Well, dear readers, guess what? I managed to stay awake through an entire motion picture. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, I, BK, managed to stay awake through an entire motion picture. Granted, after many choices, I chose one that was ninety minutes. I chose it also because I’d read the book it was based on at some point when I was still reading fiction before writing it. The book was entitled Watchers by Dean Koontz. I was in my heavy collecting phase at the time and having all the major and some very rare Stephen King stuff, Koontz came on my radar and was fun to collect because he not only wrote under his own name, but many pseudonyms. Now, I discovered Stephen King with the movie of Carrie, which I loved. Then in late 1979, I saw the brilliant trailer for Kubrick’s upcoming film, The Shining, one of the simplest but most effective horror movie trailers ever. I could not wait to see it and I’m sure everyone who saw that trailer felt the same. That trailer was shown for five months prior to the film’s release and anticipation was high. So, a few days before May 23, 1980, the film’s release date, I picked up a paperback of the book and began reading it. It was scary, compelling, really well written, and I, in fact, finished it while standing in line to see either the 4:00 or 7:00 show at the Chinese, probably the latter. That line stretched for two blocks, but I’d gotten there early enough to be within the first thirty people. I got a great seat and then the movie began. An amazing opening shot – we were in good hands, I thought – beautiful photography, eerie music. Then the first red flag – why was Jack Nicholson acting a little nutty in that first car scene? Then we have the scene with Barry Nelson as Ullman and the tour of the Overlook. Great set, and while the Ullman scene was a little slow, I was enjoying it. I didn’t much care for the kid or the way they portrayed his imaginary “friend.” And Shelly Duvall was weird as Wendy. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about the film other than to say it was not scary, the much-anticipated elevator scene from the trailer was not effective in the film itself, they left out tons of great stuff from the book and Jack Nicholson, while certainly amusing and entertaining, had nowhere to go, really, because his character in the film had no slow build into madness. The style – couldn’t complain – plenty stylish. At the climax was a weird scene in the hospital with Danny, Wendy, and Ullman. I went back to see it the following week to see if I liked it any better (I didn’t) and that hospital scene was gone.

Anyway, I loved the novel of The Shining and got myself a nice first edition of it, along with a nice first edition of The Stand, which I then read. I loved the first half of The Stand, but not the second. But it was his next novel that made me a huge fan – The Dead Zone. What a book that was and happily the film of it was just as good. Then came one great book after another with Firestarter, Cujo, and Christine. I not only had first editions of all those, I had the signed limited editions, too. Cujo came out the year we shot The Creature Wasn’t Nice. The wife of one of the producers was friends with Stephen King and presented me with a signed copy of the book, with the inscription, “There’s a creature in here and he’s not nice either!”

I also enjoyed the novellas of Different Seasons, but It, at over 1,000 pages was not for me. From then on, I only read King sporadically and found most of it way too long and The Tommyknockers almost made me stop reading him altogether. The last King I read was Dreamcatcher, which I did not care for. And then, sometime in the mid-1980s I got around to Koontz. He was adept with one-word titles but while his books always opened well, by the mid-point I found them tiresome. I read about ten and stopped. Now, both were hugely successful, both had started writing at the same time, both had appeared numerous times on the Times best seller list. If one believes what one reads on the Internet, Koontz has way outsold King – over 500,000,000 books to King’s over 350,000,000, but Koontz has written many more books, sometimes eight in a year in his early days. I, on the other hand, have written only twenty-eight books, I genre-hop, which confuses everyone, but somehow I have managed to sell over five books, which I consider to be quite an amazing feat or at least quite an amazing feet. I’m happy in my own little corner of my own little room where I can be whatever I want to be. I have never appeared on the Times best seller list and I’m in VERY good company in that regard, let me tell you. Anyway, there you have a very long treatise of meandering nothingness of the three K’s – King, Koontz, and Kimmel. I think we should just leave it at two, don’t you, even the the rule of threes is always fun.

Oh yeah, Watchers. I thought the book was a little silly, but the movie, a Canadian thing, was in a whole other universe – terrible from start to finish and changing things like making the lead protagonist sixteen instead of thirty-six so it could be a true 1980s piece of idiocy. And it sure seemed a lot longer than its horrid ninety minutes.

Yesterday was okay – another four hours of sleep thing, answering lots of e-mails, setting the recording date, so that’s done, for food I had two biscuits with gravy (excellent, from Paty’s), and I got a scoop of egg salad and turkey salad, but only late half the scoop of egg salad, and not even ten percent of the scoop of turkey salad, even though they were pretty good. Then I did stuff on the computer, dozed off for about ninety minutes, got up, did some organizing of projects, dozed off for another hour, had some Hormel chili with cheese, onions, and a hint of ketchup and that was surprisingly good. Then I watched Watchers, and I even almost made it through Private Hell 36, starring Ida Lupino and her hubby Howard Duff, directed by Don Siegel. The dialogue coach was someone named David Peckinpah, who’d soon be known as Sam. It’s not a very good movie.

Today will be a ME day and that’s all there is to it.

Then this week we’ll ship the French How to Succeed CDs, I’ll hopefully see and approve the galley and covers for the new book, I’ll attend an opening night, I’ll set the rest of the recording cast, and lots and lots of other stuff.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a ME day and mostly watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall probably dream of King/Koontz.