Some Housekeeping

And an invitation to Kindling's first ever book club

Photo by teleterapia.fi on Unsplash

It’s Sunday evening, a cool, rainy one from where I’m sitting, and I’m working on editing a piece for Wednesday. This newsletter is on my mind all the time. I love working on it—I love writing—and come July I will be rolling out a few new, and hopefully community building efforts.

I had some of these in mind from the start, but I started with 4 subscribers, so there wasn’t a whole lot to build (and I didn’t want to put pressure on my close friends and family to have to participate in something they wouldn’t be interested in.) So now that I’ve grown a bit, I’d like to jump in headfirst.

**drumroll please**

As part of the Binge section of my newsletter, I am starting a Stephen King book club

If you didn’t know, I’m a huge King fan. Like, embarrassingly so. I talk about his books almost everyday, and part of starting this newsletter was to give my husband and unlucky friends some much needed relief from my obsession. My picking up writing again was due to reading his book, On Writing, during the pandemic. I detailed that in my first post for Kindling here.

I really love his work, probably more than any other author, and I know I’m not alone. I announced this in my chat and on Notes and had a few people interested in participating, so I thought I would put together a schedule for those who want to be able to participate and need time to read the books.

A tentative schedule

• Carrie (July 1st)

• Salem’s Lot (August 5th)

• The Shining (September 2nd)

• Night Shift (September 9th-January 20th)

• Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (February 3)

• Delores Claiborne (March 2)

• Misery (April 6)

• Gerald’s Game (May 4)

• The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (June 1)

Now here’s where things get hairy. Carrie is 199 pages, Salem’s Lot is 439, and The Shining is 447. Where we go from here is tricky. The next book he wrote was Rage, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and that book has since been taken out of print and is incredibly rare. The Stand comes after, and is enormous at 823 pages. I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on readers.

So…do we continue in order? Do we stick to the shorter books? Skip a month to allow time for reading? Plunge ahead and stay on schedule? This part is up to all of you. I gobble these up, and many I’ve read before. So let me know what you think would work for this format.

What’s involved?

Your average book club fodder. I’ll publish my thoughts on the book, probably with a lot of background about why King wrote it, the true stories that inspired the work, some details about how it was received, and thoughts on the horror genre in general.

And then I’m hoping you will respond. I know a lot of my subscribers are writers, so I’m hoping for a lot of craft discussion and Kingian nerdiness. Easter eggs, spoilers, links to reviews and interviews, all the fan-nerd stuff is welcome here. As well as all the naysayers. Please, come naysay away!

Do you have any other ideas?

I’m hoping for some thoughts from you, as this is the first time I’ve really reached out to my readers in this way. Anything to avoid? Anything that would make this better?

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. I’ll publish a solid schedule next week after reading through feedback. In the meantime, if you’re jumping on this train, pick up a copy of Carrie and join us the first Saturday of July for the discussion!