Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

I rarely get emotional while reading a novel, but Doctor Sleep managed to make me burst into tears in its final pages. It’s a moment in the novel that feels inevitable long before it occurs, but when it arrives, it still manages to pack a punch. Of course, as my mother won’t let me forget, Stephen King was also responsible for another famed tear burst from me when I was eight. That was due to the ending of the film adaptation of The Green Mile. While King is famed for his twisted imagination, I’ve always found his ability to conjure catharsis just as powerful as his macabre touches.

But maybe I just connected more with Danny Torrance on a personal level then I’d ever realized before. I picked up Doctor Sleep immediately after finishing The Shining. I’d bought it years ago knowing I’d get to it one day. I’d put off reading The Shining for years because I didn’t want to ruin the movie on myself (I figured I’d be unable to enjoy Kubrick’s work after seeing the true vision). Thankfully, I was happy to discover that my heart had room for both versions of The Shining.

While I loved The Shining, I came into Doctor Sleep with low expectations. I’d heard a lot of negative buzz surrounding the book a few years back. After reading the novel, I must say I don’t agree with what I’d heard in the past. I thoroughly enjoyed this work. Not only was I rushing through the pages for the majority of the novel (a King tradition), but I was catching tons of great connections to The Shining. For instance, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death is referenced throughout The Shining, and Stephen King finds fun ways to work in new references to it, without actually mentioning it, in Doctor Sleep. A small plot point is that the villains of the story get the measles, a disease that manifests as red bumps ala the red death. There’s also a climactic moment where Dan Torrance manifests a literal red death, but I don’t want to get too spoiler-y in my review.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I felt the opening pages flew by a little quicker than some of the middle sections, but I think that’s typical of most novels. The transition to the secondary protagonist, Abra, felt a little clunky at first, but King eventually found her voice and made her a joy to read. There’s even a twist in the back half of the novel that managed to surprise me, I’d noticed the heavy foreshadowing to it, but I failed to puzzle out the meaning before the revelation. If you’re a King fan or just a fan of The Shining, you should love this book. Now, I can’t wait to see the film adaptation.

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NoSleep Live 2019 Halloween Tour

NoSleep Live Stage Set Up

At my day job, I occasionally need to compile reports that take a fair amount of time but not as much brainpower. When I got Spotify a few years back, I started using this time to listen to podcasts. I’d always liked the idea of podcasts, but I’d never had time or a good way to listen to them. After working my way through most of H.P. Lovecraft’s work in audio form, I was searching for more horror to fill my time. That’s when I discovered the NoSleep Podcast. Originally, this podcast told horror stories pulled from Reddit’s NoSleep Forum, but the podcast evolved into creating original horror stories over time. I listened to every episode available, about seven seasons worth at that point, and then started listening to new episodes every week.

In 2018, I drove two hours east to Philadelphia to see the NoSleep Podcast’s Escape the Black Farm live tour. The experience was fantastic, except for the random person who clipped my mirror and sped off as I was driving home, so much for the so-called “city of brotherly love.” Naturally, I had to see the 2019 NoSleep Live Halloween tour too. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately considering my mirror fiasco, the show wasn’t stopping in Philadelphia, but, thanks to my central location, I was able to drive three hours south to the Miracle Theater, in Washington D.C.

The venue was a historic locale, a cozy one-screen theater that hosted vaudeville acts in the days before movies. I arrived early and got a great seat near the front. You can probably find me, my wife, and my aunt if you zoom in on the third row of the NoSleep Podcast’s Instagram picture from the event. We all had a great time, and the neat place only added to the event’s ambiance.

This show contained four “spine-tingling” stories that were all spooky in unique ways. The first was about a hilariously entertaining dinner party gone wrong. The voice actors, David Cummings, Jessica McEvoy, David Ault, and Nichole Goodnight, did a fabulous job throughout the night, but I was extremely impressed with how well they worked together and bounced off each other in the opening tale. The second story concerned a potentially paranormal fog. Finally, there was the classic tale of a daughter attempting to resurrect her dead dad. Each story was masterfully scored by music maestro Brandon Boone.

If you haven’t listened to the NoSleep Podcast yet, you need to give them a listen during this Halloween season. There are a countless number of great horror stories to enjoy that span all the different horror subgenres. I can’t recommend the podcast enough, and I especially encourage trying to see the show live, if the tour is coming to a town near you. They put on a great performance, and they are all extremely friendly. Due to my long drive home, I wasn’t able to do the meet and greet after in D.C., but I enjoyed meeting several NoSleep actors in Philadelphia last year. I thanked them for being a great source of horror and taking submissions. I’m hopeful that one day down the line, I will hear one of my stories brought to life by NoSleep. I just wrote an audio script about a lost John Carpenter film that I plan to submit to the NoSleep Podcast in the future, and I am currently thinking about working on a horror story set in space for a future Christmas episode. If any other horror writers are interested in sending them a story, be sure to check out their submissions page.

Until My Next Post,

Stay Froggy,

Jeremiah

P.S. Here’s me and my wife doing scared faces after the show.

Scared Faces

Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay

Growing Things and Other StoriesGrowing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay

There’s a fun diversity of narrative forms on display in Paul Tremblay’s Growing Things and Other Stories. Notes from the Dog Walkers gives us a story told exactly how the name indicates. Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport is a yarn unwound by descriptions of old photographs. A Haunted House Is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken is a choose your own adventure. Tremblay also gives the reader stories that defy easy subgenre categorization and transcend typical tropes by being more nuanced and layered than expected. My favorite stories in this collection all have a Weird/Lovecraftian vibe, which is fitting since I just saw Tremblay at NecronomiCon in August. Notes for “The Barn in the Wild,” Where we All Will Be, and Our Town’s Monster are three that I loved, but my absolute favorite was Something About Birds. This is a story about a story with references to other stories, and I just marveled at how well crafted, entertaining, and unique it was. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I consumed it. It’s a must-read. So, to end this nutshell review, I must ask, “would you prefer talons or beak?”

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