Song of Susannah dt-6

by Stephen King

  I kept thinking about Roland, my gunslinger from the Robert Browning poem (with a tip of Hatlo’s Hat to Sergio Leone, of course), while I rode. The manuscript is a novel, no doubt—or a piece of one—but it occurs to me that the chapters also stand on their own. Or almost. I wonder if I could sell them to one of the fantasy mags? Maybe even to Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is, of course, the genre’s Holy Grail.

  Probably a stupid idea.

  Otherwise, not much doing but the All-Star Game (National League 7, American League 5). I was pretty hammered before it was over. Tabby not pleased…

  August 9th, 1978

  Kirby McCauley sold the first chapter of that old Dark Tower story of mine to Fantasy and Science Fiction! Man, I can hardly believe it! That is just so cool! Kirby sez he thinks Ed Ferman (the Ed-in-chief there) will probably run everything of the DT story that I’ve got. He’s going to call the first bit (“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed,” etc., etc., blah-blah, bang-bang) “The Gunslinger,” which makes sense.

  Not bad for an old story that was moldering away forgotten in a wet corner of the garage last year. Ferman told Kirby that Roland “has a feel of reality” that’s missing in a lot of fantasy fiction, and wanted to know if there might be even more adventures. I’m sure there are even more adventures (or were , or will be —what’s the proper tense when you’re talking about unwritten tales?), but I have no idea what they might be. Only that John “Jake” Chambers would have to come back into it.

  A rainy, muggy day by the lake. No Playground for the kids. Tonight we had Andy Fulcher sit the big kids while Tab & I & Owen went to the Bridgton Drive-In. Tabby thought the film ( The Other Side of Midnight …from last year , actually) was a piece of shit, but I didn’t hear her begging to be taken home. As for me, I found my mind drifting off to that damn Roland guy again. This time to questions of his lost love. “Susan, lovely girl at the window.”

  Who, pray, be she?

  September 9, 1978

  Got my first copy of the October issue with “The Gunslinger” in it. Man, this looks fine.

  Burt Hatlen called today. He’s talking about me maybe doing a year at the University of Maine as writer in residence. Only Burt would be ballsy enough to think of a hack like me in connection w/ a job like that. Sort of an interesting idea, though.

  October 29, 1979

  Well, shit, drunk again. I can barely see the goddam page, but suppose I better put down something before I go staggering off to bed. Got a letter from Ed Ferman at F&SF today. He’s going to do the second chapter of The Dark Tower —the part where Roland meets the kid—as “The Way Station.” He really wants to publish the entire run of stories, and I’m agreeable enough. I just wish there was more. Meanwhile, there’s The Stand to think about—and, of course, The Dead Zone.

  All of this doesn’t seem to mean much to me just now. I hate being here in Orrington—hate being on such a busy road, for one thing. Owen damned near got creamed by one of those Cianbro trucks today. Scared the hell out of me. Also gave me an idea for a story, having to do with that odd little pet cemetery out in back of the house.PET SEMATARY is what the sign sez, isn’t that weird? Funny, but also creepy. Almost a Vault of Horror type of thing.

  June 19th, 1980

  Just got off the phone with Kirby McCauley. He got a call from Donald Grant, who publishes lots of fantasy stuff under his own imprint (Kirby likes to joke that Don Grant is “the man who made Robert E. Howard infamous”). Anyway, Don would like to publish my gunslinger stories, and under their original title, The Dark Tower (subtitle The Gunslinger ). Isn’t that neat? My own “limited edition.” He’d do 10,000 copies, plus 500 signed and numbered. I told Kirby to go ahead and make the deal.

  Anyway, it looks like my teaching career is over, and I got pretty well baked to celebrate. Took out the Pet Sematary ms. and looked it over. Good God, is that grim! Readers would lynch me if I published it, I think. That’s one book that’ll never see the light of day…

  July 27th, 1983

  Publishers Weekly (our son Owen calls it Pudlishers Weakness, which is actually sorta accurate) reviewed the latest Richard Bachman book…and once more, baby, I got roasted. They implied it was boring, and that, my friend, it ain’t. Oh well, thinking about it made it that much easier to go to North Windham and pick up those 2 kegs of beer for the party. Got em at Discount Beverage. I’m smoking again, too, so sue me. I’ll quit the day I turn 40 and that’s a promise.

  Oh, and Pet Sematary is published exactly two months from today. Then my career really will be over (joke…at least I hope it’s a joke). After some thought, I added The Dark Tower to the author’s ad-card at the front of the book. In the end, I thought, why not? Yes, I know it’s sold out—there were only 10,000 copies to start with, fa Chrissake—but it was a real book and I’m proud of it. I don’t suppose I’ll ever go back to ole Roland the Gun-Toting Knight Errant, but yes, I’m proud of that book.

  Good thing I remembered the beer run.

  February 21st, 1984

  Man, I got this crazy call from Sam Vaughn at Doubleday this afternoon (he edited Pet Sem, you will remember). I knew there were some fans who want The Dark Tower and are pissed off they can’t get it, because I also get letters. But Sam sez they have gotten over THREE THOUSAND!! letters. And why, you ask? Because I was dumb enough to put The Dark Tower on the Pet Sematary author ad-card. I think Sam’s a little pissed at me, and I suppose he’s got a point. He says listing a book that fans want & can’t get is a little like holding out a piece of meat to a hungry dog and then yanking it back, saying “No, no, you can’t have it, har-har.” On the other hand, God & the Man Jesus, people are so fucking spoiled! They just assume that if there’s a book anywhere in the world they want, then they have a perfect right to that book. This would be news indeed to those folks in the Middle Ages who might have heard rumors of books but never actually saw one; paper was valuable (which would be a good thing to put in the next “Gunslinger/Dark Tower” novel, if I ever get around to it) and books were treasures you protected with your life. I love being able to make my living writing stories, but anyone who sez there’s no dark side to it is full of shit. Someday I’m going to do a novel about a psychotic rare book dealer! (Joke)

  Meanwhile, today was Owen’s birthday. He’s seven! The age of reason! I can hardly believe my youngest is seven and my daughter is thirteen, a lovely young woman.

  August 14th, 1984 (NYC)

  Just got back from a meeting with Elaine Koster from NAL and my agent, the ole Kirboo. Both of them pitched me on doing The Gunslinger as a trade-sized paperback, but I passed. Maybe someday, but I won’t give that many people a chance to read something so unfinished unless/until I go back to work on the story.

  Which I probably never will. Meantime, I have this other idea for a long novel about a clown that’s really the worst monster in the world. Not a bad idea; clowns are scary. To me, at least. (Clowns & chickens, go figure.)

  November 18th, 1984

  I had a dream last night that I think breaks the creative logjam on It. Suppose there’s a kind of Beam holding the Earth (or even multiple Earths) in place? And that the Beam’s generator rests on the shell of a turtle? I could make that part of the book’s climax. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure I read somewhere that in Hindu mythology there’s a great turtle that bears us all on his shell, and that he serves Gan, the creative overforce. Also, I remember an anecdote where some lady sez to some famous scientist, “This evolution stuff is ridiculous. Everyone knows that a turtle holds up the universe.” To which the scientist (wish I could remember his name, but I can’t) replies, “That may be, madam, but what holds up the turtle?” Scornful laugh from the lady, who says, “Oh, you can’t fool me! It’s turtles all the way down.”

  Ha! Take that, ye rational men of science!

  Anyway, I keep a blank book by my bed, and have gotten so I write down a lot of dreams and dream elements w/o even fully waking up. This mo
rning I’d written Remember the Turtle! And this: See the TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth. His thought is slow but always kind; he holds us all within his mind. Not great poetry, I grant you, but not bad for a guy who was three-quarters asleep when he wrote it!

  Tabby has been on my case about drinking too much again. I suppose she’s right, but…

  June 10th, 1986 (Lovell/Turtleback Lane)

  Man, am I glad we bought this house! I was scared of the expense to begin with, but I’ve never written better than I have here. And—this is scary, but it’s true—I think I want to go back to work on The Dark Tower story. In my heart, I thought I never would, but last night when I was going to the Center General for beer, I could almost hear Roland saying, “There are many worlds and many tales, but not much time.”

  I ended up turning around and coming back to the house. Can’t remember the last time I spent a totally sober night, but this is one of that dying breed. It actually feels fucked up not to be fucked up. That’s pretty sad, I guess.

  June 13th, 1986

  I woke up in the middle of the night, hung-over and needing to pee. While I was standing at the bowl, it was almost as if I could see Roland of Gilead. Telling me to start with the lobstrosities. I will.

  I know just what they are.

  June 15th, 1986

  Started the new book today. Can’t believe I’m actually writing about old long, tall, and ugly again, but it felt right from the first page. Hell, from the first word. I’ve decided it’ll be almost like the classic fairy-tales in structure: Roland walks along the beach of the Western Sea, getting sicker & sicker as he goes, and there’s a series of doors to our world. He’ll draw a new character from behind each one. The first one will be a stone junkie named Eddie Dean…

  July 16th, 1986

  I can’t believe this. I mean, I’ve got the manuscript on the desk right in front of me so I sorta have to, but I still can’t. I have written !!300!! PAGES in the last month, and the copy is so clean it’s positively squeaky. I’ve never felt like one of those writers who can actually take credit for their work, who say they plot every move and incident, but I’ve also never had a book that seemed to flow through me like this one has. It’s pretty much taken over my life from Day One. And do you know, it seems to me that a lot of the other things I’ve written (especially It ) are like “practice shots” for this story. Certainly I’ve never picked something up after it lay fallow for fifteen years! I mean, sure, I did a little work on the stories Ed Ferman published in F&SF, and I did a little more when Don Grant published The Gunslinger, but nothing like what I’m up to now. I even dream about this story. I have days when I wish I could quit drinking, but I’ll tell you something: I’m almost scared to stop. I know inspiration doesn’t flow from the neck of a bottle, but there’s something…

  I’m scared, okay? I feel like there’s something— Something —that doesn’t want me to finish this book. That didn’t even want me to start it. Now I know that’s crazy (“Like something out of a Stephen King story,” har-har), but at the same time it seems very real. Probably a good thing no one’ll ever read this diary; very likely they’d put me away if they did. Anyone want to buy a used fruitcake?

  I’m going to call it The Drawing of the Three, I think.

  September 19th, 1986

  It’s done. The Drawing of the Three is done. I got drunk to celebrate. Stoned, too. And what’s next? Well, It will be published in a month or so, and in two days I’ll be thirty-nine. Man, I can hardly believe it. Seems just about a week ago that we were living in Bridgton and the kids were babies.

  Ah, fuck. Time to quit. The writer’s gettin’ maudlin.

  June 19th, 1987

  Got my first author’s copy of Drawing from Donald Grant today. It’s a beautiful package. I’ve also decided to let NAL go ahead and do both Dark Tower books in paperback—give the people what they want. Why the hell not?

  Of course, I got drunk to celebrate…only these days who needs an excuse?

  It’s a good book but in many ways it seems like I didn’t write the damn thing at all, that it just flowed out of me, like the umbilical cord from a baby’s navel. What I’m trying to say is that the wind blows, the cradle rocks, and sometimes it seems to me that none of this stuff is mine, that I’m nothing but Roland of Gilead’s fucking secretary. I know that’s stupid, but a part of me sort of believes it. Only maybe Roland’s got his own boss. Ka?

  I do tend to get depressed when I look at my life: the booze, the drugs, the cigarettes. As if I’m actually trying to kill myself. Or something else is…

  October 19th, 1987

  I’m in Lovell tonight, the house on Turtleback Lane. Came down here to think about the way I’m living my life. Something’s got to change, man, because otherwise I might as well just cut to the chase and blow my brains out.

  Something’s got to change.

  The following item from the North Conway (N.H.)Mountain Earwas pasted into the writer’s journal, marked April 12th, 1988:

  LOCAL SOCIOLOGIST DISMISSES “WALK-IN” TALES

  By Logan Merrill

  For at least 10 years, the White Mountains have resounded with tales of “Walk-Ins,” creatures who may be aliens from space, time travelers, or even “beings from another dimension.” In a lively lecture last night at the North Conway Public Library, local sociologist Henry K. Verdon, author of Peer Groups and Myth-Making, used the Walk-In phenomenon as an illustration of just how myths are created and how they grow. He said that the “Walk-Ins” were probably originally created by teenagers in the border towns between Maine and New Hampshire. He also speculated that sightings of illegal aliens who cross over the northern border from Canada and then into the New England states may have played a part in kindling this myth, which has become so prevalent.

  “I think we all know,” Professor Verdon said, “that there is no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, and no actual beings called Walk-Ins. Yet these tales

  (Continued on P. 8)

  The rest of the article is missing. Nor is there any explanation as to why King may have included it in his journal.

  June 19th, 1989

  I just got back from my one-year Alcoholix Anonymous “anniversary.” An entire year w/o drugs or booze! I can hardly believe it. No regrets; sobering up undoubtedly saved my life (and probably my marriage), but I wish it wasn’t so hard to write stories in the aftermath. People in “the Program” say don’t push it, it’ll come, but there’s another voice (I think of it as the Voice of the Turtle) telling me to hurry up and get going, time is short and I have to sharpen my tools. For what? For The Dark Tower, of course, and not just because letters keep coming in from people who read The Drawing of the Three and want to know what happens next. Something in me wants to go back to work on the story, but I’ll be damned if I know how to get back.

  July 12th, 1989

  There are some amazing treasures on the bookshelves down here in Lovell. Know what I found this morning, while I was looking for something to read? Shardik, by Richard Adams. Not the story about the rabbits but the one about the giant mythological bear. I think I’ll read it over again.

  Am still not writing much of interest…

  September 21, 1989

  Okay, this is relatively weird, so prepare yourself.

  Around 10 A.M., while I was writing (while I was staring at the word processor and dreaming about how great it would be to have an ice-cold keg of Bud, at least), the doorbell rang. It was a guy from Bangor House of Flowers, with a dozen roses. Not for Tab, either, but for me. The card read Happy Birthday from the Mansfields—Dave, Sandy, and Megan.

  I had totally forgotten, but today I’m the Big Four-Two. Anyway, I took one of the roses out, and I kind of got lost in it. I know how strange that sounds, believe me, but I did. I seemed to hear this sweet humming, and I just went down & down, following the curves of the rose, kind of splashing thru these drops of dew that seemed as big as ponds. And all the time that humming sou
nd got louder & sweeter, and the rose got…well, rosier. And I found myself thinking of Jake from the first Dark Tower story, and Eddie Dean, and a bookstore. I even remember the name: The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

  Then, boom! I feel a hand on my shoulder, I turn around, and it’s Tabby. She wanted to know who sent me the roses. She also wanted to know if I’d fallen asleep. I said no, but I kind of did, right there in the kitchen.

  You know what it was like? That scene at the Way Station in the The Gunslinger, where Roland hypnotizes Jake with a bullet. I’m immune to hypnosis, myself. A guy got me up on stage at the Topsham Fair when I was a kid and tried it on me, but it didn’t work. As I remember, my brother Dave was quite disappointed. He wanted me to cluck like a chicken.

  Anyway, I think I want to go back to work on The Dark Tower. I don’t know if I’m ready for anything that complex—after some of the failures of the last couple of years let’s say I’m dubious—but I want to give it a shot, just the same. I hear those make-believe people calling to me. And who knows? There might even be a place in this one for a giant bear, like Shardik in the Richard Adams novel!

  October 7th, 1989

  I started the next Dark Tower book today, and—as with The Drawing of the Three —I finished my first session wondering why in God’s name I waited so long. Being with Roland, Eddie, and Susannah is like a drink of cool water. Or meeting old friends after a long absence. And, once again, there is a sense that I’m not telling the story but only providing a conduit for it. And you know what? That’s okie-fine with me. I sat at the word processor for four hours this morning and did not once think of a drink or any sort of mind-altering drug. I think I’ll call this one The Wastelands.

  October 9th, 1989

  No— Waste Lands. 2 words, as in the T. S. Eliot poem (his is actually “The Waste Land,” I think).