Song of Susannah

The Grant edition of The Waste Lands is sold out, and the paperback edition is doing very well. I should be happy and guess I am, but I’m still getting a ton of letters about the cliffhanger ending. They fall into 3 major categories: People who are pissed off, people who want to know when the next book in the series is coming out, and pissed-off people who want to know when the next book in the series is coming out.

But I’m stuck. The wind from that quarter just isn’t blowing. Not just now, anyway.

Meanwhile, I have an idea for a novel about a lady who buys a picture in a pawnshop and then kind of falls into it. Hey, maybe it’ll be Mid-World she falls into, and she’ll meet Roland!

July 9th, 1994

Tabby and I don’t fight much since I quit drinking, but oboy, this morning we had a dilly. We’re at the Lovell house, of course, and as I was getting ready to leave on my morning walk, she showed me a story from today’s Lewiston Sun. It seems that a Stoneham man, Charles “Chip” McCaus-land, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking on Route 7. Which is the road I walk on, of course. Tabby tried to persuade me to stay on Turtleback Lane, I tried to persuade her that I had as much right to use Route 7 as anyone else (and honest to God, I only do half a mile on the blacktop), and things went downhill from there. Finally she asked me to at least stop walking on Slab City Hill, where the sightlines are so short and there’s nowhere to jump if someone happens to get off the road and onto the shoulder. I told her I’d think about it (it would have been noon before I got out of the house if we kept on talking), but in truth I’ll be damned if I’ll live my life in fear that way. Besides, it seems to me that this poor guy from Stoneham has made the odds of me getting hit while out walking about a million to one. I told this to Tabby and she said, “The odds of you ever being as successful at writing as you have been are even higher. You’ve said so yourself.” To that I’m afraid I had no comeback.

June 19th, 1995 (Bangor)

Tabby and I just got back from the Bangor Auditorium where our youngest (and about four hundred of his classmates) finally got a diploma. He’s now officially a high school graduate. Bangor High and the Bangor Rams are behind him. He’ll be starting college in the fall and then Tab and I will have to start dealing w/ the ever-popular Empty Nest Syndrome. Everybody sez it all goes by in the wink of an eye and you say yeah yeah yeah… and then it does.

Fuck, I’m sad.

Feel lost. What’s it all for, anyway? (What’s it all about, Alfie, ha-ha?) What, just a big scramble from the cradle to the grave? “The clearing at the end of the path'? Jesus, that’s grim.

Meantime, we’re headed down to Lovell and the house on Turtleback Lane this afternoon-Owen will join us in a day or two, he sez. Tabby knows I want to write by the lake, and boy, she’s so intuitive it’s scary. When we were coming back from the graduation exercises, she asked me if the wind was blowing again.

In fact it is, and this time it’s blowing a gale. I can’t wait to start the next volume of the DT series. Time to find out what happens in the riddling contest (that Eddie blows Blaine’s computerized mind with “silly questions'-i.e… riddles-is something I’ve known for several months now), but I don’t think that’s the major story I have to tell this time. I want to write about Susan, Roland’s first love, and I want to set their “cowboy romance” in a fictional part of Mid-World called Mejis (i.e… Mexico).

Time to saddle up and take another ride w/ the Wild Bunch.

Meantime, the other kids are doing well, although Naomi had some kind of allergic reaction, maybe to shell fish…

July 19th, 1995 (Turtleback Lane. Lovell)

As on my previous expeditions to Mid-World, I feel like somebody who’s just spent a month on a jet-propelled rocket-sled. While stoned on hallucinatory happygas. I thought this book would be tougher to get into, much, but in fact it was once more as easy as slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes, or those Western-style short-boots I got from Bally’s in New York 3 or 4 years ago and cannot bear to give up.

I’ve already got over 200 pages, and was delighted to find Roland and his friends investigating the remains of the superflu; seeing evidence of both Randall Flagg and Mother Abagail.

I think Flagg may turn out to be Walter, Roland’s old nemesis. His real name is Walter o’dim, and he was just a country boy to start with. It makes perfect sense, in a way. I can see now how, to a greater or lesser degree, every story I’ve ever written is about this story. And you know, I don’t have a problem with that. Writing this story is the one that always feels like coming home.

Why does it always feel dangerous, as well? Why should I be so convinced that if I’m ever found slumped over my desk, dead of a heart attack (or wiped out on my Harley, probably on Route 7), it will be while working on one of these Weird Westerns? I guess because I know so many people are depending on me to finish the cycle. And I want to finish it! God, yes! No Canterbury Tales or Mystery of Edwin Drood in my portfolio if I can help it, thank you very much. And yet I always feel as if some anti-creative force is looking around for me, and that I am easier to see when I’m working on these stories.

Well, enough w/ the heebiejeebies. I’m off on my walk.

September 2, 1995

I’m expecting the book to be done in another five weeks. This one has been more challenging, but still the story comes to me in wonderful rich details. Watched Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai last nite, and wonder if that might not be the right direction for Vol. #6, The Werewolves of End-World (or some such). I probably ought to see if any of the little side-o’-the-road video rental places around here have got The Magnificent Seven, which is the Americanized version of the Kurosawa film.

Speaking of side-o’-the-road, I almost had to dive into the ditch this afternoon to avoid a guy in a van-swerving from side to side, pretty obviously drunk-on the last part of Route 7 before I turn back into the relatively sheltered environs of Turtleback Lane. I don’t think I’ll mention this to Tabby; she’d go nuclear. Anyway, I’ve had my one “pedestrian scare,” and I’m just glad it didn’t happen on the Slab City Hill portion of the road.

October 19th, 1995

Took me a little longer than I thought, but I finished Wizard and Glass tonight…

August 19th, 1997

Tabby and I just said goodbye to Joe and his good wife; they’re on their way back to New York. I was glad I could give them a copy of Wizard and Glass. The first bunch of finished books came today. What looks amp; smells better than a new book, especially one w/ your name on the title page? This is the world’s best job I’ve got; real people pay me real money to hang out in my imagination. Where, I should add, the only ones who feel completely real to me are Roland and his ka-tet.

I think the CRs* are really going to like this one, and not just because it finishes the story of Blaine the Mono. I wonder if the Vermont Gramma with the brain tumor is still alive? I’s’poze not, but if she was, I’d be happy to send her a copy…

*Constant Readers

July 6th, 1998

Tabby, Owen, Joe, and I went to Oxford tonight to see the film Armageddon. I liked it more than I expected, in part because I had my family w/ me. The movie is sfx-driven end-of-the-world stuff. Got me thinking about the Dark Tower and the Crimson King. Probably not surprising.

I wrote for awhile this morning on my Vietnam story, switching over from longhand to my PowerBook, so I guess I’m serious about it. I like the way Sully John reappeared. Question: Will Roland Deschain and his friends ever meet Bobby Garfield’s pal, Ted Brautigan? And just who are those low men chasing the old Tedster, anyway? More and more my work feels like a slanted trough where everything eventually drains into Mid-World and End-World.

The Dark Tower is my uberstory, no question about that. When it’s done, I plan to ease back. Maybe retire completely.

August 7, 1998

Took my usual walk this afternoon, and tonight I took Fred Hauser with me to the AA meeting in Fryeburg. On the way home he asked me to sponsor him and I said yes; I think he’s finally getting serious about sobering up. Good for him. Anyhow, he got talking about the so-called “Walk-Ins.” He says there are more of them around the Seven Towns than ever, and all sorts of folks are gossiping about them.

“How come I never hear anything, then?” I asked him. To which I got no answer but an extremely funny look. I kept prodding, and finally Fred sez,

“People don’t like to talk about them around you, Steve, because there have been two dozen reported on Turtle-back Lane in the last 8 months and you claim not to have seen a single one.”

To me this seemed like a non sequitur and I made no reply. It wasn’t until after the meeting-and after I’d dropped my new pigeon off-that I realized what he was saying: people don’t talk about the “Walk-Ins” around me because they think that in some crazy way I’M RESPONSIBLE.

I thought I was pretty well used to being “America’s boogey-man,” but this is actually sort of outrageous…

January 2, 1999 (Boston)

Owen and I are at the Hyatt Harborside tonight, and head off to Florida tomorrow. (Tabby and I are talking about buying a place there but haven’t told the kids. I mean, they’re only 27, 25 and 21 -maybe when they’re old enough to understand such things, ha-ha.) Earlier we met Joe and saw a film called Hurlyburly, from the play by David Rabe. Very odd. Speaking of odd, I had some sort of New Year’s Night nightmare before leaving Maine. Can’t remember exactly what it was, but when I woke up this morning I’d written two things in my dreambook. One was Baby Mordred,like something out of a Chas Addams cartoon. That I sort of understand; it must refer to Susannah’s baby in the Dark Tower stories. It’s the other thing that puzzles me. It says 6/19/99. O Discordia.

Discordia also sounds like something out of the DT stories, but it’s not anything I have invented. As for 6/19/99, that’s a date, right? Meaning what? June 19th of this year. Tabby and I should be back at the Turtleback Lane house by then, but so far as I can remember it’s not anybody’s birthday.

Maybe it’s the date I’m going to meet my first walk-in!

June 12, 1999

It’s wonderful to be back at the lake!

I’ve decided to take 10 days off, then finally return to work on the how-to-write book. I’m curious about Hearts in Atlantis; will folks want to know if Bobby Garfield’s friend Ted Brautigan plays a part in the Tower saga? The truth is I really don’t know the answer to that. In any case, readership of the Tower stories has fallen off a lot lately-the figures are really disappointing, compared to that of my other books (except for Rose Madder, which was a real tankjob, at least in the sales sense). But it doesn’t matter, at least to me, and if the series ever gets done, sales may go up.

Tabby and I had another argument about my walking route; she asked me again to quit going out on the main road. Also she asked me “Is the wind blowing yet?” Meaning am I thinking about the next Dark Tower story. I said no, commala-come-come, the tale has not begun. But it will, and there’s a dance called the commala in it. That’s the one thing I see clearly: Roland dancing. Why, or for whom, I don’t know.

Anyway, I asked T. why she wanted to know about the Dark Tower and she said, “You’re safer when you’re with the gunslingers.”

Joking I suppose, but an odd joke for T. Not much like her.

June 17, 1999

Talked with Rand Holsten and Mark Carliner tonight. They both sounded excited about moving on from Storm of the Century to Rose Red (or Kingdom Hospital), but either one would fill my plate up again.

I dreamed of my walk last night amp; wike up crying. The Tower will fall, I thought. O Discordia, the world grows dark.

????

Headline from thePortland Press-Herald, June 18, 1999: