A short rant and an incidental review.

Tonight, as I trolled the Stephen King forums, I saw a post lamenting SK's one-liner on Richard Laymon's The Woods Are Dark. The timing was interesting because I just read that particular book last week. It took me about forty-five minutes. I could not put it down.

The posters in this particular thread hated the book for the most part... not surprising if you've read it. It's an easy book to hate. No, the surprising part came towards the end of the thread... where a poster said, "After reading (the OP)'s take on Richard Laymon, I have no desire to read his books."

Did you try to read some sarcasm into that? You did, didn't you!? I certainly did. My mind rejects the thought that a person might actually dismiss not just a single title but every book the author put out in his lifetime... based on the opinion of one person on the internet...

(Cue creaking noises from the old gray matter.)

Now, if my mom told me not to- wait, no, that won't work, my mom hates horror... if my hypothetical horror-loving mother pooh-poohed a book, I might not bother with it. On the other hand, I might rush out and buy a copy purely because I might want to see the train wreck with my own eyes. And that's my mom.

It's one thing to stay away from a book or author because they aren't really your style... but when your style is clearly horror (King: master of), to cross an author off of your list because someone else didn't like one of his books? It has to have something going for it, doesn't it? It got a review from SK, didn't it? You don't have a review from SK, do you?

I did not hate The Woods Are Dark... it isn't a startlingly in-depth masterpiece, no. It's a sick, twisted, dark and capering little thing. Within the first couple of chapters, it had set rusty hooks into me. Parts of it disgusted, astonished and amazed me by turn. I immediately sent it off with my boyfriend to read. It is the quintessential train wreck, complete with corpses hanging from the windows and survivors screwing in the aisles, still waiting for the final hammer to fall. "Surprise, DEATH! Aaand... move on."

On another note, I finally made a little headway with the WIP... not as much as I would have liked, but I'm pleased with the quality (for now).