I’m scared, okay? I feel like there’s something—Something—that doesn’t want me to finish this book. That didn’t even want me to start it. Now I know that’s crazy (“Like something out of a Stephen King story,” har-har), but at the same time it seems very real. Probably a good thing no one’ll ever read this diary; very likely they’d put me away if they did. Anyone want to buy a used fruitcake?

I’m going to call it The Drawing of the Three, I think.

September 19th, 1986

It’s done. The Drawing of the Three is done. I got drunk to celebrate. Stoned, too. And what’s next? Well, It will be published in a month or so, and in two days I’ll be thirty-nine. Man, I can hardly believe it. Seems just about a week ago that we were living in Bridgton and the kids were babies.

Ah, fuck. Time to quit. The writer’s gettin’ maudlin.

June 19th, 1987

Got my first author’s copy of Drawing from Donald Grant today. It’s a beautiful package. I’ve also decided to let NAL go ahead and do both Dark Tower books in paperback—give the people what they want. Why the hell not?

Of course, I got drunk to celebrate … only these days who needs an excuse?

It’s a good book but in many ways it seems like I didn’t write the damn thing at all, that it just flowed out of me, like the umbilical cord from a baby’s navel. What I’m trying to say is that the wind blows, the cradle rocks, and sometimes it seems to me that none of this stuff is mine, that I’m nothing but Roland of Gilead’s fucking secretary. I know that’s stupid, but a part of me sort of believes it. Only maybe Roland’s got his own boss. Ka?

I do tend to get depressed when I look at my life: the booze, the drugs, the cigarettes. As if I’m actually trying to kill myself. Or something else is …

October 19th, 1987

I’m in Lovell tonight, the house on Turtleback Lane. Came down here to think about the way I’m living my life. Something’s got to change, man, because otherwise I might as well just cut to the chase and blow my brains out.

Something’s got to change.

The following item from the North Conway (N.H.) Mountain Ear was pasted into the writer’s journal, marked April 12th, 1988:

LOCAL SOCIOLOGIST DISMISSES “WALK-IN” TALES
By Logan Merrill

For at least 10 years, the White Mountains have resounded with tales of “Walk-Ins,” creatures who may be aliens from space, time travelers, or even “beings from another dimension.” In a lively lecture last night at the North Conway Public Library, local sociologist Henry K. Verdon, author of Peer Groups and Myth-Making, used the Walk-In phenomenon as an illustration of just how myths are created and how they grow. He said that the “Walk-Ins” were probably originally created by teenagers in the border towns between Maine and New Hampshire. He also speculated that sightings of illegal aliens who cross over the northern border from Canada and then into the New England states may have played a part in kindling this myth, which has become so prevalent.