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  • Shane Leonard

The A.V. Club's Tasha Robinson has a fantastic interview with Joe Hill. He's the son of Stephen King, effortlessly carrying on the family tradition of writing horror and weird-ass short stories. He's also the writer of the best comic book that has ever comic booked—the intensely scary, suspenseful, and downright amazing Locke & Key, which has a mere three issues to go before it concludes (this gives me a huge sad). It was recently announced that those last two issues are now going to be released as super-sized issues, with the first one dropping in August. But it's Hill's new horror novel, NOS4A2 (sound it out!), that has him doing the touring circuit. He'll be at Powell's City of Books on Friday, May 17, doing a reading, and I'll have a review of it for that week's paper (spoiler: I liked it!). Anyway, check the AV Club piece—it's pretty great. And if you aren't reading Locke & Key, you're kinda wasting your life... just sayin'.

I’ve been describing NOS4A2 as my senior thesis on horror fiction. But, in some ways, that makes it my senior thesis on Stephen King. Because the two things are almost the same. One thing I absorbed from my dad, that I’ve heard him say many times, and that I’ve come to believe, is that anything that seems like a problem can almost always be used to your creative advantage. And I had an idea with NOS4A2—you know, I like to write dark fantasy. I like to write stories of the supernatural, and… here’s my dad. And I thought, “Maybe in this book, instead of ducking from it, I’ll confront that, and see if it’s fun to play with, and goof on people’s expectations.” So yeah, there’s a little Stephen King sampling in the book.

Plus, I hear the other King kid, Owen King, can write a pretty mean book himself.