Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 0

Well, howdy there! What’s a good lookin’ thumb jockey like you doin’ hitchhikin’ on a lonely stretch o’ highway like this? Don’cha know that’s dangerous? Lucky for you I’m the trustworthy type. Where ya headed? That far?! Well, hop in! I don’t mind the drive if’n you don’t mind the company.

What’s that? “Grass, gas, or ass?” None o’ the above, doll! You wanna ride with me, then you gotta just sit back and let me talk. What am I gonna talk about? How’s about a ghost story to make the miles go by faster? Better yet — how’s about a ghost story that’s also a love story. The love of a man for his car. The love of one Arnie Cunningham for…

Okay… that’s enough of the “good ol’ bwah” patois. Let’s you and me get down to bidness — er… I mean business.

For the next thirty-one days, Blog-o-weeners, I will be behind the wheel as we motorvate our way through Stephen King’s 1983 novel Christine. Consider this post to be the pre-road trip planning session, where we sit down with our trusty old road atlas and trace out our main routes and a few alternatives just in case. Sorry, but where we are going, there is no GPS, no internet, no wi-fi, no nothing outside of what Messrs. Rand and McNally could fit on both sides of a fold-up map and what gossip we can pick up at the gas stations and diners along the way.

Of course, if we’re getting our directions from a Mountie, we may have taken a wrong turn!

There’s apt to be a lot of twists and turns to our travels. Some days, we’ll be on the highway, and it’ll be smooth cruising; other days, we’ll be taking some of the lonesomest backroads you’ve ever seen. We may even get lost once or twice. Not to worry, though. By the time we get to 31 October, we will have reached our destination.

Whether or not we will have “safely” reached that destination is something else entirely.

Much like our trip through Stephen King's novel ‘Salem’s Lot a few years ago, I think I’ve broken up our journey across the hi-ways and by-ways of Christine into twenty-seven doable legs. I don’t believe that any one night’s reading assignment will be too overwhelming for the average reader. If there are any longer sections to read, I think that the spooky story and kooky characters will act as a little nitro spat into your engine’s blower to give you a bit more oomph to get you over the finish line for the night.

As you math majors out there have already figured out, twenty-seven official nights of reading Christine leave us four “free” days to play around with. On these days, I’ll cut loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle about Stephen King, the writing of the novel, adaptations, and what I think it all means.

And, boy, do I have some opinions!

Plug yer ears all you want! It won't make a lick of difference!

So with that said, here is your first reading assignment, Blog-o-weeners: for tomorrow, let’s all read the Prologue and Part 1: Chapters 1 & 2. Depending on your edition, that’s should be around twenty-four pages. Not a bad stretch o’ distance for our first day on the road.

It’s still early days yet, but I’ll try to point out as many interesting roadside attractions and points-of-interest as I can in these first twenty-four pages. I can't promise I'll get to everything — I gotta keep my eyes on the road, after all — and I might not always sound like I know what I’m talking about, but just remember…

Blog-o-ween 2026: Road Trip!

Hey-o, Blog-o-weeners! Long time, no see, huh? Well, that’s just the way it goes around these parts. I suppose that’s what makes the time that we do spend together so special, huh, champ?

Hey, I’ve been busy!

Last year’s Blog-o-ween, as you will recall, was a truncated one, because no matter how I approached it, I could not find a novel way to celebrate the Horror High Howl-idays. (Heh-heh-heh!) You know how we here at LARPCo like to do things in October: a blog post a day on an overarching theme. We’ve covered the gory gamut, so to speak. We’ve had month-long discussions about some of the horror genre’s best short stories and radio shows. Well, last year I felt like I’d finally hit the wall blogging-wise. Sure, we ended up throwing together a mini Blog-o-ween at the last minute by writing all about the oeuvre of British writer Nigel Kneale, but I was really worried about future Blog-o-weens. Could I find something — anything! — new to write about that would keep me (and of course you, too, Blog-o-weeners) coming back everyday for more?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, I think I’ve found a topic that excites me and makes we want to hit the keys throughout the month of October.

No, the topic I’ve chosen isn’t a particularly “new” one.

Blog-o-ween 2024, as I am sure you recall (and if you don’t, you can check it out here), was a month-long discussion of a single text: Stephen King’s 1975 novel about vampires in small town America, ‘Salem’s Lot. I had a really great time digging my teeth into one of my favorite novels. ‘Salem’s Lot is a book that I read every October to get the juices flowing and the blood pumping. (If you know what I mean, and I think you do. Heh-heh-heh!)

This year, I thought, why not do the same with another favorite book? But which one? There were plenty of books to choose from on my shelves, but I needed one that had the right balance between a spooky, Halloweeny setting, a creepy story, a cast of characters about whom the reader will care whether they live or not, and a lot of interesting things to say about the time and place in which it was written.

Also, it had to be the right fit length-wise.

That’s a heckuva Venn diagram, I know, but I think I found the right book:

Stephen King’s 1983 novel about a 1958 Plymouth Fury that’s a killer-diller in more ways than one ticks all the boxes for me. I mean, is there any spookier setting than high school? C’mon! Add to that two — count ‘em: TWO! — lover’s triangles. In this corner, we have two boys, Dennis and Arnie, in love with the same girl, Leigh. And in the other corner, we have Arnie who is in love with two women: Leigh and… Christine. On top of all that, King sets his novel in my old stomping grounds:

So, pick up your copy of Christine now, because in one week — 30 September — we will be hitting the highway to hell. Our 31 day road trip through the hills and dales of King’s novel will be an eventful one, so pack accordingly. (i.e., make sure you have clean underwear in case we get into an accident.) Don’t worry, we’ll take some time off in our journey to get out of the car, stretch our legs, see the sights — you know, engage in a discussion of the historical links between the car and the American teenager, a brief history of the writing of the novel, a look at its adaptation to the screen, and if we’re lucky…

Huh? Huh? Wha’dya say?!

Fine, fine… I’m trying to educate as well as entertain here, but you know best. I think it should be pointed out, however, that…