This means you can either visit the site, follow what’s happening on facebook, by mail updates or on Twitter. Hopefully this gives each and every one of you a way to follow my updates on the site that you feel comfortable with. If so, please spread the word and wither way let me know your thoughts on this.
Here is an audio clip with King:
Today on Word of Mouth, Virginia's conversation with Stephen King, the "master of horror" and author of over 50 novels, including his most recent work, Under the Dome. He visited The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH, for the "Writers on a New England Stage" series. He reads from his newest work and talks about his books, film adaptations, and his career.
When Cemetery Dance got the OK for Blockade Billy things had to happen fast. Because of this they did one galley of the book (the white galley) in a very low number (below 20). Of these 4 where sent out to reviewers who needed the book early. Here is what Richard Chizmar said about it in an interview I did with him:
Lilja: So the first edition is limited to just 10,000 copies. Were there any proofs for the book?
Richard Chizmar: Because of time constraints, we actually needed to produce two states of the ARC (Advanced Reading Copies). The first (with a plain white cover) was only sent to four trade reviewers from places like PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, BOOKLIST, etc, because they needed the ARCs so far in advance. The rest of the reviewers were sent an ARC featuring the full color artwork 2-3 weeks later.
This galley will be very hard to find by here you can see what it looks like.
OK, a few days ago I killed of the email subscription list I ran in favor for the new facebook group. This I did because sending out the mails finally became too much work for me and I thought facebook would be a god alternative. Most of you agreed with me but quite a lot of you have also been disappointed with not getting the mails each day. Well, I have listened to you and as of now you can get mail updates again. My friend Herbert West told me about a way to send out mails automatically so I'll try it. After all, I want all of my readers to be happy.
So, click this link and follow the instructions. The first mail will probably go out tomorrow. Please know though that there will only be one mail sent out each day so if you want instant updates it’s still facebook or RSS feed you’ll have to use.
Oh, and please tell me what you think about the new list.
Dread Central caught up with Mick Garris when he attended the “Never Sleep Again” signing event held this weekend at Dark Delicacies in Burbank.
Garris told them he’ll be directing a four-hour miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones which fans will be able to check out on network television sometime in 2011.
"Bag of Bones is something we tried to do as a feature for two or three years," Garris told them. "But the way features are now, if it's not about teenagers or a sequel or a remake, forget it. We wanted to do something much more adult and passionate than studios are making now. It's a ghost story for grown-ups. Television is the only place you can do that."
Production on Bag of Bones is set to begin in June in Alaska. Garris also added that they will hopefully be casting their lead this week so stay tuned.
King comments on The Dark Tower movie:
"It looks good. Things are happening and they are happening fast but any reports you see might be taken with a grain of salt for the next couple of weeks. You will know the news from the official source as soon as we are able to post it."
It looks like there is some conflicting info about what the format for The Dark Tower will be. THR says one feature film and then a TV series and Deadline a trilogy and then a TV series.
I'm still looking for confirmation about this but it would be so much easier if Ron Howard could just e-mail me :-)
Very interesting information surfaced recently. If it’s correct King’s Dark Tower books is set to be a screen trilogy and TV series. Exactly what this means isn’t all that clear. Is it three TV movies? That will be extremely hard to succeed with. Is it three TV series with say 12 episodes each? That would work. Can Akiva Goldsman (script), Ron Howard (directing) and Brian Grazer (producer) pull it off? I have no idea. And, what happened JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof? I have no idea.
I’m working on getting more info on this as we speak so stay tuned. In the meantime, check out the full news (as it was reported by Deadline below.
Here is an excerpt from the audio edition of Blockade Billy.
Hodder & Stoughton also told me today that they will be using the same cover for their edition as Scribner does. The UK edition is released on May 25th.
BlockadeBilly will be released as a limited edition by Lonely Road Books later this year. However, the book is already sold out so if you’re still looking to get one you need to get on the waiting list. And even that is not guarantee that you’ll get one…
Here are the information about the books: Limited Edition:
Just 350 hand-numbered copies printed on a high quality paper stock (different from any other edition) and featuring a fine leather binding, two color printing throughout the book, a color frontispiece by Glen Orbik, eleven interior illustrations by Alex McVey, a sewn-in ribbon page marker, a custom deluxe traycase with pullout ribbon, an illustrated signature sheet signed by the artists, and Stephen King's first-ever baseball card, SIGNED by King as his way of signing this special edition. Also includes a copy of the authentic William "Blockade Billy" Blakely baseball card Cemetery Dance printed for their 1st edition hardcover ($450) Lettered Edition:
52 hand-lettered copies with all of the special features of the Limited Edition plus a "THREE PIECE" binding featuring a special Japanese cloth and a fine leather, an exclusive artwork page in each book featuring an original piece of artwork to make EACH copy unique, a bonus art portfolio featuring Limited Edition prints of the artwork from the book, and a deluxe hand-made custom box ($1,250)
Bloody Discusting reported:
Adam Kane ("The Mentalist," "Heroes") will be directing the pilot for the Stephen King-created supernatural series "Haven" for the Syfy Channel. Production has started with Lunenburg, Nova Scotia standing in for the fictitious Maine town of Haven, where Emily Rose ("Damages") plays an FBI agent solving the murder of a local ex-con. The pilot's ensemble cast includes Lucas Bryant, Eric Balfour, Richard Donat and John Dunsworth. The project centers on a spooky town in Maine where cursed folk live normal lives in exile. When those curses start returning, FBI agent Audrey Parker is brought in to keep those supernatural forces at bay -- while trying to unravel the mysteries of Haven.
I just spoke to Mick Garris and he confirmed that discussions are being held with a major TV network to bring Bag of Bones to the small screen. He hopes to be able to share more news with us soon.
The facebook launch of Lilja’s Library yesterday is officially a success. In the last 24 hours more than 300 of you have joined and the numbers are growing as we speak. I also want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your nice comments and kind posts about Lilja’s Library since I haven’t had the chance to do it personally.
Today Lilja’s Library premiers on facebook. To be honest I didn’t think joining facebook would be a good idea for Lilja’s Library but since quite a few of you have told me that I need to get Lilja’s Library on facebook I have. Now we just have to wait and see if it was a good idea…
Today Hodder & Stoughton announces that they will publish a UK edition of Blockade Billy. Here is the press release:
NEW NOVELLA FROM STEPHEN KING BOUGHT BY HODDER & STOUGHTON FOR FATHER’S DAY
An explosion of interest across the world in King’s novella, BLOCKADE BILLY, has prompted Philippa Pride, King’s UK editor, to step up to the plate and acquire for Hodder & Stoughton, from Chuck Verrill in the States, UK and Commonwealth rights to the publication – which includes a bonus story, the chilling MORALITY. The story of BLOCKADE BILLY is the baseball story that King has long been asked to write by his fans: ‘Ask no more; this is it,’ King Says. ‘I love old-school baseball, and I also love the way people who’ve spent a lifetime in the game talk about it. I tried to combine those things in a story of suspense.’ The novella tells the story of William Blakely, unknown baseball player for the New Jersey Titans, whose baseball days in the late 50s are relayed in first person narrative to Stephen King by George ‘Granny’ Grantham, who coached third base at the time. Pride commented: ‘It’s another gripping, tale from the master: how does he captivate you so completely from page one and hold you in his brilliantly powerful and dark grip until the last page? He’s just got that inimitable X factor, hasn’t he?’
Hodder will publish in hardback, on 25 May 2010, at £9.99.
An audio version of the book will also be available.
Richard Chizmar is the founder of Cemetery Dance Publications, who's releasing King’s latest book; Blockade Billy tomorrow. I got a chat with Rich and he told me all about the book, how it happened that CD got to publish it. You can read my interview here.
In the April 23/30 issue of Entertainment Weekly: Big Audio Dynamite. It's about giving praise to the audio version of James Ellroy's Blood's a Rover, which SK says "is, quite simply, the best audiobook I've ever heard".
It's read by Craig Wasson. As it happens, Wasson's just been named the reader of Blockade Billy.
Quotes:
"[Wasson's] a fine actor [...], but a mad hot audio reader."
"Great readers seem to live inside the books they're performing. Wasson is one of those."
LUNENBURG — The picturesque town of Lunenburg, N.S., is going to be the backdrop for a television series based on the work of horror-writer Stephen King.
Lunenburg will fill in for the fictitious Town of Haven, Maine where the inhabitants have no idea they are descendants of cursed ancestry.
Thirteen one-hour episodes are planned and the pilot for the series is pulling out all the stops for production in order to attract a large audience.
Filming will take place over three days beginning April 20.
The proposed cast includes Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant, Eric Balfour, Richard Donat and John Dunsworth.
Scribners version of Blockade Billy:
UPDATE: Stephen and Cemetery Dance have made an arrangement with Scribner to make available a less expensive hardcover edition of Blockade Billy, with an on-sale date of May 25th, the same date the audiobook goes on sale. The Scribner edition will be available in all U.S. and Canadian retail outlets. Both the Scribner book and the Simon & Schuster audiobook will feature a bonus short story ("Morality"). In the meantime, an eBook edition of Blockade Billy should go on sale through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony on April 20th.
Remember though that there ARE some difference between this edition and Cemetery Dance's 1st edition. The Cemetery Dance edition...
- has a very limited print run of just 10,000 copies
- is heavily illustrated unlike a standard New York edition
- is shrink-wrapped to protect the book
- includes the Limited Edition William "Blockade Billy" Blakely baseball card, which will never be reprinted
- is beautifully designed with both the collector and general reader in mind
The print run of Cemetery Dance's 1st Edition/1st Printing is about 1/100 of what King's New York publishers print for a new hardcover, making this easily the lowest print run of any new King trade edition since the 1970s!
Here are Richard Chizmar’s (owner of Cemetery Dance) thoughts on the Blockade Billy experience:
From CEMETERY DANCE Publisher Richard Chizmar…
First and foremost, I want to say that working on Blockade Billy these past couple months has been one of the most rewarding – and definitely the most fun – experiences I've had in over two decades of publishing. As I noted in the press release, "Stephen King and I have corresponded about baseball and books for almost 20 years now…so to combine the two is a dream come true for me."
When Stephen King's agent, Chuck Verrill, emailed last year and told me that Steve thought BILLY would be a good fit for CEMETERY DANCE because he knew how much of a baseball fan I was, I knew this book was going to be something special. But I didn't know the half of it…
If you had told me then that word of our secret, little Stephen King baseball project would end up traveling all over the world, drawing attention from Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Time Magazine, GQ, New York Magazine, ESPN, ABC, Sports Illustrated, Fangoria, PerezHilton.com, Gather.com, The Independent (UK), The Guardian (UK), Reuters, Examiner.com (New York), Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, Shelf Awareness, The Washington Post, LA Times, Bloomberg, The San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Miami Herald, The Boston Herald, Bangor Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Maryland Daily Record, Sacramento Bee, a newspaper in South Africa, and dozens of blogs and websites…I would have thought that you were crazy.
If you had told me we would end up selling all 10,000 first edition trade copies to individual readers (which is exactly what will happen in the next couple weeks), I would have sworn up and down that you were crazy.
If you had told me Stephen would graciously allow us to reprint another 10,000 copies of the trade edition and all of them would be swallowed up by just libraries (that's right, not a single retail account in the bunch), I would have known that you were crazy.
And, finally…if you had told me that retail demand – make that retail frenzy – for our secret, little Stephen King baseball project (which was always meant to have a very limited printing) would lead to Steve and CEMETERY DANCE working out a deal with Scribner to make Blockade Billy available to all his Constant Readers, I would have asked what planet you were living on... which, incidentally, is exactly what the head buyer at one of the country's biggest booksellers asked Cemetery Dance Marketing Director Brian Freeman when he explained to them that they would not be receiving any copies of our edition of the book!
But Blockade Billy really did take the world by storm, blowing away the expectations of everyone involved – and we're very proud of the role we've played in bringing Stephen King's first baseball story to readers. In just one week our World's First Edition/First Printing will begin shipping…and that's only the beginning. Who knows what kind of news our secret, little Stephen King baseball project is going to generate next.