Attack! of the Killer Weblog

I was sixteen. Barnes & Noble had just opened its doors in town, and I was all about Stephen King. But, funds being low as they were, I stuck to paperbacks and the occasional loaner from the library which wound up costing almost as much as a paperback after late fees. So on this particular day, I bought a copy of It and commenced devouring. That book engulfed me. I read at night, I read between classes, I read on the stairwell after school and before Mom got there to pick me up. Never read on the half-hour commute to and from school, what with carsickness and Mom not really approving overmuch of my sudden infatuation with horror stories. She never said anything so I saw no reason to, either.

I've been thinking on this the last few days, as my current illness has had me bolted to the sofa, and I've been reading on that old rag again. I've moved it with me from my bedroom at home to my first apartment to my rented room in a house to my second apartment to my actual house. Tried to get rid of it once or twice but it always came back. And now, after reading The Dark Tower again, I'm into the thick of it. Literally. This book is thicker than many things I'm immediately familiar with. Doorstops, for example.

My reading of Stephen King marked a very specific turning point--when I went from reading "the classics" and turning up my nose at anything popular, to where I am now. That is, enjoying a good story, enjoying the search for symbolism, but overall looking to be entertained and possibly enlightened. In other words, I dropped the snobbery and got honest about what I like to read. And it's funny, now. My bookshelves are jammed with my books and my husband's books, overflowing with words put to pages, and It is an anonymous tome among hundreds. But it marks an important segue.

Not to mention, the edges of the pages are turning yellow.

This was one of the last books I bought before acid-free paper became all the rage. A cheap, cheap paperback which probably started yellowing years ago but I never took it off the shelf to check until last week. Like a horse's teeth, a book's age starts showing as yellow, then as lengthening, and then as falling ... out? Sure. Why not. But I remember thinking as a teenager that the yellowed books were really old, right ... and now, I am either not so sure, or strong in my certainty. Ah, how I hate running a fever.

Posted by mb at 2:42 PM | Permalink

I have been bedridden for three days now with an illness best described as Upper Respiratory HELL. Those three days have involved sleep, hacking, sleeping, coughing, watching Schwarzenegger movies, sleeping, drinking orange juice and delicious water, and more coughing. In between all of that, I've been thinking long thoughts, the sort that only someone half-delirious can think after months of little to no social activity.

This is my favorite time of year, see, when the fall-blooming plants start showing off, and I go to all the Back to School Sales to fight with soccer moms over bundles of paper and pens. Because? I am an office-supplies demon, can't ever get enough of them, have an entire room of my house devoted to crates full of paper and writing utensils. Is it a sickness if I actually use them? Or am I justifying any way I can? I do have an office job, now, where I get to surround myself with office supplies and do office work with them. I like that. I've been at the job over a year now, I think I can tell if I actually like it or if it's just euphoria over the paycheck--but no, I really like it. I hated to call in sick again this morning because I actually wanted to go back. It is good times.

The other good thing? I have a finished first draft of the Story that Would Not Die. I started writing backstory to it back in 2007, early, before all the fan-hitting began. And it was all set to be a short story. I was excited, thinking, "Oh boy, I can get back to the reason I got started writing in the first place--my favorite form! Short fiction! Rawk!" And then after five pages became fifteen, and twenty became fifty, I threw my head onto the desk in despair. After writing that novel a couple years back, the novel that "needed some work," the same way you'd look at a derelict house and say, "Well, at least the plumbing's still good," provided there are no hobos in the neighborhood mining for copper, I was more than a little reluctant to try again. But it seems this story had a mind of its own, and it's sitting on my hard drive and in a binder. But, good sign, writing this did not cause the hard drive in my computer to fry, kind of like the last one did. Ahem. And I've been writing on short stories that are right in line with my usual brand, whatever that was. Researching mags to submit to, as well. It's like the person I was went into hiding and now she's back, only not as much of a jerk. Clear goals and determination, man. It is what's for breakfast.

Posted by mb at 11:27 AM | Permalink