The Tower draws nearer! This past Sunday I read a new introduction to The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three while in a Costco of all places. Stephen King wrote in it about how he wanted to create a Tolkien-like saga in a Sergio Leone movie landscape (think Lord of the Rings set in “The Good, The Bad & the Ugly”) and I immediately and gleefully starting thinking, “Yes! I knew it! I knew it!” He wrote about what motivated him, way back when, to write this series and what is driving him now to finish it. Yes, finish it. Over the next year and a half, expect bold new things from Mr. King!

First things first – Books V, VI and VII of the Dark Tower series have been named and slated for delivery. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla will arrive in stores on November 5th, 2003. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, will arrive in store in the Summer of 2004 and The Dark Tower VII, The Dark Tower, will arrive in November, 2004. It also seems that Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger has been updated to make it more in-line with the other books. Supposedly there is now 10% more content than the previous edition. Speaking of previous editions, new introductions have been written for all the first four books.

Second, at Stephen King’s web site there is a section completely devoted to the Dark Tower. Click here to go check out either a short flash movie or enter the site itself. Overall, it’s a really well done flash site – definitely one deserving to be associated with The Dark Tower.

Third, I learned from George about this book entitled The Dark Tower: A Concordance, Volume 1. It is a comprehensive handbook for all things Mid-World (characters, high speech phrases, etc) from the first four books. Volume 2, published when Dark Tower V comes out this November, will cover the last three books. While my reading load is currently backed up by a couple of books, I will need to buy this ASAP. I think pretty soon I’m going to need a new bookcase.