to put up with that kind of crap all night long.

The Kittridge house was silent that night, the moonlight casting long shadows. He was just nervous, had to let it work its way through his system and focus on the task at hand. The Kittridges were out of town for the weekend, the painting would be left there all alone, nobody around to stop them.

As they emerged from the hallway, into the private gallery, light crept in through the windows, where it struck the floor and washed up onto the toes of the furniture throughout the room. The painting itself was bathed in an incandescent light that seemed to come both from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The subject in the portrait sat there, completely obscured in darkness. Shelton could see the vague outline of someone hunched over, leaning on something out of the frame for support. He had no idea who was being depicted in the portrait, but in his minds eye he somehow made out the vivid image of an old woman, glaring out at the viewer, disdain mixing with disgust.

“What are we doing here anyway?”

Shelton ignored the question as he tried to bring his irritation back under control.

“I told you before we came in here, moron. We’re taking this thing out of here to show old Kittridge how easy it is to get to him. He calls the cops, a few days go by, he freaks out over his stupid painting and then magically, someone finds it when an anonymous tip is called in.”

There was a pause at the other end of the moron hotline before Tyler responded. “Okay, it just seems like a lot of work to just get back at a guy for pissing you off.”

Shelton shook his head, but didn’t answer. He couldn’t explain what he was feeling to Tyler, how the painting had drawn him, pulled him with a kind of tidal force from the moment he had seen it. It had gotten to the point where his daily routines were filled with the thought of this painting and the person depicted, who she might be and why the image had been obscured by such harsh shadows. In truth, he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to give up the painting. Maybe he would just leave it in his basement where he could visit it and contemplate it until the day when he finally unraveled the mystery of the thing.

“Just help me,” he said and moved forward to take the frame down off the wall.

His mind blurred from that moment, and he found himself sitting on the sofa downstairs, staring at the painting in his basement and wondering how long he had been here. A part of his subconscious seemed to be suggesting that he should be asking how long he had been sitting here this time, that it had been so long since stealing the thing, the weeks that had passed seeming like one blink of an eye sitting on this couch.

The shadows in the painting started to move.

Shelton sat forward with a start, sure that he had seen it and at the same time sure that it couldn’t have been possible. How could the painting really have moved? What else could it have been? Had that been the person seated in the painting, twisting around to get a better look at him? Was that a tendril of darkness now emerging from the canvas, or was it just a trick of the light, something to go through the machinations of his mania and flower into something menacing and beautiful?

The darkness touched him and darkness he became.

Shelton didn’t know how much time had passed. He was hunched over on some kind of bench, looking down at the floor which was bathed in darkness. All around him was dark and impossible to penetrate despite his best efforts. He tried to wave his arms around but did not detect any sensation of movement. Likewise, his legs refused to function as he tried in vain to stand up. He tried to scream, to call out for anyone that might be able to help him but of course no sound emerged. It was like he was trapped inside of a shell, painted in darkness.

Then light began to form in front of him. It was like a window that had been fogged up and starting to clear. He was looking out into some kind of private residence, a room that looked strangely familiar. He heard hushed voices and vague human forms began to clarify before him. He was looking out into the gallery, the one from which they had stolen the painting in the first place. The man standing there, staring in at Shelton, was also unmistakable.

He was looking into the face of Mr. Kittridge.

Shelton tried to twist and turn, to wave and yell to get the man’s attention, but he was stuck, fixed in this hunched over position, stuck in profile, most of the room out there lost in his periphery. The same position she had been in.

He was stuck inside the painting.

Somehow his obsession had become his being. He railed on the inside, trying to kick, to scream and rip his way out of this impossibility. It was hard to breathe, getting even harder as if his lungs were starting to freeze.

Like paint, drying on canvas.

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Issue #157 : Apostle

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Amy steered the kayak towards the shoreline. She took hold of some vegetation growing up out of the water and began pulling herself across the muddy bottom, towards dry land. Tossing her bag up past the bushes, she stepped out into ankle-deep water and slime. Making sure the boat was firmly wedged into place, she turned and surveyed the thin strip of land that ran away from her. It was still pitch black out, but the nearly full moon provided a good amount of light. She had to make this last leg of the journey at night as the park rangers would only let you go so far out before turning back. Of the twenty plus Apostle Islands, Devil’s Island was the farthest away from the mainland and camping of any kind was not allowed.

The muscles in her legs trembled as she allowed herself to sit, taking a long drink from her water bottle as she did so. Even from here, she could hear the waters of Lake Superior crashing into the network of intricate cave systems underneath the island and as she looked up, she thought she could just make out some twinkling lights from the Michigan side of the lake.

She would stay for all of the next day and leave the next night. All she needed to win the bet was a picture taken on the island, during the day. One picture of the light house was all it would take for victory to be assured. She could lay low on the island during the day, read and listen to her music. The lighthouse wasn’t currently in operation and there weren’t any tour ships scheduled for the next day so chances were low of encountering anyone out this far.

Amy took a protein bar from her pack and turned back in the direction from which she had come. She could just make out the darkened shapes of the other islands as they strung off away from her. The sound of the lake lapping up against the ground below her sent a thrill of fear up her back and all of a sudden she began to acutely feel her isolation and solitude. It was unseasonably cold, even for late summer, and if she had capsized while coming over, chances were good that it would have been the end for her. Even if she had managed to get to land or gotten back into the boat, hypothermia would have been pretty much certain.

What a stupid bet this had been.

Still, here she was.

Moving to the tree-line, Amy unrolled her air mattress and settled down, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. She had used up so much energy coming out here that she didn’t expect too much trouble.

Just as her eyes were starting to droop and the wind through the trees was lulling her towards slumber, she heard something familiar. It was a cooking sound, something like pasta and boiling water and it was just on the tip of her—

Steam.

She was hearing steam, whistling as if being ejected from a tea kettle. Amy sat up and squinted out into the dark as she slowly stood. From all around, she could make out movement of something blacker than the night itself. It was smoke, but colored glossy black, shooting up and out of the ground. She watched as tendrils of green light scattered throughout the smoke, like lightning. As it continued to emerge from the ground, the steam seemed to grow more substantial and gain body as it began to extend out into new, heavier tendrils of smoke.

In all the years she had been coming out here, she had never seen anything like it. There was also now a smell in her nose, a whiff of one of the worst rotten egg smells she had ever encountered. Stepping forward, she reached out and placed a hand into one of the jets of steam.

Her nose detected the smell of her own flesh burning before her pain receptors even caught up. Screaming, she pulled her hand back and even though she knew that it was the worst thing to do, she staggered forward and plunged her hand into the cool water of the lake. In the long run, it would likely do more harm than good but it felt better already, swirling her hand around in the cold water and mud.

Dangling her arm in the water, Amy looked up into the trees and saw the smoke coming together to form one large cloud. It began to take shape, sprouting arms and legs, feet reaching down until it touched down on land and began walking towards her, winding through the thick trees. She could now see eyes blazing out at her from the darkness of the thing, bright blue in color. She backed up, barely even registering that the water had crept up nearly to her thighs.

Amy stood up, already feeling the screaming pain from her arm as she withdrew it from the water. Her hand was already starting to blister and was a deep red color. Looking back over her shoulder she saw that the creature had somehow divided and reproduced itself, in smaller form. The miniaturized versions stared out at her and she had the fleeting thought that she should try and get to the boat, even though she knew there was no point.

The creatures began to advance.

“Stay the fuck away!” she cried out, but as soon as the words were spoken, she slipped on something underwater and toppled over onto her back. She yelled out again but even as she did so, she felt the side of her head smack against the water and everything went dark.

She woke to sunlight, and the sound of the water washing up onto rock. Lifting her head up, she looked out over the water to see the tail end of one of the tour boats passing around Devil’s Island, on their way back home. She tried to scream out, cursing herself for not bringing the flare gun. No sound louder than a squeak emerged from between her parched lips. Not that it mattered No one would have heard her over the sound of the water and the wind.

Pain flared in her shoulders and as her awareness came back even more, she began to realize where she was.

Amy was tethered to the rock face, hanging just inside the opening to one of the many caves on the north side of the island. She looked from side to side, at the chains that held her aloft and all the other bodies, in varying stages of decay, hanging alongside her. It was like some kind of morbid artisan gallery that she had now become a part of. This time, she did scream. She didn’t understand what the things had been or how she had ended up down here. She didn’t know what they wanted.

As her screams died and her strength began to ebb, she looked up at the lip of the cave and saw the black steam, now pouring down on them from somewhere above. The muscles in her neck went limp and her head dropped forward, the realization creeping in that in a few minutes she likely would be wishing she could go back to not knowing what was about to happen to her.

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