I love hearing about authors and books that never before pinged my RADAR, and Nick Kaufmann is one of them: I got an earlier copy of Dying Is My Business a few weeks before, and turning the first page found me grabbed immediately by the story, my treachea firmly gripped. So, here’s Nick to answer some questions about that very book…

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I’m a forty-something author from Brooklyn, NY with a background in the book business. I was Publicity Manager for a small literary press, a pitchman for a widely respected PR firm specializing in TV and radio author appearances, a bookstore clerk, an independent bookstore owner, a manager for Barnes & Noble, and a development associate for a top literary and film agent. I was also manager of a small indie video store for a time. I’ve been nominated for a few literary awards: the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the International Thriller Writers Award. I haven’t won any, though. Clearly I’m a charlatan.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

DYING IS MY BUSINESS is a hardboiled urban fantasy-noir about a thief for a Brooklyn crime syndicate who can’t stay dead. Also, monsters.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

This novel is such a burrito of pop culture influences that it’s hard for me to pinpoint just one. Basically, I knew I wanted to write a chase novel set in New York City. I also knew I wanted the impetus to be something different from the usual thriller MacGuffin of a stolen thumb drive or microchip. I’ve always loved supernatural stories, so I went in that direction instead. Now the MacGuffin is a ancient, mysterious box that our hero, Trent, must retrieve and protect without knowing what’s inside. Of course, what’s inside turns out to be something awful that puts all of New York City in jeopardy.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

I think I bring a few things to the table. First and foremost is my sense of humor. DYING IS MY BUSINESS is a dark and gritty novel at heart, but it’s also got its fair share of humor. There’s a lot of snark. But there’s joy, too. There are so many stories out there that don’t have any joy in them. I wanted to change that and lighten the darkness of this story with actual moments of joy. Another thing I bring along is a background in horror rather than fantasy. Most of my published work has been in the horror genre. So I called on that to instill the world in this novel with a certain darkness, a certain creepiness. Here, magic is dark and dangerous and has the potential to drive you insane. It can also mutate you physically into something monstrous. Many of the supernatural entities Trent encounters are truly alien and unknowable. This isn’t the kind of urban fantasy where magicians drive tour buses in their off hours (I love you, Egg Shen!). This is an urban fantasy where magicians risk madness or worse whenever they cast a spell.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING DYING IS MY BUSINESS?

I spent two long, grueling years writing and rewriting and rewriting again until I was satisfied with the novel. The work was hard, no doubt about it. Sometimes I felt like I was going nuts. But the hardest thing of all was not knowing if the work would pay off. I didn’t have an agent at the time. I certainly didn’t have a publisher waiting for me. The novel was written on spec, with no guarantee that I wasn’t wasting two years of my life where I could have been earning money instead with a “normal” job. Luckily, I have a very patient and gainfully employed wife who refused to let me quit. Believe me, I know how lucky I am. Not every writer has that luxury. But the gamble paid off, thank goodness. The novel landed me a great agent, and he, in turn, got me a deal with a great publisher.

 WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING DYING IS MY BUSINESS?

I learned some hefty lessons about plotting. I love great characters and I love emotional arcs, but I’ve always been a plot-heavy writer. So I thought writing a chase novel would be a breeze. Cue the loud buzzer and the giant red X from Family Feud. Turned out I had a lot to learn about plot and pacing. My initial draft was crazy front-loaded with exposition. I guess I thought I needed to get it all out of the way so I could get on with the action. My mistake. I eventually learned through trial and error that doling out information over time made it far more readable. It also made the mystery at the heart of the novel that much more compelling. Another thing I learned was how important choosing the right POV is. At first, the novel was written in third person, but it kept fighting me. I could only progress in fits and starts. It was only after I switched to first person that the chain caught and the novel took off.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT DYING IS MY BUSINESS?

I genuinely love the world I created for this novel. Dark magic, monsters lurking under the streets or around alley corners, even a theological hierarchy of sorts with entities like the Guardians and the Ancients. On top of that, I got to base it all in my hometown of New York City! Everyone who lives here has a love/hate relationship with the city. I’m no exception. I got to show my love for the city through the eyes of my characters, but also show my frustration with it by, well, destroying parts of it.

 WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

I would trust myself more. I think a lot of what made this novel such a long journey (and by “long journey” I mean “stultifying shit show”) to write was that I wasn’t trusting my instincts as a storyteller. I second-guessed myself a lot. I wondered whether certain choices would limit my readership. At times I over-explained things because I didn’t trust the reader to get it. I see now how all of that existed only to trip me up. They were distractions at best, and pitfalls at worst. Once I trusted myself, things went a lot better.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

I think my favorite paragraph may be the opening lines of the novel. Which is really two paragraphs. I’m totally cheating.

“It’s not as easy as it looks to come back from the dead.

It’s a shock to the system, even more than dying is. The first new breath burns like fire. The first new heartbeat is like a sharp, urgent pain. Emerging from the darkness like that, the sudden light is blinding, confusing. Coming back from the dead feels less like a miracle than like waking up with the world’s most debilitating hangover.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

The sequel, currently titled DIE AND STAY DEAD, is set to come out from St. Martin’s in the fall of 2014. I also have a story coming out later this month in PS Publishing’s new anthology, DARK FUSIONS, which is edited by New York Times bestselling author Lois Gresh. In the near future, I plan to start work on the third book, tentatively titled ONLY THE DEAD SLEEP, as well as another urban fantasy that’s completely unrelated.

Nicholas Kaufmann: Website / Twitter

Dying Is My Business: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound / Powells

It has begun.

What has begun?

The period of time whereupon my wife has left her job and will be a stay-at-home mother to our darling little wolverine tornado, B-Dub, and where I am the sole provider for the family.

This is awesome.

I do not say that snarkily. I say that with great oomphing trumpets. My chest is puffed out. My victorious plumage is on colorful display. My cloaca is flush with turgid triumph.

This is awesome.

It is awesome in the colloquial sense, as in, “This is great.”

It is also awesome in the proper sense of the word: awesome like a tsunami, like one’s imagined God, like a meteor made of flaming lions and electric guitars.

And in that proper sense, it is also terrifying.

Writing’s been good to me. But it’s not a job with a steady paycheck. It’s not universally considered to be a reliable, easy career. Again: it’s been good to me. I’ve little cause to worry at this stage in the game. But writers, as the saying goes, must be sharks. We gotta swim forward —

Or we drown.

As such, this is where I turn to you and I ask for your help.

I’m not looking for charity. We’re financially comfortable — “comfortable” in the sense we can pay all our bills without complaint, but also “comfortable” in the sense that one small tragedy could cut our legs out from under us — but really, we’re solid. Just the same, I need to keep doing this to survive, and keeping on keeping as a writer-type means having an audience there willing to catch me when I, well, make jumps like this one.

And catching me means a couple different things.

It means buying my books, for one. I just put up a bundle yesterday where you can get all my six author-published writing books for a mere ten bucks until the end of November.

Maybe you’d dig a woman who can see how you’re going to die just by touching them.

Or maybe you got a hankering for a corn-swept dystopian future full of adventure and turmoil and teenage tragedy.

Could be you’d like to read a story about a dude punching his way through the Secret Hell beneath the streets of Manhattan in search of his traitorous daughter.

Might be instead that you’d like to read about a teen girl going up against the institutionalized bullies of her town and trying to take down a dog-fighting ring.

Plus, you know, all those other writing books.

Point is: hey, options.

Now, I recognize that not everybody is flush with the kind of disposable cash that makes procuring entertainment easy or palatable, and that’s okay, too. In that case, I’d simply appreciate it if you told some folks about my books. Spread the word, as it were. Maybe write a review if you’ve read something of mine in the past. Anything to lubricate that whole “word-of-mouth” thing a little bit.

All this goes to helping keep me solvent as a writer. It helps pay bills and put food in the mouth of the toddler. And it helps keep this website around — as the site has grown, its hosting bills have grown with it, and these days it costs a pretty penny to keep her running.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for helping me stitch together the parachute as I plummet.

*shrieks in victory as I fall through someone’s barn*

Six books.

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING.

500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER.

500 MORE WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER.

500 WAYS TO TELL A BETTER STORY.

CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY.

REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY.

All available in one bundle.

Usual cost: ~$18.00.

Available until the end of November as a NaNoWriMo special for: $10.00.

(All of these are PDF except for 500 Ways to Tell a Better Story, which is PDF, Kindle, and ePub, all wrapped up in a delicious zip file. If you want the books through Amazon or B&N, they are available at each, though not in “bundled” format.)

Buy now direct from this site (click the image above or the direct link below), and you’ll get a *.txt file with a download link within it. Note that Payhip is an e-book delivery service that uses Paypal to collect and distribute funds.

(If you have any issues with the download, please email me at terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com in order to get it resolved. Thanks!)

Direct link to bundle:  https://payhip.com/b/NsWQ

What follows below is the presentation speech I gave at this year’s GenreCon in Brisbane, Australia. I had originally thought to do a 25 list devoted to what I see as problems in genre fiction from the authorial perspective — but I was taken by the sheer love of All Things Genre at the conference and decided instead to be a fountain, not a drain, and talk about all the things that genre fiction does well.

It seemed to go over well in the room — then again, the room featured alcohol, so I probably could’ve slurred my way through a Neil Diamond song and done all right. Just the same, here’s the list of 25 — edited just slightly in places to make it more blog-palatable.

* * *

So, here’s the thing — I got to Australia on Thursday after 24 total hours of travel, including one 16-hour direct flight from Dallas to Brisbane — and then, ignoring every caveat and whispered warning I got drunk last night and ended up doing karaoke with a cabal of you fine upstanding citizens. And yet, I’m feeling pretty good? I think maybe my hangover and my jet lag had a fight this morning inside my soul and obliterated one another? Whatever.

Just the same, it’s worth mentioning that at any point I could fall asleep right here during my speech and if I do, I’ll politely ask that you just quietly go on with your banquet and leave me be. It’s also possible that I’m so mentally broken right now that I’m up in my room giving this speech to an audience of half-eaten biscuits and crumpled tissues.

I should also make note that this speech will contain words that are considered by many to be quite vulgar — so, if that bothers you, please be advised that the safe word is KOOKABURRA.

Now — I’m told that many folks were hoping I’d do a list of 25 things as I do quite frequently at my blog, terribleminds — but I’ll have you know I won’t be pinned down by your fascist expectations of me OKAY THANK YOU.

Now! I’ve prepared for you this evening a very special list of…

Ahem, 25 things…

SHUT UP QUIT LOOKING AT ME.

So now I give you:

25 REASONS I FUCKING LOVE GENRE FICTION

(Which is not the same thing as 25 REASONS I LOVE FUCKING GENRE FICTION, as that paints a rather unsavory picture.)

1. VAMPIRES

Mean vampires! Sweet vampires! Surly vampires! Vampires who glitter. Vampires who only glitter when they’ve killed and eaten a stripper. Romancey vampires. Vampires that look like Willem Dafoe on chemotherapy. Vampires who hate werewolves. Vampires who fuck werewolves. Vampires who hatefuck werewolves! Any flavor of vampire you want: genre fiction can accommodate.

2. ROBOTS

Do I even need to say more than just “robots?” WELL WHO CARES ‘CAUSE I’M GONNA. Robots that look like people! Robots that love people. Robots that want to eradicate the fleshy meat-sacks called “people.” Robots that are artificially intelligent! Hive-mind robots! Robots trained to kill. Robots that empty litter boxes. Sad robots. Happy robots. Space robots. Domo arigato, Mister Roboto.

3. SEX

Sexy sex! Unsexy sex. Awkward sex. Weird sex. Kinky sex! Bondage. Spanking. Riding crops. Kissy kissy. Touchie touchie. Turgid and tumescent! Okay, maybe not so much that last one. Point is: genre isn’t afraid of love! Of romance! Of all the sex that comes with it!

4. ALL OF THE ABOVE, AND THEN SOME

What I’m trying to say is, with genre, you can have it all. Robots making sweet love to vampires? Done and done! And it doesn’t have to stop there. Ladle in a couple unicorns, a spaceship or three, a handful of Greek Gods, a crime scene photographer, a serial killer, a dominatrix, a steampunk wombat, AND BY GOLLY YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF A STORY.

5. GO ANYWHERE, DO ANYTHING

Genre fiction takes us to places and lets us experience things that are built out of — to borrow a phrase from Willy Wonka — “pure imagination.” We can ride on the backs of dragons, solve a squicky homicide with a grumpy detective, navigate the moaning, shambling corpse-stench apocalypse of zombies, partake in the pleasures of a lunar brothel (be sure to get checked for MOON SYPHILIS because for reals that’s a bad one). Genre fiction ensures that no realm or time period is closed to us.

6. IT TAKES US AWAY FROM OUR ORDINARY LIVES

Genre fiction lets us buy the ticket and take a ride away from our own lives. Hey, listen, sometimes? Life will punch you right in the Chicken Twisties — it’ll kick you square in the Tim-Tams. See? Local references, Australia! Now I am one of you! Ahem. What was I saying? Ah, yes. Jobs and laundry and paying bills and commuting to work and all the mundane rigors of an average life can be mitigated by opening the magical mystery box that is a book of genre fiction.

7. WHAT I MEAN IS, IT AIN’T LITERARY FICTION

Oh, I’m not knocking literary fiction — stories across the whole range of human experience have value. But sometimes you want to read fewer books about intellectual ennui and MORE books about SEXY STEAMPUNK WOMBATS.

8. BUT IT CAN DAMN SURE BE AS LITERARY AS WE WANT IT TO BE

Uh, hello, China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Connie Willis? Genre fiction can bring the literary cred. Our work can resonate with powerful themes, with lyricism and rhythm, with complex characters, and have just as much Narcissistic navel-gazing as those other guys, goddamnit.

9. THE TRUTH ABOUT LITERARY FICTION AND GENRE FICTION

Oh, hey, dirty publishing secret: that literary book that won all the awards? Yeah, it probably didn’t sell that many copies, and was paid for on the backs of all the genre releases that came before it. That’s right — literary fiction is subsidized by the strong sales of, drum roll please, genre releases. BOOM. I think this is where I’m supposed to drop the mic, but I don’t actually have a mic, because this is a blog post translating a speech where I did have a mic, but it was totally attached to the podium. Making this all very awkward.

10. GENRE CAN BE THE OPPOSITE OF ESCAPIST, TOO

We think that genre is taking us away — to far-flung castles and distant nebulae — but often it’s really taking us home. These books of great imagination are the elaborate shadows cast on the walls by the lives and the people and the things we already know.

11. BECAUSE GENRE FICTION OFFERS FANTASTIC LIES THAT SPEAK COMMON TRUTHS

All fiction is of course a lie — but genre fiction turns up the volume on those lies all the way to 11. But those lies are themselves a lie — the fiction itself a fiction, because all these crazy things we’re making up are here to deliver ideas and arguments and themes that speak to real things. The troubles of galactic colonists are really our troubles. The love triangles of star-crossed characters really speak to our own fears and desires about love. Genre traps the real inside the unreal, like a mosquito trapped in beautiful amber, or like a unicorn inside of a piano crate that I will sell to poachers for its delicious unicorn meat to feed my family DON’T JUDGE ME MY TODDLER NEEDS DIAPERS AND DADDY NEEDS WHISKEY.

12. GENRE FICTION CAN SAY THINGS ABOUT OUR WORLD

The Hunger Games is really telling us about what war does to children. Some say that Dune shows us an allegory about the Middle East. My own book, Under the Empyrean Sky, delivers an adventure story in a dystopian cornpunk future ravaged by bloodthirsty corn, climate change, and rampant wealth disparity — oh, what you didn’t think I wasn’t going to plug my own books, did you? Pssh. Whatever. I blackened my shame sensors with the heel of a boot a long time ago (as I think many writers have). So get used to it.

13. GENRE FICTION CAN SAY THINGS ABOUT US

Zombie apocalypse stories present a cynical view of man as his own worst enemy; stories of sex and romance telegraph our secretmost desires and fantasies; crime fiction often shines a light into the darkest corners of our own souls. Genre fiction is a circus funhouse mirror — we look and we see the warped vision of vengeful angels and roguish pirates, of cyborg brides and seductive steampunk wombats — but what we’re really seeing is ourselves looking back, clad as cosplayers and costumers wearing outfits that do not hide who we are but rather, accentuate and reveal. (The night of this speech, by the way, I masqueraded as someone who was not a writer — meaning, I wore pants.)

14. SUBVERSIVE SOCIAL POWER

Do not neglect to embrace the subversive social power of genre fiction — books of various genres can carry powerful messages about women, about people of color, about the unfortunate supremacy of heteronormative white dudes living on Heteronormative White Dude Mountain. I might suggest that as a cultural object, some genre works are best when they take the form of a big-ass hammer to destroy those walls and barriers that hold us back as human beings.

15. GENRE CAN HELP CHANGE THE WORLD

Lev Grossman calls genre fiction “disruptive technology” — and that makes sense. I mean, jeez. Scientists actually read science-fiction! Here’s a brief story — my writing partner and I had a short film called PANDEMIC out at Sundance in 2011, and we crafted around that a rather large transmedia experience that simulated this supernatural pandemic day by day throughout the festival. And we had scientists from around the world make use of the data that came out of that experience in order to help show how pandemics — real ones, not ones with monsters running around — spread.

16. BECAUSE GENRE CAN HELP CHANGE US

I feel changed every time I read a great genre novel. I feel challenged and energized like I’ve just had a hard hit of creative and intellectual caffeine — genre fiction forces us to take a long look at some really big ideas, man: love and sex, the past and the future, life and death, something-something steampunk wombats. Man, you guys, can we just talk about how adorable wombats are? Like, for real? As an American, I assume all Australians just have wombats hanging around their houses and I am so angry they won’t let me have one.

17. BECAUSE GENRE FICTION MADE ME WANT TO BE A WRITER

I remember reading the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander while sitting on the beach and being transported away from the sand and the sea to this fantastical place and I was so moved by moments within those mythic stories that I have since wanted to be a writer — a fierce need only increased by the great authors I read and love: Robin Hobb, Robert McCammon, Joe Lansdale, Bradley Denton — and since then I’ve been rejecting the beach and the sea and the sand and the sun to hide in my penmonkey cave ever since. (Which probably explains why we’re I’m butt-white and pasty. But hey, I got color in Australia! The kind of color where my forehead looked like a boiled lobster and has been shedding its flesh for the last two days. CURSE YOU OZZIE DAYSTAR. This is why I stay inside and read books and stuff.)

18. BECAUSE GENRE FICTION HAS TAUGHT ME THINGS

Every time I read or write a book I learn so many new things! I learn new words and new ideas. I learn about the insidiousness of corn. I learn about the Sandhogs of Manhattan and how these unsung union men keep the whole of the city running by working in the labyrinths beneath the city. I learn about death and dinosaurs and guns and girl-gangs. Fuck write-what-you-know — genre fiction proves we can always know more.

19. BECAUSE THERE EXIST RULES FOR WHEN YOU NEED ‘EM…

Genre has conventions. Rules. Tropes! To keep our plots and characters straight. To weave our stories into shared tapestries. But…

20. THOSE RULES CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF WHEN THEY GET IN THE WAY

Hey, don’t like those rules? We can toss ’em out in the motherfucking cold. We write the rules: never forget that.

21. ALL THE LITTLE TINY ITTY BITTY BABY SUBGENRES

So many adorable little subgenres! Dystopian science-fiction! Time-travel romance! Zombie apocalypse! Steampunk! Dieselpunk! Cyberpunk! Cipherpunk! Bugpunk! Cornpunk! Punkpunk! BDSM New Adult Vampire Psychological Apocalyptic Space Opera Eroticapunk! They’re like Pokemon: I want to collect them all and trade them with my friends.

22. SO EASY TO READ BEYOND YOUR COMFORT ZONE

As writers, we don’t want to get trapped in that human centipede of genre regurgitation — where we continue to ingest and crap out the same stories again and again, gulping down throatfuls of the same genres by the same authors. Genre fiction is best when it’s a series of rabbit holes we keep falling down — from fantasy to dark fantasy to paranormal romance to horror, and on and on, across books and authors and into those little subgenres I was just talking about — a veritable buffet table of influences and ideas. (It occurs to me now that referencing human centipede crap-guzzling and then ending with buffet table does not make for appetizing idea-making, but it’s too late now why didn’t anyone stop me?)

23. GENRE DOESN’T OWN US; WE OWN GENRE

For some authors, genre is a brand the way that the flesh-charred marking on a cow’s hide is a brand — it’s a symbol of ownership, thought to keep the herd mooing in their bovine enclosures. But genre is no mere marketing category. Not to us. Genre is possibility — the chance to invent and explore, the opportunity to imagine and destroy. Genre isn’t our brand — our voice is our brand. Our ideas and our arguments are our brand. Stephen King isn’t a horror writer. He’s fucking Stephen King! J.K. Rowling isn’t a writer of children’s fiction: Harry Potter is only a portion of who she is. Genre for us is a world without borders. Genre is not the prison; genre is the key to the prison door.

24. BECAUSE GENRE WRITERS TEND TO BE VERY LOVELY PEOPLE

Seriously! You are! I don’t know what it is, but I think you all vent your spleens and purge your toxins in all these crazy books you write, because genre writers are frequently the kindest, most generous, most welcoming community I’ve ever had the pleasure of engaging with. Oh, and did I mention the SEXIEST, TOO? HEYYYYYYY. *bats eyelashes, makes kissy noises* (Yes, yes, I know a certain subset of the genre world is full of puerile prejudiced fuckhats, but I’m going to cleave toward optimism and suggest that those jerknuts are a very loud and cranky minority, not representative of the larger whole.)

25. BECAUSE GENRE WRITERS ARE *MY* PEOPLE

You are my people and I was incredibly thankful to be invited to Australia to give this speech, where all the fine feathered folks made me feel like the luckiest writer-boy in the whole wide world. And thanks too to all you readers here at terribleminds who share your love of writing and genre fiction with me on the daily. You guys rock. Now let’s make out.

*lurches toward you, mouth open*

* * *

Ahoy! New Under the Empyrean Sky review, this one from VOYA Magazine (Voice of Youth Advocates), which speaks to young adult librarians. They give it a 5Q and 4P rating — 5Q being hard to imagine it being better written (!) and 4P meaning broad general YA appeal.

I’ll make note that UtES is presently on sale for $1.99 (e-book) at Amazon.

Review below!

“In the Heartland, corn is both king and conqueror. It shackles the people to the land and allows the rich to live decadent, worry-free lives atop floating islands in the sky. Seventeen-year-old Cael McAvoy is determined to break free from a dead-end future, and when he discovers rogue vegetables growing among the cornfields, he knows he has found his ticket to the good life. But when his beloved Gwennie becomes betrothed to his uber-nemesis, Boyland, and he uncovers a secret about his father, he knows the time has come to quit living by the Empyrean’s rules and to forge an unknown future.

Wendig is the kind of writer who makes other writers jealous and turns readers into salivating fanatics. Yeah, he is that good. Not only does he take a weird, dystopian premise and make it work, he does so with panache. His descriptions are spot-on, using language that evokes the hardscrabble, Midwestern setting of the novel. Clever plot devices and characters you just want to throw a frying pan at round out the fun. Young readers will identify with Cael and his desire to break away from his oppressive life and carve out a better future, and fans of Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series will savor the strange setting and tragic romance. This is definitely one to add to stock of young adult dystopias. The only drawback to this little gem is that readers will be left waiting for the second book in the series to come out. —Cheryl Clark.”

UNDER THE EMPYREAN SKY

Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

It’s Halloween and that, to me, is the time of the horror novel.

And of course, you can’t talk horror novels without some talk of one of the Masters.

So: Stephen King.

I asked this on FB a few weeks ago and it produced some interesting discussion, so I’m bringing it here to the blog because, well, YAY BLOG.

I gotta know: what’s your favorite King novel?

And, more importantly, why?

Bonus question: least favorite King novel (and also, why)?

If I had to pick my favorite — which is a tooth-pulling maneuver, because so many choices — I’d go with the entirety of the Dark Tower series, with a preference toward Wizard and Glass. Least favorite — you know, I don’t know. I tried Gerald’s Game and just couldn’t do it. Cell had a cool idea but the execution didn’t come together for me. But if I had a gun to my head: Dreamcatcher. (Doubly true of the movie, of which I am not a fan.) Still, some of King’s leastmost works are still better than so many, you know?