Word Play – All Hail The King

In the shadow of the US Bank Stadium, writers, readers and book peddlers gather in the make shift Minneapolis tent village, crowding the closed streets, haggling over words, sentences and paragraphs, and whispering in hushed tones, “Soon the master will be here.”

“Imagine” by John Lennon is being piped out over the crowd when I show up. And I wonder if these are the same people who sold out First Avenue last night to hear the Rock Bottom Remainders. I suspect they are. Why should they be any different from me? Here to witness the same phenomenon, the head horror writer in charge, Lovecraft’s current channeler on earth—Stephen King.

He doesn’t go on until 10 AM, so I pick out a spot fairly close to the stage, but far enough back I’m out of the crowd—at least for now. The morning is relatively pleasant. It’s sunny, there’s a spring breeze, classic rock plays along with a steady bongo drumbeat somewhere that has me thinking “Renaissance Festival for Writers.” Commercial interests are represented, mostly by Target reps in red shirts that hand out sunscreen and sunglasses, all with the Target logo.

I scan the crowd for writers I know—and come up empty. But there are enough people here they could easily be hidden in the growing mass of people. “I Feel Like Making Love” comes on, and the Ren Fest feeling now gives way to more of a “carnival for writers” vibe. I also think that in a King novel (Cell, for instance) this would be the moment right before it all goes bad, before people start going mad and biting each other. I take a step further back from the growing crowd, eye-up the exits.

A woman in the crowd asks me how Instagram works on her phone (I’m no help). Another woman, about four feet tall and at least eighty years old, leans close to me, enjoying the shade I provide. When I take a step away, she moves closer again. My toes are run over by a stroller filled with two sleeping infants and their mom yells “toes!” in surprise, and jokes with me that “You probably didn’t need those anyway.” No harm done, I concur. There are clearly a variety of people here, and most of them, it seems, are here just like me, readers or writers, waiting to see King.

“Dangerous Type” by the Cars plays now. Somewhere past the wall of people, King must make a brief appearance as he heads towards stage. A flurry of hands and cheers all go up at once, and stop just as suddenly as he ducks out of site. I can’t help but wonder if this is where fame gets you. People yelling and waving at just a slight glimpse. There are so many of us now in this crowd, my mind jumps to a scene in Jesus Christ Superstar: Jesus and the Lepers. “There are so many of you!” I hope King gets something worthwhile from this—besides big bags of writer superstar money, that is. I hope it’s worth it.

When King is finally introduced and makes it on stage I mostly see him on the big projection screen they have set up. He has a casual manner, and a wide, friendly smile. He shows his age a little: gray hair, a bit bent of posture, very soft-spoken.

Benjamin Percy, local author (of some fine books like Thrill Me and Red Moon) interviews King, with full disclosure, that they will mostly talk about one of King’s newer books, The Outsider (I’ve read it, not bad—the first two-thirds were great, the ending felt familiar to me, reminiscent of It).

King is so much fun to listen to, and between him and Percy they had some great things to say about reading and writing and horror. Here are a few gems (tried to capture as best I could, please consider most of what follows “paraphrased”):

·      King complimented the crowd for being “People who read shit.” (Meaning: great that they are readers)

·      “If you can read and write you can own the f•cking world.” - Stephen King

·      He spoke of how many people have written him to say our current president reminds them of Greg Stillson, the president in his book The Dead Zone (The first thing I thought of when Trump was elected.)

·      A few times he talked about how his books end, in this manner: “I’ll find out the ending in the course of writing the book.”

·      He’s a Game of Thrones fan.

·      Random thought/observation: The closed captioning at this event was bordering on hilarious. I’m sure it’s tough—I couldn’t keep up if I were typing, but here are a few captions I noticed that made me smile:

o   Supernatural Beans (beings)

o   Needful Chinks (things)

o   Swagger (Jimmy Swaggart)

o   Kid tanning on the window (tapping)

·      Some projects King has in the works

o   A sequel (perhaps) to Salems’ Lot

o   The Outsider will be a Netflix series

o   If It Bleeds (new novel coming out soon—it sounds good!)

·      A joke by King:  “So far so good: What the guy who jumped off the roof said as he was passing the 40^th floor.”

·      What does King write about? He says he writes to the point that monsters are real—and sometimes they win. He likes to write about people falling apart. He also talked about how all people have secrets, and used the example of Ted Bundy, who did terrible things yet to most people around him, they only saw a handsome, charming guy. He also uses his writing to pass on his fears and traumas to others (why pay a psychiatrist when people pay him to read his fears).

·      King also spoke about how in these (current, terrible, scary) times people are frightened, and that writers have a responsibility to write about what frightens them.

o   His upcoming book If It Bleeds may express some fears about Alzheimer’s and dementia. (A writer’s tool is his mind…)

·      Some things that King spoke of fondly:

o   Wait Until Dark (an old movie with Audrey Hepburn)

o   The Shrinking Man (Incredible Shrinking Man)

o   Richard Matheson

·      On fame: “Writers should be like Clark Kent.”

·      “Minnesota is a great place. You’re lucky to live here.” – Stephen King

·      “It’s a strange life.” – Stephen King

·      How good writing should be: “A hem stitched so fine…” (meaning so well written people can suspend belief)

·      Side note by King and Percy: the director, John Carpenter, apparently keeps a “File of Scares’—creepy images—that he uses to work from.

As King spoke the crowd grew. Some of the most interesting people in the audience, to me, were the ones who walked on by, who never looked at King up on stage, or even paused. One of the most popular writers on the planet is up on stage—and you can’t stop to listen in for a minute? I just don’t understand.

This is my third time being in a King audience—and I love to listen to him expound about writing. But why shouldn’t I, as someone who has read 40+ Stephen King books? I’m plenty biased.

One other moment I got to experience, thanks to The Loft’s Word Play event (and my thoughtful wife who bought us tickets for our anniversary), was to hear King and the Rockbottom Remainders play a blend of classic rock songs, most that I recognized as cover tunes from my father’s old record collection. Hearing this group of writers sing “Paper Back Writer” was wonderful, and as another writer friend of mine said, “Hearing King sing Stand By Me was a dream come true I never knew I had.”

Ditto.

~Mark
@manOwords

Stephen King Sings CCR 

Two Sentence Horror Stories: A Challenge!

In honor of Halloween, I've been looking at Two Sentence Horror Stories.
There are tons of them out there on the interwebs. Some are amusing:

 a few are quite good: 

but most are predictable: 

 

And very few are complete stories:


Think about it. You can imagine that entire short story, fleshed (pun intended) out, beginning, middle, and end. Would it be worth writing out in full? Probably not, unless the author was exceedingly clever in their execution. Again, too predictable. But, as a Two Sentence Horror Story, well done. 

But wait! Before I get all judgy in my judgebox - maybe I should try it myself. 

*some time later*

Oh, crud.

Not easy. 

But here's my attempt. 

Martha knew Janey's secret: the ever-growing belly she tried to hide under layers of boys' shirts and baggy sweaters.

As they walked deeper into the woods, Martha had a secret hidden beneath her clothes as well: their daddy's biggest hog knife. 

Cons: Not a complete story. Maybe too wordy? (Always my bugaboo.)
Pros: I think this raises a lot of questions, and gives readers room to speculate. I flatter myself to think all the possibilities are pretty creepy. 

Whatever you think of the results, it's a terrific writing exercise. You have to be concise, and you have to be very specific. With such limited space, I found myself carefully choosing every word to paint a picture of who these characters are, and what motivates them.
Imagine approaching every line in your novel with such care. Somewhat exhausting, but I imagine the results would be worth the effort.

So then. If you dare, post your Two Sentence Horror Story below. Let the games begin! 
This is hard, but fun. No one will judge you harshly. Give it a whirl!

-Q

Oh the Horror

It’s 3AM.

It’s also almost Halloween, which is the perfect time for me to inform you, if you didn’t already know, that I’m a horror writer. That’s right, horror. Considering that many literary agents, per my handy copy of “Jeff Herman’s Guide To Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents,” lump horror into the classification of things they DON’T want to represent, along with sci-fi, fantasy, westerns and porn--I think this is a brave thing to come forward with.

In the recent “book in a month” class I took at the Loft, I was the first writer to volunteer to read a chapter in class. Afterwards, there was a stunned silence. The teacher was the first to break the ice saying:

1) “Looking at you, Mark, I wasn’t expecting that type of story.” And

2) “That was genuinely creepy.”

Some writers when told that their work is creepy might be discouraged, but well, that’s where us horror writers differ: guy-next-door types who blend in pretty well until you see what we put on the page. The rest of the comments in class generally concurred. Chillling, scary stuff. I made a note: Keep doing more of this.

Recently I was amused by a fellow writer who shared that while writing a climactic and scary scene for his mystery novel in progress that his imagination got the best of him and he imagined a raccoon, yes, a raccoon, entering his basement and was unable to finish any writing that night. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that in my last writing session (plenty late at night) the body count had added up to six dead in that session alone, or six billion, depending on who you want to consider dead--or undead. Raccoon? Us horror writers aren’t afraid of no stinking raccoons.

So why do I write horror?

There are probably lots of reasons, but for starters, blame my parents, or more particularly, my father. I have some strong childhood recollections of sitting in my father’s den playing while he smoked Carter Hall tobacco and read the latest Ray Bradbury book or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery magazine.

When I finally started doing my own reading I was hopelessly lost, drawn to books by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury and short story collections with titles like, “Book of the Dead” and “Horror Times Ten.” (The latter contains a really good August Derleth story called “The Lonesome Place” that still gives me chills when I think of it).

My parents taste in literature didn’t fall far from their taste in TV and movies, either. I have just as many memories sitting between my parents on a weekend with a bowl of popcorn watching black and white Twilight Zone episodes and Saturday afternoon Creature Features like “The Blob,” “The Island of Lost Souls” and “The Fearless Vampire Hunters.” My parents also managed to expose me to my first ever walking dead movie at the age of seven. I was supposed to be sleeping while they watched “Night of the Living Dead.” I managed to see most of it in its entirety—which ultimately kept me, and them, up most nights for the rest of the month with nightmares.

In a screenplay class (another Loft offering) I took within the last year another student asked the instructor: “So what is the point of all the really bad horror movies out there? Or for that matter, the point of horror at all?”

I wasn’t about to defend some of the crap movies that the class started to name, but I did feel compelled to mention box office hits like Jaws, Alien, Seven, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and so on, that were well written and directed and contain not just terrifying villains but equally strong main characters who must overcome horrifying creatures and circumstances to live, survive, grow and hopefully make it out of their stories alive. To me, good horror follows all the other rules of good story telling. Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean it can't be damned good writing.

Getting back to those agents who openly say they don’t want to agent horror—it is interesting to me just based on the sheer success of many horror books and movies. What publishing house wouldn’t want another book like “The Stand” or a series (even though I’m no fan) like “Twilight”? (If it’s got vampires in it, it’s got to have some horror elements, yes?) I can only guess that maybe it’s because of the sheer number of bad/unoriginal stories that are out there for every truly good one.

So there are probably many other reasons why I enjoy reading and writing horror, but I suppose ultimately it’s because that’s how I’m built. These are the sorts of stories that interest me and I want to tell. Supposedly when Stephen King was asked why he writes horror, he replied, “What makes you think I have a choice?”

Ditto for me.

Below are some links (sorry, I’m not taking the time to make them pretty), a couple of them to some of my favorite scary stories.

Happy Halloween. I’m going to bed.

One of my favorite Halloween stories, Ray Bradbury’s October Game:
http://www.october-country.com/wychingwell/ww-bradbury_01.html

GoodReads scariest book list: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/121.Scariest_Books

(I’ve ready about half of this list)

Supernatural fiction database: http://freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/d9.htm

The Monster Club.Com sci-fi horror collection: http://www.themonsterclub.com/radiolibrary.htm

Per their own instructions, use the password Boo13 (I notice another of Bradbury’s stories in the mix: Zero Hour)

Note: The image accompanying this post is part of one of my paintings. Scary art is fun, too.