Over these last couple of weeks, I have been resetting myself, switching from school year mode (teaching) to summer mode (research and writing). There is, of course, always overlap between the two: my research informs the work I do in my classroom, as demonstrated in my Short Fiction class-based posts, and I’m always working on research and writing at least a bit, but during the fall and spring semesters, my teaching and work with students is the primary focus of my time and energy. On the flip side, even in the summer, I’m always thinking about teaching, planning readings, calendars, and activities for the upcoming semester (including some fun King stuff in an American Gothic-focused course!), but without my usual class schedule, I’m able to really zero in on some of my bigger scholarly projects.

As we move into the summer, my work and my posts here are switching gears a bit, because my biggest to-do in the next few months is to finish my book manuscript on King’s literary geography, which is due to the publisher in November. So in the coming weeks, I will be building on these blog posts and working with all of my experiences and thoughts on reading King’s fiction, the Castle Rock Kitchen recipes, my travel experience from October 2023, my teaching, and much more to develop that scholarly reading.

As a result, over the summer months, my posts here will be sharing some small sections of that work in progress and maybe a bit of my own writing experience: in King terms, we’re switching into Danse Macabre (1981) and On Writing (2000) mode. Much like my work here on the blog, this book is focused on King’s Maine and literary geography, with six key chapters:

1. Overview of King’s Maine, including a background on literary geography theories and close reading of towns like Derry and Castle Rock, as well the Maine islands and King’s setting of stories in the Gothic wilderness
2. Explorations of literary cartography, including maps in King’s books (like the map of the path of the eclipse in Dolores Claiborne and Gerald’s Game [both 1993]), Glenn Chadbourne’s excellent map of Jerusalem’s Lot from the gorgeous Cemetery Dance deluxe edition of ‘Salem’s Lot, and a couple of artists’ maps of King’s Maine)
3. Consideration of literary tourism, including published guidebooks on King’s Maine, the excellent work SK Tours is doing, and Hallowell, Maine’s first Stephen King Day celebration, which was held last month
4. Analysis of some film and television adaptations of King’s Maine, with selections focused on two key themes: 1) work that was filmed in Maine, highlighting the real-world setting, like the 1989 version of Pet Sematary and 1990’s Graveyard Shift; and 2) adaptations where representation of place plays a really predominant role in storytelling, like Chester’s Mill in Under the Dome (2013-2015), Castle Rock in Hulu’s Castle Rock (2018-2019), and Derry in Andy Muschietti’s two IT films (2017 and 2019)
5. Exploring connections between food, place, and the intersections of sensory experience and literary geography. Theresa Carle-Sanders’ Castle Rock Kitchen (which we’ve seen many recipes from featured here) will be central to this chapter, but there are also a range of other fan-made recipes and culinary adaptations of King’s work to check out as well, all of which allow us to think about and experience King’s universe in a new (and often delicious) way
6. A consideration of how board games provide readers and fans with the opportunity to spatially navigate fictional worlds in really interesting and interactive ways. IT: Evil Below will be central to my consideration of King’s Maine in this respect, but this chapter will also move beyond Maine to look at a couple of different game adaptations of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of The Shining (1980)

What I’ll be sharing here over these summer months as I write will be some bits and pieces from my work-in-progress, many of which will build on the posts I’ve been sharing here over the last couple of years and some of which will be entirely new. I’m currently hard at work on the literary cartography chapter and look forward to sharing an excerpt or two of that with you here next week!