King Sorrow
Hey there -- how you doin'? As the guy on NPR says, it's been a minute, huh?
So on Good Friday I wrapped up the 1st draft of the new novel -- my first since The Fireman, which came out six years ago.
I know: that's a long time between books. But after writing two big ones back-to-back (before The Fireman, there was NOS4A2, and they both weighed in at 800 pages+) I needed to spend time on some other things.
Like: I got married! That was important to me, more important than my writing (and more fun too!).
And after finishing two doorstops, I wanted to get small. I wrote a couple novellas, and a few short stories, which appeared in Strange Weather and Full Throttle respectively.
I also did a lot of writing for film and TV. Some of that made it into the world, in the form of material for the Netflix Locke & Key show. Some of it never got on screen but paid well and was fun while it lasted. I adapted one of my stories for a feature. Everyone seemed to like it, but it never got made. It happens.
I wrote a pile of graphic novels: Dying is Easy, Basketful of Heads, Plunge, Sea Dogs, and Locke & Key: The Golden Age, featuring our massive 64-page Sandman Universe crossover (more about that below). It was fun to really go for it as a comic book writer, to roll my sleeves up and commit to carrying several titles at once, just like the pros. I spent 2020 cosplaying as Ed Brubaker.
But also: I needed a while to figure out what I wanted the next novel to be. I just didn't know. I wrote a couple hundred pages of something called Up The Chimney Down, which is Hitchcockian and romantic, and maybe really wanted to be a comic, or a film. I might circle back to it someday.
I wrote two hundred pages of another book, Mr. Rabbit, that has a bunch of good ideas in it, and needs more time to steep. Sometimes a story is ready to pop the day after you get the idea. Other times, it needs a year -- or ten -- to develop in your subconscious, and Mr. Rabbit feels like that.
Finally, I wrote 250 pages of another thing, which I think is good, and which I think I'm likely to finish... but at a certain point I realized it was a sequel to a book I haven't written yet. So I put that aside too!
All this is by way of saying that the creative process (or at least my creative process) isn't linear and anyone who does this work has to figure out how to adapt to the setbacks. That's probably 70% of the job.
Eventually, I found my way out of my post-Fireman thicket, hit on some notions that excited me, and fourteen months later wrapped up a sprawling, multi-lead, supernatural thriller titled King Sorrow.
A first draft is an important step. It isn't the last, though -- don't look for King Sorrow in your local bookstore just yet. Like all the other novels, there'll be two more major revisions, and at least three more minor rewrites. That's the way it goes. If I had to guess, it won't be out until late 2023... or even early 2024 (yikes!) which will make for an eight-year gap between novels (!!!). I will try my very best to make the period between King Sorrow and the next book much, much shorter.
Anyway, thanks for waiting and I'll get it to you soon as I can. I hope you like it.
Gold Don't Come Off
Gabriel Rodriguez and I started working on Locke & Key: The Golden Age* in 2011, when we introduced Chamberlin Locke and his family in "Open the Moon." We polished off the last chapter of their story a decade later, in our Sandman Universe crossover event, "Hell & Gone." The whole thing has been collected into our biggest Locke & Key hardcover ever, out at the end of this month (although -- psst -- I've heard it's already started appearing in some comic shops and bookstores).
And this thing is massive. It includes "Small World," "Open the Moon," a new vignette titled "Face the Music," the entire 3-issue "...In Pale Battalions Go..." storyline, and the 68-page beast that became "Hell & Gone" and threw the Locke family into the Sandman U. We had such a blast dreaming this story into existence. We hope you have just as good a time reading it.
* (did you know you can order signed editions from Water Street Books? As long as you don't mind waiting until I've got a moment to scribble in your copy...)
The Forecast Calls For RAIN
Hey, while we're talkin' comics, had a chance to check out the Image/Syzygy adaptation of Rain? Author David Booher and artist Zoe Thorogood took the novella from Strange Weather, reimagined it for comic books and created something new and fresh and lovely. Don't take my word for it: the reviews collected at Comic Book Round-Up have been consistently through the roof. I'm delighted to have my name anywhere near something so terrific. If you haven't already picked it up, hit your local comic store and jump in before it's too late. The series is just about to wrap up with the climactic fifth and final issue.
Hey, and I think that's it! For now, anyway. I had an idea to do some book recommendations, but maybe that's something for next time -- I've already nattered at you for a 1000+ words and you're probably itching to get to your other e-mails. I'll try and not take another year off between issues of Escape Hatch. Stay sane -- if you can. Catch you round, 'kay?