Take two main characters from two different books (either fiction or nonfiction) and introduce them to, or have them meet, each other. What would happen next?
I’m going off prompt here, as the only thing that came to mind was when I was reading The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons.
At the time I was “eating” books, anything that had a bit of horror in it – King, Koontz, Barker and Shaun Hutson to name but a few. A few books on the go at the same time and reading about 4-5 a week. These authors do like their words – looking at you Stephen – so their books could easy be used as a brick. And I had collected enough books to build a small extension to my parents house.
Now remember, this was when there weren’t anything to do an online order on. Most of the foreign books you could get hold off – at a premium – was text-books/manuals. The local library had very few horror books in the original language, and if they did it would only be the big sellers.
Lucky the local book shop, had a keen lad, who was into reading SiFi and a bit of horror. Who was like me, getting tired of the long waits for a book to arrive in the stores, because someone had to translate it first.
He talked his boss into getting a few of the big authors in the original language in paperback. Which was a great success, as they flew of the shelves faster than he could get them. Since we now had an “original” print and could see all the other books the authors had written, printed in the back pages of the paperbacks. Sometimes along with new and upcoming authors from the same publisher and if you where lucky some of these paperbacks had a little snippet of their new book.
I knew that we were a few costumers, but boy were we keen, the lad just couldn’t keep up with our demands – have you ordered this yet, when will be coming out in paperback, do you know if the author have written anything else because I have just finished the seventh book by them?
Need too read something!
One of these books I asked to order home, I think I read about him in the back of a Stephen King book, was Dan Simmons’ book Carrion Comfort.
I then sped through few of his books – Hyperion, The fall of Hyperion, Summer of Night and Prayers to Broken Stones. When I got to The Hollow Man I had probably ready about twenty more books in the SiFi, Horror and Gore and bizarre area. I had a spell reading Short Stories collections, as they were a great way to learn about what other authors to get on order.
When I started to read The Hollow Man and I just knew that I had read this before. I recognised so much, places, things the main characters did and would do. But there was more to it in The Hollow Man so I wasn’t sure and it nagged me. I was even playing with the idea that it was a plot, that a friend told me about, in one of the books he have read. Even a movie, when I wasn’t reading, I partook in movie marathons – 15 VHS were rented, pizza ordered, sit back and relax and the weekend was gone. So I was bit over loaded on who, when, where at the time.
I was probably in the last third before it hit me, that it was a short story in Prayers to Broken Stones – Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams – that I have read this before.
Leave a Reply