"Sookie's boyfriend Bill disappears while working on a secret project, and Sookie heads out to Jackson, Mississippi in hopes of retrieving him alive. In this quest, she enlists the aid of a werewolf, Alcide Herveaux, and of vampire Eric." (wikipedia)
Dug it, dug it lots. But man, Bill is just kind of a dick in this one, isn't he? First the secretive nature with all the vampire database business and then the tomfoolery with Lorena (which was much more intense and detailed in the show) not to mention the (I suppose you could call it) date rape inside the trunk of the Lincoln? Jeez. Eric, Eric, ERIC! Who's a little sneaky, too, but at least less dickish and more helpful to Sookie in times of need (refinished driveway).
"When I woke, it was dark again, and Bill was in bed with me. Oh, thank God! Relief swept over me. Now all would be well. I felt his cool body behind me, and I rolled over, half asleep, and put my arms around him. He eased up my long nylon gown, and his hand stroked my leg. I put my head against his silent chest and nuzzled him. His arms tightened around me, he pressed firmly against me, and I sighed with joy, inserting a hand between us to unfasten his pants. Everything was back to normal.
Except he smelled different.
My eyes flew open, and I pushed back against rock hard shoulders. I let out a little squeak of horror.
"It's me," said a familiar voice.
"Eric! What are you doing here?"
I think I was reading this passage in the bath and then whooped out a huge, "YES!" There were a few more of those moments throughout; reading about Eric is nearly as much fun as actually watching him . . . . Next up, Dead to the World.
"Ben Mears returns to the town where he lived as a boy between the ages of 9 through 13 (Jerusalem's Lot, or 'Salem's Lot for short) in Maine, New England, to discover that the residents are all becoming vampires." (wikipedia).
I think this might be my very favorite vampire book, although I Am Legend would be an extremely close second. I read this years ago and only remember something ominous about a stairway; it was a very unpleasant surprise reading it again, but evil and clever, too. I have to say that reading about King's writer characters is probably my favorite thing in the world because you know damned well he's filling them with literal business from his own life; I think he basically writes about himself and then adds scary shit just for filler, honestly. And I'm not saying it doesn't work, because it does----but that it's somehow more meaningful, maybe.
"He wrote quickly, without thinking: For Susan Norton, the prettiest girl in the park. Warm regards, Ben Mears. He added the date below his signature in slashed notation.
"Now you'll have to steal it," he said, handing it back. "Air Dance is out of print, alas." She hesitated, and this time her glance at his eyes was a little longer. "It's an awfully good book."
"Thanks. When I take it down and look at it, I wonder how it ever got published."
or "All writers like to talk about their books. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I make up a Playboy interview about me. Waste of time. They only do authors if their books are big on campus."
or "Kind of touchy, ain't you? For a man who means his books to be read?"
"When it's gone through three drafts, editorial correction, galley-proof corrections, final set and print, I'll personally see that you get four copies. Right now that comes under the heading of private papers."
But the scary stuff is pretty significant, too, and described in a way that I found to be pretty damned brilliant:
" . . . he found himself reflecting ---not for the first time--- on the peculiarity of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can't get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowls with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary facilities, and this is called adulthood."
But not necessarily everyone's adulthood. I'm well into my thirties and have slept with the light on halfway since the film list last October and full on since seeing Insidious and am not planning to turn it off anytime in the next ten years. . . .
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