The Top 40

I had never read King until my wife gave me the Dark Tower trilogy in the mid 90's. I sat at my workbench in the garage for the next 11 days reading all of it nonstop. Then I stopped, and though people have given me all the rest of the books in the series I have never read them. There they sit, spider webbed and dusty, with hundreds of other's on the shelves.

See, a few years passed between the end of book 3 and the beginning of book 4 and I lost interest along the way. Between 3 and 4 I caught an interview of King on the radio one night and called the station and I actually spoke to Stephen King and I asked him when the next Dark Tower book was going to come out. I recorded this conversation on cassette tape and still have it but I have no player. King sighed and said DT takes him to a special place in his mind and he's afraid that if he returns to that place he'll never leave. But he did go back to that place and he did return, but I never did.

I tend to visit writers in a flurry, inhale and digest them then suddenly move on. I consumed 11 of Michael Crichton's books that way in the early 90's, then I read everything Ayn Rand in the late 90's, and many, many other writers over the decades.

I can feel it in me bones, it's about time to visit a new writer.....