Hey, how do you like that snazzy new logo? Big thanks to Pixar artist Marty Baumann for the cool new header, which I wildly prefer to a picture of my face.
I said in the last e-mail I wasn't going to disappear on you. That was April and I promptly disappeared on you. In my defense, a couple things happened. The couple of things in question are pictured below:
TWINS.
(featured here with a somewhat sleep-deprived daddy)
You never met a happier, easier-tempered pair of little fellows. You hear a lot about how tough twins are, but not how much fun they can be. The two boys share the same sense of humor, the same sense of the absurd, the same eagerness to have an adventure. My wife and I have been having a blast.
What else have I been up to? Well, I've been pounding away at the second draft of the new novel, King Sorrow.
*pants for breath*
*almost there*
*gasp, wheeze*
I'm hoping to turn in the latest draft by the end of January. Out in early 2024 maybe? As I mentioned in the last note, it's another big one. I think (touch wood) I've got a sense for what the novel after might be, and that one should be much shorter. But we'll see. The story is the boss -- I'm just the hired help.
If you're scratching around for a Christmas present, a signed book is easy to wrap. Water Street Books in Exeter, New Hampshire, offers autographed copies of just about everything I've written, year round... but if you want to get a signed something-or-other in time for the holidays, and you live in the United States, you'll have to place your order by December 9th. (They also ship worldwide but it's probably too late to guarantee an international delivery by the 24th.)
My thanks in advance to anyone who feels stirred to order an autographed Full Throttle, Basketful of Heads, Black Phone, or any of my other books. I hope it's just the gift you were looking for.
What Was Good in 2022
I spent a lot of 2022 with a baby in my lap, a bottle in my right hand, and a book in my left. I read some exceptionally great stuff this year. Most of it usually is good... I don't finish the lousy stuff. If I've read 15% of something and it still hasn't grabbed me, it's time to move on.
A few books stood out in particular (and seem likely to appeal to folks who enjoy what I write, which maybe you do, if you're reading this newsletter).
When C. Robert Cargill wasn't crushing it with his script for The Black Phone (co-written with director Scott Derrickson), he was welding together the iron plates of another relentless novel set in his SF Rustverse. The first, Sea of Rust, was the best sci-fi action thriller of 2017... it just happened to be on the page instead of the screen. You don't have to have read that one, though, to enjoy the living s**t out of Day Zero, about a little boy and his combat-hardened robot tiger, struggling to survive at the end of the world.
If I had to pick my single favorite novel of the year written by someone who isn't a blood-relative, it would be The Night Always Comes, by Willy Vlautin. It takes place over a single 24-hour period, and documents a young woman's dark night of the soul, as she scours Portland, Oregon, for the money owed her by a wide-flung collection of low-lifes, meth-heads, safe-crackers, prostitutes and johns. This book gripped me like a hand on the throat.
Sarah Pinborough never disappoints, and I thought Insomnia was one of her best. It's as irresistible and twisty as a Gillian Flynn or a Paula Hawkins, but with a chilling supernatural element that is uniquely Pinborough. I read it in January and haven't stopped thinking about it since.
Rounding out my fearsome foursome is Jason Rekulak's breath-taking shocker, Hidden Pictures. A young recovering addict steps out of the wreckage of her life and into a job as a live-in nanny for a gifted little boy named Teddy. Teddy has an artistic bent and Hidden Pictures is crammed with his whimsical drawings. Here he is riding a giant rabbit; here's Teddy in a hot air balloon; and here he is with his imaginary friend, an eyeless and rotting corpse that only he can see. Zany fun ensues!
One of the most amazing parts of my life is that I'm related to some goddamn unbelievably great writers. Other reading highlights of my year included two by my dad: Fairy Tale, which is one of his finest adventures, and Later, a dark coming-of-age tale about a boy who can talk to the dead. The former boasted the cinematic artwork of my Locke & Key co-creator Gabriel Rodriguez, while Later was another of my pa's pulpy Hard Case crime entries. I'd love to do a Hard Case crime novel someday. And then there was my brother Owen's forthcoming novel, The Curator, which rocked my world, and is a stone-cold masterpiece. It's written with the lucid beauty of All The Light We Cannot See, is as narratively rich as The French Lieutenant's Woman, and has all the compelling forward motion of, well, Fairy Tale. It's out next year. I can't wait for it to drop.
In the interest of keeping it short and sweet, I'll say a bit less about my favorites in film and TV. Don't watch Smile if you ever have plans to sleep again. X was a splatter-and-sleaze spectacular the likes of which we haven't seen since the trashiest 70s horror films... but it elevates the game by blowing up a lot of slasher genre's most tiresome tropes about sexuality. The Autopsy of Jane Doe is a few years old but was new to me. Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch deliver expertly restrained performances in this beautifully engineered and relentlessly terrifying horror flick. And finally, in Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, the fable of the living puppet has been reimagined against the backdrop of Mussolini's rise to power and Italy's collapse into fascism. The imagery is haunting and beautiful and completely fresh, while the whole story is shot through with Del Toro's moral clarity and sadness about the human condition. It's another essential entry in his cabinet of cautionary curiosities.
I had this idea about Andor today. So the Star Wars saga is the fairy tale version of an ancient war fought in space. It is, as Joseph Campbell correctly identified, an intentional attempt to craft not a story, but a myth, and resembles the tales we've held onto about the Trojan War, tales full of god-forged armor and giant wooden horses.
But Andor isn't a myth -- Andor is like the true facts on which a myth is based. It dispenses with magic, lightsabers, and space druids altogether, for a heart-battering story about radicalization, environmental destruction, prison labor, personal sacrifice, and rotten moral quandaries. I was there for it.
Star Wars went somewhere completely new; Star Trek: Strange New Worlds went back to basics. SNW expertly distills all the optimism, imagination, wit, and soaring sense of adventure that was so a part of the Shatner-era series. It makes for a pretty tasty brew.
As for Severance, I just wanna say that no one says the word 'motherf---r' with more elan than John Turturro, except maybe for Christopher Walken, and in this surreal mind-bender, they play romantic partners. That's just one facet of a show that somehow merges the humor of The Office with the tragic weirdness of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. It's a masterpiece of Phillip K. Dickery.
And Sandman just made me so g'dam glad. The comics taught me how to write Locke & Key and have figured prominently in my imagination for decades. They're an absolute dragon's hoard of story. To see them brought to the screen with such beauty, power, and faithfulness is a dream come true, huh? (Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)
Right, that's enough out of me. I meant to write 1,000 words and spilled 2,000 instead. Now you know how King Sorrow wound up so long. Although if you still haven't had enough of me, I've opened the blog back up. I mostly gave up on Twitter (Elon had to make it weird) and needed a place to share my thoughts. That said, I'm keeping @joe_hill in my back pocket and sometimes my wife still posts promotional stuff for me there (I don't even know my own password anymore... and don't want to know it).
And, ah, hell, I can't entirely blame my disaffection on Elon Musk. I spent 12 years tweeting like it was my job... almost a quarter of my life! I think that's enough. And I don't think I want to replace Twitter with a different social network, because (a) that's like an alcoholic switching from beer to wine, and (b) I don't really feel like renting a stall in someone else's marketplace of ideas anymore. Social media networks are always at the whims of their owners and management teams, and at any time, a place you love can suddenly roll out the welcome mat for ISIS and white nationalists. But that's not a problem when I'm posting to my blog.
Hey, see you there?