Guest Post! Laure Eve loves this author: Stephen King
If you’ve visited this blog before, you might remember that I reviewed (and absolutely loved) Laure Eve’s book Fearsome Dreamer. If you don’t remember or if this is your first visit, you can watch that review here.
I mentioned the book again when I wrote about how much I love Hot Key Books and now I’m about to talk about it again because THIS IS THE WEEK THAT IT WILL BE PUBLISHED! Hooray! You should all go out and buy a copy. Or borrow one from your library. Or buy it. Just make sure you read it, is what I’m saying.
I already have a book token set aside to buy a copy of my very own.
I feel like you might be confused about this. Here’s why I plan to buy it:
- I ordered this book into my store in quantity. This was a call that I can make as the person in charge. It also means that I’m responsible for making sure that they sell. If I sell them all, I can order more. If I don’t sell them, I will be in trouble with my boss and my buyer (who I
bullied intoencouraged to order extra for me) and I’ll feel like I’ve let everyone (including myself) down. Anyway, I’m going to make sure we sell at least one of them! - Although I get a lot of books for free, my livelihood pretty much depends on people buying books.
- The author doesn’t make any money when I am given a proof. They just have to hope that I enjoy it and then that, having enjoyed it, I want to talk to other people about it and encourage them to buy it.
- The cover is SO pretty. You can’t really tell from a picture on the internet but, in real life, it has this shiny circuit design happening behind the fantasy-ish image of Rue.
Anyway, I feel like we’ve gotten sidetracked from the point of this post which is that LAURE EVE IS HERE!
A while ago, when she was gearing up for the book to come out, Laure Eve mentioned on Twitter that she would be happy to write guest posts for blogs. Knowing me how you do, you can imagine how quick I was in emailing her about appearing here. It turns out that she is super-nice (and slightly adorable) as well as being incredibly talented because she agreed to appear on my blog TWICE.
For her first visit here, Laure is going to tell you all about why she loves the work of Stephen King and why you should give him a chance to win you over too:
To kick off, here’s a list of Top Ten things I learned from Stephen King:-
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The absolute certainty that horrible monsters exist.
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The absolute certainty that the human monsters are the most frightening.
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The awful conclusion that sometimes good people die for absolutely no reason.
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The better conclusion that this means sometimes so do evil people.
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Stories can change your life.
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I’m over it now, but for quite a while I had a real problem with clowns. Guess why? Yes, I read It when I was about eleven or so. I know, I know.
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Children are ten times more capable than adults think they are.
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Mundane evil is far more disturbing than supernatural evil.
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Maine must be a really strange place and I’m not sure I want to go there.
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The realisation that everyone has a well of darkness inside them. And that that doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. It just means they’re a person. This may be the most important lesson I’ve ever learned about the human race, and I learned it from him.
He’s a man of many faces, is King. You think you have him pegged. He’s the horror guy, right? The one who created Pennywise and gifted coulrophobia to at least two generations of the human race.
But then he wrote these intense, tight science fiction novels (less science fiction and more near future, let’s say) under the guise of Richard Bachman, and made you think about where we’re headed as a species.
Okay, so horror and science-fiction-y horror, centred around the worlds of his main characters and their immediate surroundings. But then he wrote The Dark Tower, an unbelievably epic universe-spanning fantasy western with robots.
Okay, okay. So he can write in different genres. But it all has basically the same level of nastiness going on, right? But then he wrote The Green Mile, which I read through floods of tears, and which broke my heart.
The Shawshank Redemption was my introduction to a King with not a jot of the supernatural in it. There are others. The list goes on.
He has his themes and characters that occur again and again, but I somehow never tire of reading about them. They’re so fully realised, each and every one, that there’s no part of me ever questioning whether they’re real. That’s the magic of King. He laid bare the human soul for me. He taught me about the things we don’t talk of – the nastiness inside us all. Yes, even the nice ones. But also the glory inside us all – that blinding capacity for love and selflessness. He’s given me, a constant reader, every nuance of the human character, and for that he will always remain, I think, my favourite and most cherished storyteller.
Has Laure made you feel like trying something by Stephen King? He has a brand new book out, Doctor Sleep, which is the sequel to The Shining. Why not visit your local bookshop on Thursday and pick up this (or any of his others) while you’re there to buy your copy of Fearsome Dreamer? Just a thought.
This is the first of two posts this week. The next one will be a mini Q&A with Laure and details from the Fearsome Dreamer launch party. Come back on Friday to read all about it.
