[Roll Your Own Life] The Books that Hooked Me (Part 1)

Over the last couple of months I've been keeping my brain occupied, and distracting myself of the horrific state of the world, by writing regular (if not daily) blogposts of nonsense. Looking at the comics, the movies, the TV series, and the RPGs that have all had a massive impact on my life.

Those days of daily blogposts may soon be coming to an end as I can see the need to return to my dayjob is looming ever closer. Unless something horrible happens with the R-number, despite it not actually going down at the moment, I'll be back at the day job in just over a week. I must admit, on one hand it'll be great to see the rest of the staff as I've missed them, but I'm really not looking forward to being out there - exposed to the world and its current potential dangers. How all those who have been doing it for the last ten weeks or more have been coping, both physically and mentally, astounds me, and I can only thank them for their efforts of ensuring we can still eat, get the necessary items to live, and to look after those in need. Thank you.

Anyway, with the return to work looming, there really is only one subject I haven't covered in these daily blogposts of media that has had an impact on me - Books.

I'm going to try to do them in chronological order of me reading them. Some are classics, some a little more left field, but each one of them has had an impact on me, and shaped my reading choices - and in many cases, my writing style.

So let's start at the very beginning. It's very good place to start...

IT - STEPHEN KING

I have a confession. My youth was not filled with reading books. Sure I read comics, but my very early years were mostly spent watching movies, TV, and playing with Lego and Star Wars figures. I distinctly remember reading The Secret Seven, and strangely I have a memory of reading the Action Man novel, The Taking of Monte Carrillo. Why I can remember that, I don't know...

Otherwise, I bought a lot of paperbacks - all of them movie adaptations. I have boxes of them still. It started with the novel of Star Wars, and it just kept going. Through the foil covers of the Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the weird, fake romance novel covers of Romancing the Stone and the Jewel of the Nile. I bought them all. If they had a colour photo bit in the middle, even better. It was like being able to see the movie again before VHS existed. I would read some of them them, others I'd just read the exciting bits I remembered from the movie, or skim for the extra bits that weren't in there - like some in the Ferris Bueller novelisation.

I mean, I tried other books. When I started playing D&D and Middle Earth Roleplaying I tried to read The Lord of the Rings, but really couldn't get into it. It wasn't until I went back to it over a decade later when Babylon 5 was on that I actually read it and loved it.

Anyway, I used to buy these novelisations of movies, even after VHS started being a thing. It was just the collector in me - if I liked a movie, I'd get the book of it.

In my little home town there was a little store near the biggest junction in the town. It was tiny. I mean, the whole store was about the size of a small terraced house's kitchen. You could get two customers in there at most, with a tiny counter at one end. However, they sold books, and records. I bought a lot of music in my teens, listening to vinyl with my enormous headphones on while playing games on my ZX Spectrum.

The owner of the shop was a middle aged Chinese lady who was lovely. We used to chat, and she used to order the weird records I wanted as special orders for me. And some of those weird movie novelisations too, looking up what was available from her supplier's monthly printed catalogue that looked more like a supplement to the phonebook than anything glamorous. I think outside of my family she was the only person I used to talk to for weeks on end. She probably dreaded me coming in. I'm sorry if you're reading this now...

When I went in there, there was this book on her spinner rack of novels that just kept staring at me. Literally. Because it had freakin' eyes on the cover...

IT.

This must have been 1987, as it was the paperback and it wasn't a brand new release, but I was out of school, out of work, and in a limbo - trying to write on my ancient electric typewriter.

I'd been in a few times to get various records over a number of weeks, but that cover was still there - staring at me. So bloomin' unsettling.

Eventually, I caved, and bought it. It really wasn't the sort of thing I read - it didn't tie into anything (at least not yet) but I'd seen the movies - Carrie, The Shining, Christine, The Dead Zone, Silver Bullet... And on top of that, it was HUGE. I wasn't a big reader, and I hadn't managed to get through The Lord of the Rings, and here I was buying a book that was longer. Over a thousand pages of it...

Anyway, I bought it. And blasted through it. Not the fast speed of most dedicated readers, I'm never a fast reader, but I did get through it pretty swiftly for me. I was hooked. Mostly because it had the weird nostalgia element, and playing upon your childhood fears. I loved it.

So much so, that when I finished it, I started reading the rest of Stephen King's work. I moved on to Christine - which I also loved. I knew the film really well, so the extra stuff in the book that wasn't in the movie was brilliant. It was like a massive director's cut of the movie. And then I moved onto The Stand, Carrie, The Shining... and kept going.

Stephen King is the reason I read.

Simple as that. I owe it all to him.

I've kept reading his work too. I'm a bit behind - I think I got sidetracked about Duma Key era, but I loved the Dark Tower series, and especially loved Insomnia and Rose Madder.

I've mentioned on this blog before the surreal moment when I finally got to meet Stephen King. My reading had got to the pitch that I was working in Ottakar's bookstore, looking after the SF/Fantasy section and becoming an advisor to the chain of 140+ stores to recommend titles to the genre ranges. I was even editor of their chain-wide SF/Fantasy/Horror newsletter.

Thanks to this, the sales reps from various publishers knew me, and the awesome rep from Hodder - Stephen King's publisher in the UK - invited me and my wife (who also worked for Ottakar's at that time) to go to the big book launch for Stephen King's new book, Lisey's Story. It was more like a weekend, as we had tickets to the talk one evening, and the following evening there was a launch party in a weird building off the Strand in London. It looked like a masonic temple, but within its walls Alabama 3 were playing.

The evening went on, the publishers and booksellers were mingling, and eventually - tired from a hammering six hour book signing in a supermarket - Stephen King came in, got up on stage, and sang along with Alabama 3 (see the blurry photo to the right)...

Our sales rep from Hodder spotted me and Debs, and said - "Have you met him yet?" - Hell no, not yet! "He'll head this way when he gets off stage, wait there..."

So we did. And Stephen King was introduced to us by our lovely Hodder rep. We shook his hand, Debs gave him a bar of chocolate (as the UK chocolate is far superior - you don't know what you're missing, honestly), Debs thanked him for his books really changing our lives, and I kinda just stood there going... "errrrr"...  And off he went, chocolate in hand.

Anyway, that's about it really. All I can say again is thank you, Stephen King. Without you, I doubt I would have been as big a book reader as I've become. I doubt I would have ended up working in book retail for eight years. Thank you.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 13)

LOCKE & KEY (2008-2013, and more)

Another one I came a little late to, I completely missed the first few issues of Locke & Key when it first launched. Which is ridiculous as the writer was someone we'd known about before. Joe Hill. Probably bored of being called Stephen King's son, Joe Hill had a novel out in 2007 called Heart Shaped Box, and he came to our hometown to do a signing at the bookstore where Debs worked - I remember she created this display in the store of an old suit she'd bought from a charity shop, suspended from the ceiling. It was really creepy. Debs loved the book, and his other works, so it was surprising we completely missed the first few issues.

Those first issues sold out really quickly so we just waited until IDW produced a collection of the first storyline, Welcome to Lovecraft. We bought the cool hardcover, and were blown away by how cool it is. The storytelling is phenomenal, with some amazing art by Gabriel Rodriguez that has you looking over pages again and again to get every little detail.

It's so brilliantly drawn there's one bit that really stands out where the characters are looking for keys in Keyhouse and they pass one hidden on top of a clock (I think it is), then go back and find it... but you could see it in earlier panels, just a little detail that the eagle-eyed would spot.

Anyway, for those who don't know, Locke & Key is about a family (the Lockes) who move back into their old ancestral home (Keyhouse) after the father of the family is brutally murdered. While there, the three kids (Bode, Tyler, and Kinsey) discover the secrets of the house, of their family, and the various keys in the house that each have a unique power.

Unfortunately, Dodge, a mysterious stranger is released from their imprisonment and tries to gather all of the keys for their own evil doings and to finish what had been started a generation before.

It's just brilliant. The characters are great, each with their own hang-ups and flaws, while Bode (the youngest) tackles each key discovery with dangerous joy. The moment when they discover the Head Key, one that literally opens your head so you can remove aspects of your personality, or revisit memories, and Bode is just stood there with his head open thinking it's the coolest thing ever... Amazing.

As the past is revealed and you discover what happened with their father and his group of friends, it just adds a sense of horrible foreboding that it'll all happen again. And the final volume was so tense, it was a really sweaty-palm read.

So tense it was, just the memory of what happens made the final couple of episodes of Netflix's adaptation of Locke & Key even more scary. You knew how bad it was in the comic and kinda couldn't believe they were going to do it on TV...

Brilliant stuff.

The main storyline of Locke & Key finished in 2013, and there are some lovely hardcover collections out there that are a must have for anyone who likes spooky, cool and incredibly imaginative comics. And if you watched the Netflix series and enjoyed it, seriously read the comics.

There have been some short stories published since that tell various tales of Keyhouse in the years before the Locke kids show up, and the most recent one hints at a new continuation. Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez are working on a new storyline, which leads into a cross-over with the universe of Sandman (another of my favourite comics), joining Lucifer's Key to Hell into the Keyhouse mythology.

I can't wait.

Must admit, I do think it would make an excellent tabletop roleplaying game... (hint hint)

#RPGaDAY 2019 - DAY 25: CALAMITY, DAY 26: IDEA and DAY 27: SUSPENSE

Spider-droid has seen better days, time for a hot bath! Custom Autocratik dice thanks to www.chimericdesigns.co.uk

Much like the Doctor said, "I got away from me, yeah." Day job, deadlines, and so on has meant I'm three... yes, THREE... days behind on #RPGaDAY 2019.

*Insert Charlie Brown Aaugh!*

Time to catch up!

DAY 25: CALAMITY

Not really sure what I had in mind for CALAMITY - I guess the thing I always think of when it comes to RPGs and calamities is the good ol' fumble. At least that's where I remember it starting. Fumble tables, when you roll so badly that you really - I mean, REALLY - mess it up big-time. That kinda escalated over the years to become "disasters" or "Despairs" or the like.

Are they good for the game? It's a bit of both really - there's the advantage that it really shakes things up, adds some challenge and often some humour, and can lead to some exciting story developments. However, I've noticed a trend in "Fail Forwards" thinking - you don't get what you want, but something helps with the plot. Can they both exist in one game? Hmmm...

DAY 26: IDEA

Well, that's always my problem. I have too many ideas for games and not enough time / resources / connections / money to produce them. Possibly the best known of these ideas is the Harry Potter RPG I'd love to write if I could only fund the massive licensing deal and convince J K Rowling that RPGs are a great idea. Then there's the Ka-Tet RPG I wanted to write - roleplaying in the many worlds of Stephen King. I tried for that one, but it was just as the movie deal was being signed for the Dark Tower, so they said it wasn't a property they were interested in licensing out.

Problem is, I watch things and think "That would make a brilliant RPG" - the most recent one was watching 3Below: Tales of Arcadia. Connected to the amazing Trollhunters, and the third series Wizards coming later this year, it would be a great RPG...

And Twin Peaks...

Maybe I should just stick to working on WILD...

DAY 27: SUSPENSE

Onto today's post, catching up slowly! SUSPENSE! Hate to bring it up again, but our most recent game of Fria Ligan's ALIEN was one of the most terrifying experiments in suspense building I've had at a game for a while. I'm guessing it's because the scenario just kept piling on the tension in the form of infections, secret player character motivations, the knowledge that at least one of the xeno/neomorphs was on the loose in the ship - it meant even moving from one area of the ship to the next was full of suspense.

Great! If very stressful.

LOST the plot...

This is the end... beautiful friend.

Endings have been on my mind a lot recently. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I've been finishing a few series that I've been reading for what seems like forever.

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Stephen King's The Dark Tower. I'm a massive King fan, and I mentioned in an earlier post that I had the honour of meeting him a few years ago when he was promoting Lisey's Story. The Dark Tower was his epic, his fantasy story that tied all of his universes together - all circling the Dark Tower, and Rowland the Gunslinger's quest to reach it.

It's taken many, many years for King to write it, and almost as many for me to read it. I've reread the first three, been sidetracked by other books, and forgotten the series almost entirely but I finally reached the last page a couple of weeks ago and was left with that disappointment that usually accompanies massive works of fiction.

Let's just get this straight - the ending of The Dark Tower is just about perfect. Without giving anything away, it is a logical conclusion, and a perfect resolution to the story. But, me being me, I just wasn't satisfied.

Maybe it's just me.

Yesterday, I finished reading the comic series Unwritten. Great stuff, about the power of words and stories, and imbuing a person with that sort of power. It defies genre, messes with the medium, and when the main story finished it came to its perfect ending. An ending that goes against expectations, and is another great and brilliantly suited ending. And again, I just kinda felt empty.

Maybe I just don't like endings.

Take TV for example. I quite enjoyed True Blood. Pretty good series, nothing groundbreaking, but that ending!! Oh, jeez... with a couple of minor tweaks it could have had a great ending.

Battlestar Galactica (the remake). I loved that series. Loved every second - brilliantly done, amazing acting, effects, and story... but again, that ending left fans very, very divided.

Of course, the series I felt most betrayed by was LOST. I loved LOST. Loved it. Was obsessed by it. I watched it as it aired, I bought the DVDs, I read the books (even the tie in weird one - Bad Twin), played the awesome online Alternate Reality Game (The Hanso Foundation stuff, and the Rachel Blake blogs), and the action figures. LOST was great. Mysterious, intriguing, and brilliant.

When the island moved I went insane with joy. It was great. And then the time travel stuff? Awesome.

And then came the ending. An ending that they promised us (way back at the end of season one) wouldn't happen. They said that wasn't what was going on, but they lied to us and that last episode ruined everything for me. I've not rewatched LOST, I've given most of the books to charity shops, sold off the action figures, and find it hard to think about that series at all.

Maybe that's why I'm having a problem finishing my writing...  I don't want to pull a LOST. Luckily, I know how the trilogy of fiction books that tie in with WILD end. I know how that last scene plays out - and I don't think it's a cop-out. But then, I bet Damon Lindelof didn't think the ending of LOST was either...

Well. We'll see. NaNoWriMo is looming ever closer, and I'm undecided as to whether I'm taking part - I probably shall, attempting to either make a first draft of the second book in the series, or rewrite the first for a new and improved draft.

Only time will tell!

Until next time, stay multi-classy and LLAP.

D

PITCH - KA-TET: Adventures in the Worlds of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower"

"First come smiles, then lies. The last is gunfire." 

Our world is connected to many others, and at the centre is the Dark Tower - a nexus point of time and space, the heart of all worlds - a tower under threat from an ancient evil. A group of mismatched "heroes" are thrown together from across space and time to embark on an epic journey across wastelands, facing horrors, to reach the Tower to restore the Beams and to save reality itself.

However, Roland, Eddie, Susannah and Jake, along with their billy-bumbler, Oy, were not the only Ka-Tet travelling through the realities to the Tower. Now players of Ka-Tet can form their own group of characters to battle the forces of evil through the many worlds of Stephen King's imagination. 

Ka-Tet: Adventures in the Worlds of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" is a 304pg core rulebook. Within its pages you will find:

• The complete game system, utilising the Rapid Die Movement system from Autocratik's game "WILD", adapted to use D19s (available separately)
• Character creation system that allows the creation of player characters from across multiple realities, from the gunslingers of Mid-World, to the darker side of our world.
• Pregenerated characters for Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, along with stats for the many villains and helpers they will meet on their epic quest.
• Introductory adventure "The Drawing" to bring the characters together, to form their own Ka-Tet, and to launch them on their quest to the Dark Tower.

304page hardcover

Written and Designed by: David F. Chapman

Cover art: Michael Welan 

An Autocratik Publication

This isn't a real RPG, like The Beatles RPG - but again, there's a level of hope there. 

But, there's a little tale to tell here. As you'll probably know from my many blog posts, especially this one about Carrie, I've always been a massive fan of Stephen King. Meeting him during his Lisey's Story tour in London was easily one of the highlights of my time working in the book trade, and it was reading IT that really got me reading books for pleasure. Without Stephen King, I don't know if I'd have been much of a reader, which probably would have meant I'd have never worked in book stores, and I may never have read Harry Potter, and... oh, it's all too horrific to consider.

About four years ago I was thinking about how cool Steven King's universe was, how it all tied together across multiple books and worlds, all connected to the Dark Tower, and I thought how cool it would be to have a roleplaying game with the Dark Tower as its heart. Sure you could play the Gunslinger and other awesome characters from the Dark Tower series, but they travel across the world of The Stand, and just about every King novel has some connection, albeit in a minor way...

It would mean that your Dark Tower RPG could have supplements to play Salem's Lot, The Stand, Insomnia, Eyes of the Dragon, IT, Black House, Desperation, Hearts in Atlantis, The Talisman, and even The Shining. Just how cool would it be to play in Steven King's universe?

I still had contacts at King's UK publishers, and dropped them an email about it, and they kindly forwarded my query to Stephen King's lawyers. After many days of waiting, the verdict was a no - understandable really, I was a little fish in a big pond, especially as the Dark Tower was in the middle of various changing plans for TV series / movies / TV movies / movie series or something... the talks are still going on. Maybe someday in the future they'll sort it all out and we'll get to see Roland on the big and small screens.

A game set in King's worlds would have been cool, and it hasn't put me off revisiting the many dark settings of the master of horror. Far from it. As long as Stephen King keeps writing, I'll certainly be reading them.

Thankee-Sai!

"They're all going to laugh at you..."

[This blog-post was originally written to feature a promotion for the remake of Stephen King's Carrie. Since the promotional videos are no longer online, these have been cut to get straight to the story of how I first started reading Stephen King, to meeting the legend himself...]

I’ve always been a big fan of Stephen King. This really does go back to my youth. In the past, before the internet and the masses of video games out there, there wasn’t really a lot to do except watch TV, go to the cinema, and in my case, play Dungeons & Dragons. I used to read, but my reading really consisted of my weekly subscription at the local newsagents to a comic (which started with Look-In, progressed onto the UK Spider-man reprints “Super Spider-man and the Titans” and then onto the comic that everyone had to read every week – 2000AD). 

When it came to books, I really didn’t read an awful lot as a kid. I used to get the novelisations of movies I’d been to see, so that I could relive the movie again and again. I could skip to the cool part, and while I was reading Lucas’ novelisation of Star Wars, I could picture the X-Wings over the surface of the Death Star, and the extra stuff about Biggs was like the deleted scenes of the Eighties…

Even then, I didn’t have much time for reading. That was until most of the gaming group vanished off to University and I found myself bored and unemployed, trying to write scenarios for Ghostbusters.

We didn’t have a great bookshop in my hometown. It used to be part corner shop, part card shop, and part bookshop all crammed into a room about the size of Harry Potter’s cupboard under the stairs. But they also sold vinyl records (yes, LPs and 12” singles) so I used to pop in there when there was something I was after, and they’d order it for me. But there was one book in there that unnerved me. It used to taunt me while the old lady that used to run the place rummaged through the delivery for whatever obscure Mike Oldfield or Jean Michel Jarre album I’d asked them to get in for me. The cover was of a drain with a pair of inhuman eyes staring out of the darkness. In the water, a lone paper boat drifted towards the void, while a red balloon floated to one side.

The book taunted me. It looked horrific. It was huge – longer than Lord of the Rings (which I’d tried to read when I was thirteen and gave up on – don’t worry, I’ve read it and loved it since, but that’s another story that involves Babylon 5). But something compelled me to get it. In the same way that the cover of Kult lured me into purchasing that game many, many years later.

That book, of course, was Stephen King’s “IT”.

I’d never read anything that long before, but there was something about the writing style that just pulled me in. It had everything I could ever imagine in a book. The lead characters – the Losers Club – appealed to me instantly, being one of those kids who wasn’t popular, suffered a little from bullying, and ended up with a group of like minded “nerds”. A group that formed bonds that would stay with us the rest of our lives. 

The villain of the piece, the IT of the title, appeared as the things these kids were afraid of. Bloody clowns. I hate clowns. What’s the point of them? And that mind-blowing ending that could never be captured on film, it just amazed me. A book that looked like a camp horror novel was far from it. It was brilliantly written, with characters you cared about. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of them. My record buying habit was replaced as I purchased most of Stephen King’s work up to that point. I blasted through Carrie in a week, faced heartbreak and returning evil in Pet Sematary, lapped up every moment in Christine, and survived Captain Trips in The Stand.

I watched the movies as well, bought the soundtracks of a couple, but as with all things, real life gets in the way. I got a job, which lead to art college, and moving away from home.

Luckily, my future wife was a big fan of Stephen King as well, and when we both ended up working at the same huge bookstore, Ottakar’s, we rekindled our love of King’s work. We caught up with his works and devoured the titles of his second renaissance – Insomnia, and Rose Madder especially, before Debs convinced me to give The Dark Tower a try and loaned me The Gunslinger.

When Lisey’s Story was about to be published in 2006, the publishers hosted an evening talk in London in association with one of the major newspapers, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hear him talk in person. But as an added bonus, booksellers from around the country were invited to a private book launch in an old masonic temple behind the Strand in London the following day. We, of course, leapt at the chance.

King takes to the stage to sing with
Alabama 3. (Sorry about the
grainy photo)

The publishers of King in the UK have always been incredibly good to us, and our regular sales rep from Hodder came over to see us in the strange environment. There were complimentary drinks, nibbles and copies of the book, while Alabama 3 played on a strange stage to the rear of the building. The rep explained that Stephen King had been signing all day at some supermarket somewhere, and was exhausted and may not make much of an appearance, but he insisted that he’d try to get us to meet the man himself somehow. Then to make the evening even more surreal, Stephen King appeared in the venue, and took to the stage, joining Alabama 3 and singing along to a couple of songs. 

He apologised that he was worn out from a gruelling signing session and couldn’t stay, but the ever-wonderful rep from Hodder ushered us to where King would be exiting the building for the briefest of encounters. 

It’s at those moments that you realise that you don’t really know what to say.

What can you say to him? Do you ask how he is? Ask how he’s enjoying the UK? Something banal like that?

Or do you explain to him that he is really the reason I started reading books for pleasure? Without picking up that copy of IT I may never have ended up working in a bookstore (I still cite working for Ottakar’s as being one of the best “day job” experiences of my life).

The rep stopped King and his entourage briefly as they were making their way out of the building, and said that he just wanted him to meet some of the booksellers from Ottakar’s who were selling his books so enthusiastically. Stephen King stopped, and despite looking exhausted by the insanely long day he’d had, he shook our hands and said hello. 

Words were lost completely. It was as if I’d lost all power to communicate. I may have just made a meeping noise, but that’s about all I remember. Debs managed to thank him for all the hours of enjoyment we’d had from his books, though she always cringes at the thought as she opened her one line to Stephen King by calling him “dude”. 

I really don’t see that as a bad thing. He is a dude. The dude. He’s as Dude as Lebowski. He’s the grand dude of horror and suspense.

I like to think that in that brief moment, before he was whisked away (with the chocolate that Debs gave him) to rest and recover before yet another intense signing period, that just the smallest amount of particles from the hand of Stephen King himself remained on our shaken hands. And that somewhere, hidden at an atomic level, the smallest part of King’s writing ability has transferred itself to me. If it has, it is laying dormant somewhere, waiting to be activated, because I’m still churning out the same old crap as I ever was.

Blimey.

That was a bit more than I was expecting. Amazing how many memories just one trailer can conjure up. I guess, that’s the power of Stephen King. More power to you, dude.