Stephen King's next novel

I'm rereading Stephen King again, and atm I'm reading 11/22/63. There's a paragraph early on where he writes about what would happen if Jake died when he first goes back to 1958.




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It's a short paragraph, but I made the mistake of stopping and thinking about it. :)

What would happen if someone went back in time and died?

Please don't time travel!

If Jake went back to 1958 and was hit by a car and died, then obviously, Jake would still be born at some point in the future, but here's the thing: Jake would still go back to 1958 and the car would still hit him. That scenario would repeat forever. There would be no future timeline after the point that Jake goes back.

Thoughts?
 
In 11/22/63, Jake Epping/George Amberson is in a motel room puts the tv on and the trailer below comes on. Pretty tragic that actors used to shill cigarettes. King actually quotes some of the dialogue:

 
This is pretty strange.

Stephen King and Stuart O'Nan's A Face in the Crowd is getting an hardback release this November, along with another story by Richard Chizmar. Anyway, there were 52 lettered and signed editions available. If you wanted a copy, too late! They've all sold out. Which is odd, as they were priced at $4,000.

 
Hearts in Atlantis - Another brilliant film! This is up there with The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption.

 
Yes!!!

Stephen King’s Next Novel, Fairy Tale To Be Released On September 6, 2022​


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Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes deep into the well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.

Because within the shed is a portal to another world—one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.” And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.

A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.

A massive book at over 600 pages, Fairy Tale will go on sale on September 6, 2022. Pre-order the book HERE.

 
Stephen King - Fairy Tale

Excerpt:

A hundred and eighty-five stone steps of varying heights, Mr. Bowditch said, and I counted them as I went down. I moved very slowly, with my back planted against the curving stone wall, facing the drop. The stones were rough and damp. I kept the flashlight trained on my feet. Varying heights. I didn't want to stumble. A stumble might be the end of me.

On number ninety, not quite halfway, I heard rustling beneath me. I debated shining my light toward the sound and almost decided not to. If I startled a colony of giant bats and they flew up all around me, I probably would fall.

That was good logic, but fear was stronger. I leaned out a bit from the wall, shone my light along the descending curve of the steps, and saw something black crouching two dozen steps below. When my light hit it, I had just enough time to see it was one of the jumbo roaches before it fled, scuttering into the black.

I took a few deep breaths, told myself I was all right, didn't believe it, and went on. It took nine or ten minutes to reach the bottom, because I was moving very slowly. It seemed even longer. Every now and then I looked up, and it wasn't particularly comforting to see the circle illuminated by the battery lights growing smaller and smaller. I was deep in the earth and going deeper.

I reached the bottom at the hundred and eighty-fifth step. The floor was packed earth, just as Mr. Bowditch had said, and there were a few blocks that had fallen from the wall, probably from the very top, where frost and thaw would have first loosened them and then squeezed them out. Mr. Bowditch had grabbed a crack in one of the spaces from which a block had fallen, and it had saved his life. The pile of fallen blocks was streaked with black stuff that I guessed was roach shit.

The corridor was there. I stepped over the blocks and into it. Mr. Bowditch had been right — it was so tall I didn't even think about ducking my head. Now I could hear more rustling up ahead and guessed they were the roosting bats Mr. Bowditch had warned me about. I don't like the idea of bats — they carry germs, sometimes rabies — but they don't give me the horrors as they did Mr. Bowditch. Going toward the sound of them, I was more curious than anything. Those short curving steps (of varying heights) ringing the drop had given me the fantods, but now I was on solid ground and that was a big improvement. Of course there were thousands of tons of rock and soil above me, but this corridor had been down here for a long time, and I didn't think it would pick this moment to collapse and bury me. Nor did I have to fear being buried alive; if the roof fell in, so to speak, I would be killed instantly.

Cheerful, I thought.

Cheerful I was not, but my fear was being replaced — overshadowed, at least — by excitement. If Mr. Bowditch had been telling the truth, another world was waiting not far up ahead. Having come this far, I wanted to see it. Gold was the very least of it.

The dirt floor changed to stone. To cobblestones, in fact, like in old movies on TCM about London in the nineteenth century. Now the rustling was right over my head and I snapped off the light. Pitch darkness made me fearful all over again, but I did not want to find myself in a cloud of bats. For all I knew, they might be vampire bats. Unlikely in Illinois . . . except I wasn't really in Illinois anymore, was I?

I went on a mile at least, Mr. Bowditch had said, so I counted steps until I lost count. At least there was no fear of my flashlight failing if I needed it again; the batteries in the long-barrel were fresh. I kept waiting to see daylight, always listening to the soft fluttering overhead. Were the bats really as big as turkey buzzards? I didn't want to know.

At last I saw light — a bright spark, just as Mr. Bowditch had said. I walked on and the spark turned into a circlet, bright enough to leave an afterimage on my eyes every time I blinked them shut. I had forgotten all about the lightheadedness Mr. Bowditch had spoken of, but when it hit me, I knew exactly what he'd been talking about.

Once, when I was ten or so, Bertie Bird and I had hyperventilated our stupid selves and then hugged each other, good and tight, to see if we would pass out, as some friend of Bertie's had claimed. Neither of us did, but I went all swimmy and fell on my ass in what felt like slow motion. This was like that. I kept walking, but I felt like a helium balloon bobbing along above my own body, and if the string snapped I would just float away.

Then it passed, as Mr. Bowditch had said it did for him. He said there was a border, and that had been it. I had left Sentry's Rest behind. And Illinois. And America. I was in the Other.

I reached the opening and saw the ceiling overhead was now earth, with fine tendrils of root dangling down. I ducked under some overhanging vines and stepped out onto a sloping hillside. The sky was gray but the field was bright red. Poppies spread in a gorgeous blanket stretching left and right as far as I could see. A path led through the flowers toward a road. On the far side of the road more poppies ran maybe a mile to thick woods, making me think of the forests that had once grown in my suburban town. The path was faint but the road wasn't. It was dirt but wide, not a track but a thoroughfare. Where the path joined the road there was a tidy little cottage with smoke rising from the stone chimney. There were clotheslines with things strung on them that weren't clothes. I couldn't make out what they were.

I looked to the far horizon and saw the skyline of a great city. Daylight reflected hazily from its highest towers, as if they were made of glass. Green glass. I had read The Wizard of Oz and seen the movie, and I knew an Emerald City when I saw one.

This excerpt was reprinted with permission from Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster.

 
This is odd.

Waterstones state that the UK edition of Fairy Tale, published by Hodder & Stoughton, will have 320 pages.



The US edition, published by Scribner, will have 608 pages.



The UK edition will probably come with a magnifying glass due to the size of the font.

Seriously though, the quality of Stephen King's UK books are cheap as hell when compared with the US editions. Anybody else noticed this?
 
"Blumhouse Television Sets Stephen King Novel ‘Later’ For Limited Series

Blumhouse Television has landed the rights to turn Stephen King’s bestselling novel Later into a limited series star vehicle for Lucy Liu. Series creator Raelle Tucker wrote the pilot script.

Published in March 2021 by Hard Case Crime, Later centers on Tia, a literary agency owner who is raising her son Jamie alone and finds herself on the brink of professional ruin when her star author client dies before turning out the work that will make her agency financially whole. Jamie has the supernatural ability to talk to the dead, all of whom tell him the truth. This is very helpful when he talks to the dead author and feeds the contents of the book to his mother, who writes it herself and publishes it under the author’s name, to great success. But this gift can be used for more nefarious purposes. Tia’s police detective girlfriend figures out what the boy can do, and soon the youth gets over his head in the spirit world, as Danny Torrance did in King’s The Shining."

More here:

 
Is Fairy Tale a Dark Tower story???


From that Fairy Tale excerpt above (Page 8):

"I looked to the far horizon and saw the skyline of a great city. Daylight reflected hazily from its highest towers, as if they were made of glass. Green glass. I had read The Wizard of Oz and seen the movie, and I knew an Emerald City when I saw one."


In The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, the gang encounter something very similar:

"The Green Palace, an imitation of Emerald City of Oz, is encountered by Roland’s ka-tet near the end of Wizard and Glass. Randall Flagg erected this along the I-70 thinny in the Alternate Topeka to taunt the ka-tet.

The Green Palace is entirely green and made of glass. The gate, made of twelve colored bars represent the twelve bends of Maerlyn's Rainbow. The broad central bar is black. All of the bars contain small creatures. The entire structure hums similar to a thinny."

 
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