‘The End Times’ announcement
Courtesy of Bad Hand Books
There’s an exchange between Stu Redman and Glen Bateman in Stephen King’s The Stand, where the latter postulates how society might return from the devastation of a mutated flu virus that nearly wiped out all of humanity.
“Man is a gregarious, social animal, and eventually we’ll get back together, if only so we can tell each other stories about how we survived the great plague,” muses the scholarly Bateman, who soon goes on to note the following:
“All the machinery is just sitting there, waiting for someone to come along — the right someone, who knows how to clean the plugs and replace a few burned-out bearings — and start it up again. It’s all a question of how many of those who have been spared understand the technology we all took for granted.”
Acclaimed writer Benjamin Percy (The Sky Vault) is following through on that idea — and bringing Mr. King along for the ride as contributing writer — with a serialized novel dubbed The End Times, for renegade horror publisher, Bad Hand Books.
The post-apocalyptic narrative, which will release installments weekly over the course of a year starting this November, takes the form of a fictional newspaper run by a woman who discovers an old printing press 12 years after a pandemic nearly destroyed human civilization (a premise that feels ghoulishly relatable, post-Covid).
“[Ben’s] remarked to me that it’s basically influenced by the world of The Stand,” Bad Hand Books founder and CEO Doug Murano says over the phone. “So I think it’s a really good fit for Stephen to play in that playground, in a little bit of a different way.”
King, of course, is no stranger to serialized stories, having published The Green Mile in six total increments between March and August 1996. “Ben thought — and rightly so — that Stephen would be interested in doing something like this,” Murano says. “And so, they’re off to the races with it. They’ve been exchanging ideas, articles, snippets, and things like that. I’ve kind of just let them take it where they want to go with it.”
The timing couldn’t be more perfect for King, who celebrates the release of a Stand-centric anthology, The End Of The World As We Know It, this month.
As you’ll see below, the first available page from The End Times carries all the benign hallmarks of a small-town newspaper: an editor’s note, birth announcements, classified ads, an events calendar, and even a small advice section on how to jar your own pickles. But as the story continues, Murano teases, we’ll see more content, including letters to the editor and guest columns by the master of literary horror.
“From what I’ve seen so far, Stephen King is going to be writing via a character (or characters) that will be featured throughout the run … I’m not entirely sure exactly where each of his articles will land, but my perception of what they’re trying to do is build a storyline with a certain character (or characters) writing in to The End Times.”
The publisher also tees up a subplot involving a local cult that takes over the paper in what sounds like a biting critique of “fake news” and the general division among Americans in the current political landscape.
“It helps the project itself take on the topic of misinformation in the news, which I think is really important to a lot of people right now,” Murano explains. “There’s going to be a portion of this project where you only hear what the cult wants you to hear. It’s going to allow readers to confront a lot of the issues that are happening in actual journalism right now, in terms of the importance of getting the real story, the importance of doing things in good faith, and the danger of what happens when you don’t have responsible actors in places of power.”
‘The End Times’ front page
Courtesy of Bad Hand Books
The End Times got an immediate green-light from Bad Hand, given the fact that it “checked a lot of boxes” for Murano, a marketing and communications alum who started the company after losing his job in 2018. For one thing, his mother-in-law currently runs a small weekly newspaper, The Waubay Clipper, in the city of Waubay, South Dakota. “Ben and I bonded over both being from the Midwest,” says the founder. “He lives in Minnesota and I live in South Dakota. We talked a lot about the power that small local newspapers have in a community and the importance of that role — especially as we become more fragmented and distant from each other.”
For another, the experimental nature of the book was exactly in line with what Bad Hand looks for in prospective “oddball projects” that wouldn’t necessarily fly at a mainstream publishing house. “Our philosophy is kind of scrappy,” explains Murano. “We like to be the underdog, almost to the point of absurdity. It’s the idea of starting a horror publishing company in South Dakota, which is about as far away from the publishing centers of North America as you can get. But at the same time, [it’s about] trying to do really, really big things. Our company’s tagline is, ‘You can do a lot with a bad hand.’ It’s this mixture of punk rock sensibility and militant optimism that fuels us.”
Thirdly, Murano has been a fan of King’s since he read IT at the age of 13. “I was definitely too young in some ways for a story like that,” he admits, “but when I tell you it is 100% responsible for what I’m doing now, it’s not an overstatement. As a grown-up who still has a spooky inner child, getting to come full circle and work alongside the person responsible for my career choices is just totally wild.”
Bad Hand Books founder Doug Murano next to the company logo
Courtesy of Aaron Packard & Bad Hand Books
And while Band Hand just signed a major distribution deal with Baker & Taylor that will get their titles into bookstores across the nation, Murano vows that the ethos behind the brand won’t change: “We’re still going to make time and dedicate resources to doing these off-the-wall projects that are just fun and allow our artists and authors to flex their creative muscles in a way that they wouldn’t normally be able to do.”
The End Times will be available in two different forms: 500 physical newspaper copies (already sold out) printed in the same Minnesota town as mother-in-law’s Waubay Clipper and PDF issues sent out each week. Digital subscriptions only cost $15 and once they hit 500 sign-ups, Bad Hand pledges to donate a dollar to the ACLU in order “to support freedom of speech and journalism.”
“A lot of people now feel like we’re in dystopian times and this newspaper represents hope in a world that’s been torn asunder and the idea that we can come together again in the face of of extreme circumstances that would really work to tear us apart,” Murano concludes. “I think the creation of art itself is optimistic and, in a way, to express not only the horror of the world, but the beauty of the world. That’s one of the things that Ben and Stephen are getting at with The End Times.”