"Kingdom Come"

Ya, it's a clever title. I have been reading a relatively lot these last couple months. First a few Heinlein books: Stranger in a Strange Land and Job: A Comedy of Justice (both very good) and have started some Stephen King books. My first Stephen King books in fact. Specifically the seven book epic The Dark Tower Series. I'm on the second book with 120 pages left.

The first book, called The Gunslinger, was only 300 pages long. According to the new introduction by the author he wrote it in his mid-20s and I think it shows actually. Not necessarily in a bad way, it's just a writing style you might expect from an author just starting out. In fact it was Mr. King's first book. The first one he wrote entirely out anyway. I think it was published somewhat later.

Anyway it's a kind of a mix of Sci-Fi and Western. The Gunslinger was kind of a brief introduction to the main character and the strange world in which he lives. There are several flash backs to both his childhood and to some experiences he had in a little town called Tull. Since he wrote that book knowing there would be many to follow he didn't go into a lot of detail on what the main character looked like or why he was seeking the "Dark Tower".

The second book, The Gathering of the Three is a little longer at 340 pages and you can tell is written by a much more experienced author. In this one there is a description of the Gunslinger from the perspective of your average person from our world. His descriptions of the mysterious doors were certainly well done.

This brings me to the other part of this post: writing. Specifically November is the write-book-in-30-days thing. I haven't been writing a whole lot lately so I thought I'd better start. I also realized last year my inability to write a book that actually sounds like a story. I think I got caught up in the phrase "show don't tell". Well of course you have to describe things that are going on and happening. But some where in the mix I must have been a little confused or something. In any case it was obvious I should be reading a lot more to give me an idea of how stories are actually presented.

The Gunslinger is the perfect book for this. The Heinlein ones were actually quite well written but not necessarily a good model to learn from. The first Dark Tower on the other hand was perfect to model after. As is I think the second one. I would like to have all seven read by Halloween, right before the book month thing. A very lofty goal, for me anyway. That'd be five books in only four months. I would have to read one of them inside of two weeks or really quick anyway. I suppose I could do that. There's lots of time to read at work and I can always read a hundred pages here and there on weekends.

Of course when I'm not reading I'd like to writing. Writing like this in a blog or writing some kind of story I don't know. But the more writing the better I think. I mean assuming I really do participate in November. I think this November will go much better than last year.

In fact I wanted to start writing a book for July. Since I forgot to turn off my alarm on Friday I was even up at 6am yesterday morning. So I had lots of time to start writing. I didn't know where to go or even how to start so I only got as far as a working title. I have a rough outline/synopsis floating around in my head but no ideas beyond that really.  ¶ 9:36 AM