The Best Year of My Life - An Epic Adventure in 12 Parts: October

For the final 12 days of the year, I thought I'd look back at my 2012 and determine why it was the best year of my life. Every month brought new adventures, achievements, bits of awesome that worked to make my world a happier, more fulfilling, more exciting place. Come along with me, won't you?

October

I looked up from my computer with a sense of disbelief. Out of nowhere, with no training and no help, I’d written my first sketch. It was called “Seward’s Folly,” and it was about Lincoln and his advisor, William Seward, who went on to buy Alaska. My sketch started off as a critique of social media and ended up with Lincoln being precognitive, for some reason. Most of the people I sent it to liked it. Some didn’t. But being the guy who’s producing and directing the show gets you some perks; the sketch was going in. However, being that guy also alerts you to the dangers of that, so when it was read out loud for the first time with my actors (my actors, OMG), I listened to their critiques and modified the sketch to focus on the funniest parts. Until you’re there, you don’t know how immensely satisfying it is to write something and watch other people give their all into learning it and performing it. It’s an immediate sort of writing you don’t get from writing novels.

Rehearsals for my three World of Hurt shows launched into high gear. Juggling three completely different shows to be performed in a single month is absolutely not easy, and is probably one of those things only new directors attempt, because we’re full of ambition and vim and vigor and all that. But man, my writers and actors were absolutely bringing their all. Even more thrilling than having my own sketch performed was seeing my idea brought to fruition. I had an idea, brought it to these people, and they ran with it.

I wrote one article for FEARnet – my first non-Stephen King audio review – and one poem, “66 Days.” Work continued on My Agent of Chaos, a work I was gradually realizing could be subtitled Kev Is Working Through Some Shit. Just when you think you’ve examined every aspect of yourself, you launch into a novel about your first time. Or at least I do. And not that I knew it was going to be a novel at this point. I’m going to say at least half the novels I’ve completed have started off as either short stories or novellas. And despite how painful some of the stuff in Chaos was to dredge up, I was so happy to watch it grow.

Midway through the month, Cemetery Dance sent me comp copies of two books: The Stephen King Illustrated Trivia Book and The Stephen King Illustrated Movie Trivia Book. I’d written the afterword for the former – “Trivial Matters” – and a giant chunk of the latter (co-written with Brian, my editor, and Hans-Ake Lilja, a buddy of mine and the fellow who runs the only Stephen King site on the internet more popular than mine). The books would be published in three editions – limited, regular hardcover, and trade paperback. For the first time ever, my work would be published in hardcover. On my way.

I’d also learned that the new Shivers anthology would be released this winter, and that there’d be a “lost” Stephen King story, “Weeds,” included. I wrote to Brian and asked if I had any chance of getting fiction in the collection. He instructed me to give it a shot. I emailed him my short story, “I Am Become Poe,” and waited.

At the end of the month, me and Shawn and Joe and Marty headed down to Walt Disney

World for Epcot’s 30th anniversary, and for the Food & Wine Festival, which Shawn had never been to. It was a trip fraught with peril – all of us lost something, making for some tension – but the memories I’ll take away are Shawn experiencing Food & Wine for the first time, surprising Marty with a birthday trip to Typhoon Lagoon, Joe and I dancing in a hippie circle with strangers to classic Epcot music, and the four of us experiencing Horizons: Resurrected, a fan-made virtual-reality exhibit that allowed you to “ride” Horizons, an attraction I never experienced because it was demolished before I ever went. On our first trip to WDW together, Joe played me the Horizons ride-through video and I fell in love with it. Years later, Joe and I got matching Horizons tattoos. Doing this event together was, for me, a culmination of the me-and-Joeness of going to Walt Disney World. Brothers from different mothers, he and I.

There’s a show at ImprovBoston called The Kerfuffle, which showcases the most bizarre and experimental comedy at IB. I try to never miss it. The morning of the October show (theme: “Running with the Devil”), one of the acts wrote to me and asked if I could be in her sketch. “Are you willing to appear in your underwear?” she asked. “We were supposed to have a naked guy, but he bailed.” I wrote back, “I’ll do naked if you want.” Because apparently that’s how I do. And that night, during a sketch where the director appeared in a bunny mask, I knelt before her, naked, wearing devil horns, and had fake blood drizzled all over my face. Because: comedy!