In retrospect, it seems fitting there was a dark, turbulent storm in progress, the day I went into the used book store, in Ann Arbor, Michigan (yes there are still such things in this digital, e-book world). I had just finished the second draft of my novel, “Bridges – a Tale of Niagara” and was feeling pretty pleased with myself and was ready to send it into the meat grinder of agent queries.
Oh – how foolish we mortals are!
Luckily for me, after I’d found the book I was seeking in the musty book store, it was still pouring and thundering outside, so I decided to kill some time rummaging through a bin of yellowed, smelly paperbacks, while waiting for the storm to subside. Digging around, I wasn’t too impressed with the cast-off fodder in the bin when, to my amazement, I found a book from Stephen King that I had never heard of before. How could this be? A Stephen King novel I didn’t know about? And so old it was in the ‘Bargain Basement’ bin of discarded paperbacks? I was shocked – how did I miss this?
The book was titled: “On Writing – A Memoir Of The Craft”.
What’s this? A horror story about a writer gone over to the dark side? Hmmm, “Craft” , huh? Must be about some writer who gets involved with witchcraft. Must also really be bad for me not to have heard of it, I thought.
D.K. LeVick's "Writing in the Woods" 