Rich Chizmar and I got to visit the set of The Mist in Shreveport, Louisiana on Thursday and Friday last week. I posted a lengthy “travelogue” of the trip on my Live Journal. While I was in Shreveport, this article was published in the local newspaper: A bad day at the market’ is fun for creators of The Mist I’m writing a set visit report for Rue Morgue magazine, which will probably be in their next issue. Set videographer Constantine Nasr put together a video blog (a webisode) from day 10 of filming that premiered at Ain’t It Cool News and later appeared at Jo-Blo.
I was interviewed recently for this article about the Dark Tower in the LSU Reveille. It seemed apropos that I was in Louisiana when it appeared. Also apropos that I took exit 19 from the highway to get to The Mist set every morning.
Amazon has a page up for The Science of Stephen King: From Carrie to Cell, The Terrifying Truth Behind the Horror Masters Fiction by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg, due out from Wiley at the end of August. I had a chance to read this book in manuscript a few weeks ago, and my lengthy blurb is available on the Amazon page, along with comments from Peter Straub, Stephen Spignesi and F. Paul Wilson.
Postscripts 10 should be shipping soon, with the new King story “Graduation Afternoon.” I strongly recommend that you skip King’s introductory paragraph until after you read the story itself, because it reveals an image that is best left undiscovered until you get to that part of the story.
King is the editor for the new edition of The Best American Short Stories, an anthology that is organized by a well-known guest editor each year. King said he picked 20 stories to be featured in the 2007 edition, which will be out in October, after reading more than 400. King also said the book will contain a list of 100 short stories that weren’t chosen for the collection but made the “honor roll.” He wrote in the introduction to the collection: “There isn’t a single one … that didn’t delight me, that didn’t make me want to crow ‘Oh man, you gotta read this!’ to someone. I knew it would be that way. That’s why I took the job. Talent does more than come out; it bursts out, again and again, doing exuberant cartwheels while the band plays ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.'”
The Gunslinger’s Guidebook, a concordance for the Marvel graphic novel series, has been pushed back to August. Co-author Anthony Flamini posted this on the Marvel DT board: “Yeah, The Gunslinger’s Guidebook was originally envisioned as a handbook focusing on Roland’s Hambry adventure and everything that occurred prior to that. But as Robin Furth and I discussed things in greater detail, we decided that we also wanted to feature profiles on the all-new Mid-World characters who would be debuting for the first time in the comic adaptation following the Hambry story arc . . . characters such as the ferocious General Grissom (of the blue-faced barbarians). So that’s the primary reason for the book’s delay — but you’ll be getting a superior product packed with much more original content! The wait will be worth it!”
The first issue of The Gunslinger Born has been reprinted with a new Quesada cover. I don’t know how frequently this happens in comic-dom. Issue 3 will be released next Wednesday.
Eli Roth told SCI FI WIRE that King endorsed his version of Cell. “My first question when I adapted it was can I deviate from the book?” Roth said. “It’s Stephen King. Am I going to piss off Stephen King? He was mad at Stanley Kubrick, I don’t want him mad at me. And, finally, Stephen King was like, ‘Do whatever you want.'” Roth warned that he would be making changes to the story. “I love the opening [scene],” Roth said. “But I also want to keep, … not necessarily that same chaotic tone, but I want to keep the tension of the opening 40 pages of the book going throughout the whole film and introduce other elements. Because I think the book, for me, where it loses tension is where suddenly you don’t feel like the phone crazies are trying to kill them. … I find that it’s finding other ways to make it so you still feel the tension that any second you could get killed [and] carrying that throughout the whole film.” He hopes to get King to do a cameo. “There’s always room. That’s the good thing about Cell. Because it’s like crazy people running around trying to [kill you] It’s like everybody gets a cameo.” He hopes to shoot the movie in his native Boston, where the book is set.
