 |
I don’t really know what the magic is in deciding that a story really should be a series. I mean, sometimes you come at a story and you already know. For example, my two Sin-Eater books were originally created to be a comic book. As such, I already had the word “series” in mind when I did it. Then came The Dead Phone – a book mean to be a stand-alone sort of thing, and something just sort of clicks.
As you may know, The Dead Phone takes place in rural Pennsylvania, in a tiny town called Knorr. Yes, it is loosely (very loosely) based on a real place. I will not tell you what place, but you can probably look at a map and kind of figure it all out.
As I was writing The Dead Phone, suddenly it occurred to me that there was more to tell about little Knorr and the people of Knorr County. Plus, I liked the character of Tabitha, and I knew that she would have come back one one way, shape or form. So, somewhere along the line, while writing The Dead Phone, I realized I had stumbled upon my Castle Rock.
You know Castle Rock, and I am not talking about the movie production company. I mean the fictional town in Maine that Stephen King has used as the setting for large number of his books. He isn’t the first and he wasn’t the last to set a bunch of different books in the same place. His wife, Tabitha, has a fictional town where a number of her books take place, Nodd’s Ridge.
It does not mean that the star of each book is going to be Warren and Tabitha. No, I think the Sheriff is an interesting character. I think there are more residents, living and dead, within Knorr that have yet to be explored. In fact, I have already started a new novel set in the fictional town. Don’t worry, though, I am sure we will run into Warren and Tabitha again.
You see, I think Knorr is a place where strange things happen. The walls between our side of reality, and the “other” side of reality are very thin there. And it doesn’t take much to poke a hole in that wall. And when that happens – things come through.