The Place Between

Back when I was dating my distaster-ex, I picked up Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link. I was on a field trip to Michigan, and the night before, I drank one-third of a bottle of vodka (size: large duty-free), purchased (but did not eat) a white chocolate KitKat bar, and fell asleep under a pool table in my host's living room. When I awoke, I peeled back my sleeping bag to reveal splotches of melted white chocolate from my collarbones to my knees, and a monster hangover (size: Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining). I stumbled out of the house, past the frat boys in UMich lettermans jackets who were drinking beer on their front lawns, and tried to make it the conference.

I made it as far as the bookstore. I was, of course, still drunk, floating through the town of Ann Arbor on an unseasonably cold November day. I felt acutely aware of the eyes of the frat boys on me. I had never been to a "college town" before, had never seen how a town could orbit around the faux-Grecian university campus. The guys in their jackets drank beer out of red plastic cups and shivered in the wind. Some of them were eating pancakes. Their eyes moved as I did.

When I made it to the downtown core, near campus, I stopped for sanctuary in a bookstore. I don't remember the name, or why I picked up Stranger Things Happen. I was probably drawn in by the fake-folksy artwork. I read the back. The room swam. I peeled off an American twenty-dollar bill, marveled sickly at the American cover price, and left.

I spent the rest of the day trying to navigate the conference. Mostly, I hung out on the floor of whatever session we were in. It was a student conference about co-op housing, so the hippie/normals ratio was pretty high. People talked about radical bike organizations and how to have babies in a co-op setting. I saw someone drinking tea out of a mason jar. I watched as the carpet resolved itself from looking like the internal organs of a butchered animal into something more normal. The hangover faded, slightly. I still smelled like white chocolate.

It was in this headspace I was introduced to Kelly Link. Her work is uncanny, in the dictionary sense of the word: characters don't always know if they're alive or dead. People disappear into the ether, and reanimate from the grave. Purses contain Eatern European homelands, but only if you open them just right. But the stories are also grounded in humdrum reality. High schoolers shop for prom dresses. Gangs of friends watch TV. Little girls play hide-and-seek with their babysitters. But is the babysitter really a person? Or is she a ghost? Who's to say, really.

Link's books could be imagined as young adult literature—especially her most recent title, which had a strongly youthful bent to them. Adolescence is a time spent mired in the place between child and adult, when the membrane between both is permeable. It would be easy, then, to slip into some other world altogether, as so many of Link's characters do. It's like a hangover: not quite sober, not quite drunk. Some third, not entirely knowable, thing.

I just started reading Karen Russell's St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Russel is the author of Swamplandia!, a magical realism book set on an alligator wrestling attraction. Her writing, like Link's, is lyrical and strange. Unpredictable. When I write fiction, my role models are the sharp, direct words of Dashiell Hammett and Stephen King. But Russell's writing is nearly vegetal in its lushness. Whole pages are devoted to the way the swamp sounds under a particular kind of moon. Her characters, too, inhabit places between worlds. This is not always easy, either to write or to read.

I've also been reading Scare Yourself Silly, a feature series on The Toast. The author, Lucia Peters, takes something creepy or spooky—uncanny might the best term, again—from the dark corners of the internet, and shines a light on it. Her latest is a look at the 200 Phenomenon in the City of Calgary, which ideates that there is another, secret, hidden Calgary under the one we all know and tolerate. You can access this ur-Calgary by doing things like painting a door on a specific yellow wall using hazelnut oil; pushing through this door (now open) will lead you to rooms unknown. Peters looks at Boothworld Industries, which seems to be some sort of Murder Inc., and the true stories of people living undetected in other people's houses, usually in secret basement cubbies. The idea of that makes me want to vomit with disgust and anxiety. What drives her features is the question if these things are real or unreal, that we live in a world that science can't always explain. That sometimes we want to believe in those places between worlds, because we sense that things are not always real, but unreal isn't the right answer either. The membranes are thin.

Taken together, this coven of Link, Peters, and Russell is powerful stuff. I don't know what it is about women working in magic/horror, but they're so good. Maybe it's because we're used to blood and discomfort, to unexplained changes and strange smells. There is power in womanhood that doesn't stem from lipstick or high heels or leaning in or whatever. It comes from literally making food with your body, from being to withstand other people growing inside you. From all that blood, and from pushing down emotions until you too don't quite know if you're alive or dead; only that you're somewhere. In a world in between. A world filled with words.

Break in the Clouds

I was going to write a moody blog post about all the stresses in my life - money, wedding, new job, work/life balance, friendships hitting rough patches or maybe going off the roads entirely - but you know what?

I don't want to.

I'm going to take a deep breath and look at the trees, which are finally in that amazing stage of budding where the air around them looks like green mist. I'm going to hop on my bike and ride to the west end of the city, where I'm going to eat some sort of fudgey brownie and drink an upscale lemonade. I'm going to do a workout, and feel the movement of the muscles under my skin and feel sweaty and irritable; then I'm going to flex naked in front of a mirror and marvel at the work that I've put into my body and how it's paid off.

I've spent so much of life being anxious. Anxious about money, about men, about the health and welfare of family members, about my employment status, about whether or not my new shoes give me cankles. Sometimes, I'm anxious that anxiety is the only emotion I can really feel. It comes so naturally, in so many situations. I worry. Constantly. It is exhausting and leaves my soul and my brain feeling like they've been an Easy-Bake Oven all day long.

And then beams of joy break through the clouds, and they save me.

I get a text from a friend who's just had a baby, and despite how tired she is, she still gets excited when I tell her about wedding plans. I decide to walk my bike up a particularly gnarly hill, and instead of feeling like a loser, I choose to notice that my heart rate is still up and I still get to work on time. Mike and I make an elaborate meal, just for kicks, and then we eat it on the couch watching Game of Thrones in our underwear. (He saves me more than anyone else: relentlessly upbeat, and so full of love for me and his life.) Spring, finally, is arriving, and its bringing little flowers and buds and robins and green grass with it.

And while there are lots of big-ticket life things happening right now, including getting married and starting a new job, I think that's a good reason to double-down on finding joy.

It's amazing how much happier I was when I wasn't working full-time. Sure, I would occasionally have hysterical crying fits about my bank account, and I had a tendency to release a strangled yelp when people asked me what I did at cocktail parties. On the other hand, I saw my friends more, I was outside more, I was more physically active. That's a recipe for feeling pretty good most of the time.

Now, I have to pay careful attention to my joy-moments, because they are fewer and more fleeting. But they're still there. A new magazine in the mail. A quick coffee with a friend. Sleeping in with my beloved, and waking up slow in a still-dark room together. A fudgey brownie and a bike ride. A break, however fleeting, in the clouds.

Image via The Good Vibe.

The Rules

Statistics always have a weird, personalized hold on me. If I read that couples who have profile pictures together are more likely to still be together six months down the road than those who have those pesky solo photos (as if they exist outside of their relationship, or some malarkey like that), I start worrying about my own Facebook status. I take the vaguest, most half-baked graduate student science as gospel, and I fret.

On the other hand, when someone tells me, "This is the way something is done" in a tone that carries any authoritative weight whatsoever, I get all bristly and contrarian. I have to go to university? Pardon me, but I think I'll become a very successful writer (I became a waitress, middle-level successful, and eventually returned to finish my undergrad). I have to work at a desk job? I'll just be over here, semi-retired at the age of twenty-nine, working on a novel and freelancing from the comfort of my living room (I eventually caved and got a Real Job™, because it turns out I really enjoy having a paycheque). I have to live in a house I own with my husband? Excuse me while I research housing co-ops and think critically about what kind of self-made family we can create with other consenting adults who might also want to live with us and our freaky hippie babies (stay tuned to see how that one turns out!).

On the other other hand, as I discovered while working with a really terrific therapist last fall, it bugs my shit out when people don't follow their job descriptions. I'm not talking about Mom = the person who feeds the kids and dusts the lamps; when professional people behave badly, it burns my chops in a way that I can barely tolerate them. I remember a professor I had in university who liked to drop the f-bomb during lectures. Now, I'm no shrinking violet, but being sworn at in a school setting, by the teacher, is usually a pretty clear indicator that things have gone off the rails somewhere. I found it disrespectful, but when I complained, his reaction was basically, "Well, get over it," and he kept doing it. My expectation that his role meant that he would behave a certain, predictable way was dashed. This was, of course, enraging.

So, what am I even talking about? I'm talking about rules. How things get to be rules, which rules are important, and which ones can be tossed aside like so much outmoded trash.

Which rules we follow can mean a lot to how we define ourselves. I've never been particularly interested in following the "rules" of living arrangements: dorm to roommates to solo apartment to living with a partner to getting hitched = normal. I lived in a dorm, sure; then I spent eight years bouncing around a student housing co-op with varying degrees of privacy, ranging from sixteen roommates to living alone for three years. It's not super far off-script—I never lived in a tiny house or a yurt—but the time I spent living with a lot of other people was incredibly valuable. I got over apologizing for missing the "normal" experience, and reveling in the one I actually had.

But as I grow up (ugh, which is taking forever), I find myself becoming more and more aware of this unwritten code people seem to be following. Maybe it's because, in the past, I wasn't exposing myself to the type of people who would be willing or able to take on, say, being a homeowner, or graduate school; now, they've infested my friend group. Like overachieving termites! Boring holes into my soul.

Except they're not even overachievers: they're just people who got their shit together. How? ("Probably by following the rules," a dark part of me just muttered snidely.) I have to admit, it seems like the folks who did their degrees in four years, married the people they were dating when they were twenty-one, and joined some sort of recreational sports league seem to be doing okay. They seem happy—sometimes in a one-dimensional way that makes me wonder if they stay in their jobs, not because they're really happy there, but because it's easier than looking for a new one...but happy.

But then I look on the other side of that white picket fence, and I see all the friends I have who didn't follow the rules: the people turned out to be queer, or who took until their 30s to finish their degree, or left academia entirely to become, I don't know, a fetish model or a fashion vlogger. The people who live in share houses, the folks who flung themselves away from their desk jobs or retail drudgery in favour of following their passion. The people who leaped and knew that, somehow, a net would form. They seem happy, too—albeit often stressed about money and more prone to stomping off from the potluck in a huff over a comment about gender identity...but happy.

Straddling that white picket fence is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds. There's a part of me, deeply ingrained, that wants to follow the rules to the letter; it seems like, from the outside, the people who do that seem to end up with the babies, the houses, and the pension plans. By following the rules, they knew exactly how to plan a wedding or start a book club, and things seem easy. And then, on the other side of the fence, there are the people who are figuring out as they go, saying, "Fuck your rules," and meaning it. And part of me is drawn to that: those people seem to have deeply soulful friendships and don't seem burdened by all the things they've acquired. They make their own clothes and they buy glitter in bulk, and things seem fun.

I guess the biggest work of growing up is figuring out exactly which rules matter to you—the house, the job, the travel, the sex, the family, the sexual and gender identity, the stuff you buy, and the money you give away. The importance of creativity, and what you're willing to sacrifice to maintain it. If you're a lone wolf or a party girl, and if you buy into the stereotypes of who those people are. I'm still working on all of this, and it's really goddamn hard to figure out. But talking about it is one rule I'm happy to break—pretending I'm not feeling something when I am has never been my strong suit, even if the world doesn't always like that. Some rules, they say, are made to be broken.

Image via http://www.domusweb.it

Cuts Like The Knife

Artists are considered singularities, able to produce that which no one else can, and their sole job in our world is to bear their vision through. Piddling things like folding laundry or making one's own snacks or being a nice person fall away when in pursuit of capital-A art. No wonder Vera Nabokov has a cult following among writers, most of whom probably long for their own laundress/editor/teaching assistant who, as an added bonus, also keeps the bed warm.

But! Singularities are rare in humanity, and even the most creative, envelope-pushing artists benefit from surrounding themselves with like-minded folks. Think of Paul McCartney: amazing as a Beatle, and decidedly meh as part of Wings. There's something so delicious about the words "art collective," am I right? No wonder so many teenagers thrill themselves by saying, "Oh, I'm in a band." In a band. "The artist" is supposed to be a lonely creature, and the cultural expectation that "artists work alone" still holds serious water. Like all lonely people, artists can be punishing to be around (think of Walt Disney's terrified office drones whispering "Man is in the forest" as Disney entered his own building, warning each other to be on their best behaviour as he passed through the office). But when they aren't actively scaring people, and they actually work with others, the results of collaboration can be astounding. See: White, Snow.

I came of age in a time of "pop divas," when teenagers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera duked it out on the charts. In no way were these performers actual divas, like an aria-delivering stage star or even a Motown-era soul sister. They were Auto-tuned, focus-grouped, and aerobicized into virtually indistinguishable plastic molds. They were propelled forwards by mostly invisible armies of stylists, songwriters, producers, "momagers," eyebrow-pluckers, and PR assistants, but the end goal was always a girl, under the spotlight, alone. The team effort was strenuously hidden, and the final product was designed to be, well, perfect. It has always been perfect. Nothing can be messy, and nothing can be difficult.

Last night, we went to see The Knife in concert. The Swedish brother-sister duo have been putting out increasingly challenging albums since 2001; the latest of which, Shaking the Habitual, manages to contain both dancefloor-friendly pop singles as well as an uncomfortable 18-minute long noise track. They write songs about gender politics and give interviews (often in disguise) that leave some journalists fleeing for the hills. Translating this album into a live concert was never going to be easy.

The Knife solved this problem by exploding the band into a multitude, bringing dancers, artists, spoken word performers, drag queens, spiritual aerobics instructors, and a metric ton of glitter into the equation. The Knife, a band of two, became The Knife, an art collective of many. Karin Dreijer Andersson and her brother Olof Dreijer stubbornly refused to position themselves as the stars of the show, and instead were swept up in the dance numbers. The singers were all arranged like backup singers—no one took center stage—and the dancers mouthed the words as well. It was disorienting, but it was also beautiful.

Art collectives have own their messy process. No one was expected to be a Vera—in the background, helpfully and unobtrusively driving the creative engine. No one was asked to be an uncredited songwriter or a no-name costume designer. The men and women who came onstage last night were all vigorously present and equally important to the show, despite the fact that some of them had made the album they were performing and most of them had not. Making anything collaboratively is a challenge (think about all the managers in the world who operate under the Peter Principle), but making art, which we've been taught is the result of a singular vision and a network of invisible and unacknowledged support struts, seems especially slippery.

The dancers last night weren't "perfect bodies." Some had hefty upper arms, or strangely shaved heads. Some had made themselves deliberately odd-looking, and the combination of so many unusual and unafraid bodies onstage (that's where the perfect people go!) at the same time was kind of breath-taking. The costumes evoked 1980s power suits (big shoulderpads and nipped-in waists), but everyone worse so much glitter it was sometimes difficult to distinguish facial features. The dance moves were angular and blocky, sometimes deliberately outmoded, but juxtaposed with the electronic music, and with the hype man's mantra "Self-consciousness is the illusion that this is only happening to you" still ringing in our ears, they worked. It all worked.

After five years of sitting on a board of directors and a year in a writer's group, I can tell you that collaborative creativity is not for the faint of heart. Art collectives get to be brave by trying to take everyone's difficult, challenging, special visions and integrating them into something that not only moves, but moves you. This is not easy. The cracks often show through. But the results, when they're like last night's show, are spectacular in every sense of the word.

Image via The Knife

The Five-Year Plan

 "Oh, I have a five-year plan," my friend Rachel said. It was a few years ago, and we were probably making some of our patented Bad Life Decisions™(of which I will spare you the details, but rest assured most of them involved the intersection of men and alcohol in a spectacular way). The topic of life plans came up, and as we slurrily discussed them, it dawned on me that planning was not my strong suit.

I had vague images in mind when I thought about my future: I'd like a subscription to The New Yorker, please, and enough free time to read every issue cover to cover. I'd like a house full of plants and books, and a partner and some kids to share it with. I'd like to be able to visit my work on a bookstore shelf, and I'd to eat food that makes me feel amazing. But I was lacking in the specifics: did I want that house to be in Toronto, where I live now? Or some yet-to-be-determined smaller town, preferably one with a decent arts scene and only a small drug problem? Did I want to live in a condo, a low-rise, or a house? Did I want to pursue my passion for non-profits and produce a how-to for co-op housing, or write the Great North American Novel? Did I want to experiment with vegan food, or get really into ribs and kombucha as part of the paleo diet? Things were fuzzy.

A few years ago, I set up a Google Doc called "Five-year plan." I added to it every now and then, after a brain session with myself, and thought I had a decent overview of where I wanted my life to go. When I looked at it a few months ago, it was mostly target weight goals and saving 10% of my paycheque. Planning fail.

I do think it's important to set goals. I use spreadsheets to keep track of my writing targets and my travel budget savings, and I use to-do lists to makes sure I get my weekly stuff done. But the big-picture stuff can be elusive. Does anyone ever really follow them? Telling myself I want to have a novel published by the time I'm thirty-two doesn't make that happen; sitting down and finding an agent (or deciding to get into e-publishing) does.

But since this blog can often be a dreamy place, here are some things I'd like to have happen by the time I turn thirty-five. I'm not sure how to get there, exactly, but being able to come back and look over this list might be the first step to accomplishing some goals.

Travel: Earlier this week, I realized that Mike and I have taken at least one trip together since we started dating. Some of these have been big-ass trips, and some have been weekend trips to New York City, but we've busted out our passports at least once per calendar cycle, and I think we can keep that schedule up. California this fall, and then in the next couple years, we have our eye on Scandinavia, Hawaii, and a return trip to NYC; the big-ticket trip is going to be Japan, which is a dream and seven thousand dollars away.

Work: Finishing my novel was a great first step; the next is going to be revising it and then finding a buyer. I want to at least have an agent by my next birthday. The long-game is definitely publishing a damn book, though. In the meantime, my day job is teaching me a lot, and I want to learn as much as I can about small businesses and non-profits while I'm there.

Family: Mike and I are making some big changes, which is really exciting! And we're starting to talk about what those changes could bring. I don't want to spoil/jinx anything, so I'll just say that we're in the negotiation stages of The Future.

Home: I want to find a great place that isn't above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley. Since we're making wishes, not plans, it should have outdoor space, in-house laundry, and a second bedroom. It should also be downtown, not in a condo building, and cost $800/month. Make it so, Toronto housing market! I just know you have some hidden gem! Oh, and if could not be infested with various insects or rodents, that would be terrific.

There are plenty of other categories I could make goals in—Friends, Siblings and Parents, Finances, The General Amount of Stuff I Have in my Home (I'm deliberate ignoring Target Weigh in favour of Target Amount of Desserts, which seems decadent until you realize that my target is two, on the weekends, and they'd better be chocolate)—but this seems like a good place to start. Putting these out there into the universe means that people can ask me about them ("Hey, how's your apartment hunt going?") and I can come back to this post and strike stuff out when it gets done. It also looks like a previously undiscovered territories on the map of the Republic of Kaitlyn's Life, and that's license to bust out the compass and go exploring.

Image via Congostudio

Nest Eggs

This morning, we pulled out the futon from a couch into a bed, piled the pillows on top, and snuggled in with bowls full of potato hash, guacamole, and a poached egg. I had a bottle of kombucha by my side, a blanket from Cambie, and Andy Samberg on the TV. It was the coziest I've been in a long time, and I take my coziness seriously.

It sound silly, but after a year of denying myself material things in the name of, oh, you know, unemployment, being able to surround myself with beautiful things feels pretty wonderful. Like, for example: my wallet, which was a beaded coin purse emblazoned with an unabashedly knock-off Chanel logo, had been slowly disintegrating for the last eight months. It had been shedding beads, and the lining had come apart. It was pretty sad. So being able to treat myself to a new Bookhou wallet—one that has a fully functional zipper, even!—felt special. Like a treat.

It's not that shopping is a panacea, but I'd been feeling strapped for cash for a really long time. I've spent the last year browsing online and sighing over things I can't afford (which was pretty much everything), deciding which body wash I was going to buy based solely on which brand was on sale, and skipping expensive monthly magazines in favour of the expensive quarterly ones. I realize that is the highest and most obnoxous brand of "my diamond shoes are too tight" complaining—I can't afford Harper's every month, you guys—but when it came at a stage in my life when I started to see several of my friends motor through a tax bracket or two, it made me feel...young. Like my shit wasn't quite together. It also frustrated me to no end. What was wrong with me that I couldn't afford nice things? I should be more on top of my game, &tc.

Creature comforts have power. Buying a nice bottle of wine for a housewarming party, being able to afford a dim sum brunch, or treating myself to a bunch of just-because tulips? That's allowing yourself an existence beyond mere subsistence. But that can be tough to develop. I struggle with spending real money (I agonized for months before plunking down the cash for a pair of super-cute clogs), and I likely always will. A pile of student debt (by most accounts, it's a foothill, but still, it's there), a pathological need for a savings account, and the knowledge that buying things doesn't really change anything about a person, have combined to make me leery of spending cash. But that leeriness is a luxury of someone who has money; when there's no steady income, you stop asking yourself if you should this party dress or that pair of shoes, and start comparing prices between grocery stores. Buying a house? Out of the question. Traveling? That's for people with paycheques.

EI carried me for nearly a year, and it was supplemented with a small but not-insignificant freelance income. My family is generous, and my boyfriend is the type of person who can sense when I'm feeling especially broke and treat me to something small but thoughtful: flowers, maybe, or even a can of Fresca. Just a token that says, "hey, you deserve nice things." He's a good role model in that way.

Now that I've landed a job (hurray!), and I have a couple special events coming up, I'm feeling more wiggle room in my spending habits. That's not to say it's a free-for-all—I don't understand why wedding dresses are, like, thousands of dollars, and I'm still light-years away from home ownership. But I bought the cute clogs. I'm cuddling under the blanket. My fridge is stocked with kombucha. I'm working down my student debt and saving up again. And having a nest egg, abd being able to make my nest beautiful at the same time, feels really good.

Image via Aubrey Jo via Pinterest.

King Among Monsters

 Forty years ago this weekend, the reading public was introduced to a shy, bullied girl with an overbearing mother and the eerie ability to control objects around her with her mind. Her story, first told in Stephen King's novel Carrie, would eventually become a movie, a musical, and a TV movie. It's a terse novel, under 200 pages—a rarity for King, whose work tends towards the "doorstop" end of the size spectrum—told in newspaper clippings, interviews, and flashbacks. We all know Carrie's story: she's pelted with menstrual pads in the shower, locked in a closet by her deranged mother, has her breasts called dirty pillows (?!), and, after one last bloody prank, eventually goes berserk at the prom. It's delicious, gory stuff! While it's one of the most commonly banned of his books, it really should be required reading for anyone who's ever mean-girled someone.

My first experience with Stephen King came when I was thirteen. We had just moved to Stratford, and while my mom washed the walls of our new rented house and cried (people who smoke inside rental units are bad, bad people), I rifled through my dad's boxed-up paperbacks, looking for something to read. I had only recently graduated from Sweet Valley high books, and I was ravenous for something that felt dangerous and adult. Even though the cover featured a pint-seized, snotty-looking Drew Barrymore on the cover, picking up his copy of Firestarter gave me a thrill. Stephen King. He was, the cover proclaimed, the master of horror. Despite the fact that even browsing the VHS boxes of the local video store's horror movie section (guys, I'm old) sometimes gave me nightmares—thanks a bunch, Wes Craven—I devoured Firestarter in a few days. I was hungry for more.

Thankfully, my dad, being a dad, was required by law to have a shelf full of yellowing King paperbacks at both the cottage and our now-clean house. I read a bunch of the mid-'80s blockbusters in quick succession: Salem's Lot, which was genuinely scary; Christine, which I understood on an intellectual level to be pretty silly (it's about a demonic...car), but still managed to give me a memorable nightmare (the car was under my bed! Trying to eat me!); It, whose reputation was solidly in place as one of the scariest books of all time, and which is responsible for two generations of clown phobias; Gerald's Game and The Tommyknockers, both of which were just strange; and a host of other books. I read the third book of The Dark Tower series without realizing that it was part of a larger story, I dug up my dad's copy of the Bachman books, featuring the pre-Columbine shooting novella "Rage," and I read The Stand, which I read upwards of a dozen times over the next decade. My sister once casually mentioned reading a King story—"Strawberry Spring"—and that surprised me, because she's always been a little more highbrow that me; then again, it's awfully hard to resist King's pull. (We bonded over how freaky that story is, and still reference it. His stories leave a mark.)

If Stephen King was a doctor, he would be a battlefield medic. His stories are brutal, thumping pieces of prose—they often feature evil sentient rats, or distraught ex-priests who fight vampires—and they lack fine delicacy. He sews stories together with big, looping threads, but those stitches are tight. He's no plastic surgeon, that's for damn sure. His books aren't pretty, either in content or style, but when you're relying on someone to assemble a real kick-ass story, he's unmatched. Even after he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Awards, he was dismissed by snobbish publishing poobahs, but frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. King is fascinated by the fascia of life, sure—the gutty parts, the sharpened teeth, the ragged fingernails and the slitted eye—but he's also a top-notch storyteller.

I will refer anyone who doubts me to his best book, The Stand. This book is a monster. It's a thousand pages long, featuring roughly one million different characters, and takes place during and immediately after a super-flu that kills, oh, just about everyone. The handful of people who remain begin having strange dreams about a scary man in a denim jacket and a old black lady in a shack. It is, of course, the story of good and evil, of humanity in the face of great despair, of love's survival in the wilderness, and of free choice and destiny. It's also scary, heart-breaking, superbly characterized, about 200 pages too long (most King books are), nuanced, fractured, and gloriously alive. I read it a lot in my teens and 20s, because—and I know how this sounds, trust me—those characters were my friends. I loved Frannie and Stu and Nick and Dayna, and I hated (hated!) Harold Lauder and rooted for poor Larry and was appropriately freaked out by The Walkin' Dude. Anyone who finds themselves drawn into the intrigue of Game of Thrones, the ethical devolution of Breaking Bad, or the splatter of The Walking Dead will find themselves right at home in The Stand, and have absolutely no leg to stand on for being sniffy. Just read it.

Carrie was King's first, his supernoval debut. It sold four million copies. The movie adaptation earned Sissy Spacek an Oscar nomination. And it launched King's career, basically giving him carte blanche to write whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. He's been remarkably experimental in his work—epic series, e-books, non-fiction musings on baseball, literally hundreds of short stories—and even though his life-threatening car accident might have slowed him down for a while in the early 2000s (and, I believe, led to some very bad novels—did anyone actually read Duma Key?), he deserves to be celebrated as a publishing and, dare say, literary force.

This anniversary, I'll take down my copy of Everything's Eventual, a short story collection published in the middle of last decade. I'll turn to "1408," a haunted-house story set in a very bad hotel room. King probably doesn't even remember writing it, but, like the first and second and third time I read it, I'll get an actual chill when I reach the story's climax. It's a very scary little story. You should read it. Turn all the lights on, but that won't help. You'll get that same chill too.