19th Level

Taking a break from geeky topics to reflect on the Sandy Hook School killings. Feel free to move on to more pleasant topics in my blog such as Cthulhu, Stephen King, Dungeons & Dragons, and the like. Reflecting on the massacre in Connecticut... I'm a proud Massachusetts boy now and always consider myself to be "from" Brooklyn. But the fact is I spent most of my childhood in Connecticut, maybe half an hour or so from Sandy Hook. I'm married to a school teacher. My brother's wife is a teacher. My mother is one. And I find myself writing the words "massacre in Connecticut". I know there's talk as to how we shouldn't politicize the issue. But all I can think of are nearly thirty dead people, the majority of them children. Children! I read of a teacher who saved her entire class with her own life. My own wife Patty tells me that she thinks as a teacher that'd be instinctive. I don't want to read about another massacre of kids. I don...

1960: It was his first real kiss, too, and Bobby never forgot the feel of her lips pressing on his his - dry and smooth and warmed by the sun. It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting. 1999: "Sometimes a little of the magic sticks around," Bobby said. "That's what I think. We came because we still hear some of the right voices. Do you hear them? The voices?" Hearts in Atlantis can be considered his writing on his own generation, the one that came of age in the 1960s. Being born in 1971 I have to confess to not having any personal connection to the 1960s. But, one of King's greatest strengths is in his characters - they are real people with real wants and needs. I think that is what makes his addition of the supernatural to his stories so effective - even in the face of the supernatural we are still dealing with real people. Hearts in Atlantis  is a collection of novellas and short stories. I'll b...