I’ve been trying to do more reading lately. It’s a reliable way to find inspiration and spur my own writing. A recent read is Stephen King’s sci-fi-ish / time-travel story 11/22/63.
[You guessed it: Here’s a time portal! I know…Let’s save JFK! ]
If you read Stephen King stories with the same wild abandon I bring to eating Cheetos, you might enjoy this one. The “sci” part is laughable, but King is the undeniable master of the “fi” part. The storytelling shines with his usual brilliance. But this isn’t the reason I enjoyed the book.
King both conducted and hired major research into not just the event, but the mood and the reality of life in that time and place. He didn’t just describe Dallas in the early 1960s, he positively resurrected it. In that aspect, it was actual time travel for me.
I was a schoolgirl in Dallas on that ignominious date. I have my own “where I was when it happened” story. It’s not King’s recounting of the assassination that intrigued me, though. I have some particularly vivid memories of the time, the place, the people and the mood of those days. King somehow managed to capture that aura of grimness and vitriol that tints most of my memories. He took me back to places I’d forgotten I’d ever been.
Talk about your horror stories!