Lilja's Library (2 page)

Last year, Cemetery Dance released the book version of Lilja’s Library and let me tell you, it was nice—surreal, but nice—to hold a hardcopy version of the website I have worked on for 15 years in my hands. To be able to open it, smell it and flip through the pages… But now it’s time for the next step—to release Lilja’s Library as an eBook.

There are obviously huge differences between a printed book and an eBook, both having their respective advantages and disadvantages. But some of the things I like most about eBooks include that they are [physically small], easy to bring from place to place and that they are searchable. The last quality is something I think the eBook version of Lilja’s Library will benefit from; I realize it’s not a book everyone wants to read cover to cover and that many people might just want to pick it up to read it every now and then. Maybe you’re looking for something someone said in an interview? Doing so will be a lot easier to find in the eBook version.

I asked Cemetery Dance if I could write a foreword for this eBook edition and they told me to go right ahead, so that’s what I did! What I want to do is to thank each and every one of you for all the support you have given Lilja’s Library: The World of Stephen King. I have been running the site for more than a decade now and, I will admit, there have been many times I have considered closing it and starting something else. But my love for King’s work and the support from all my readers convinced me that the site has a purpose and that it’s not time to shut it down just yet. I doubt that it’ll be here for 15 more years but who knows…

So, thank you so much for all of your support. It has meant more than I can ever say and I hope you will enjoy the eBook version of Lilja’s Library: The World of Stephen King as many others have done with the printed version. Feel free to send me your comments about it, good or bad—I want to hear them all. You can reach me through the website, Facebook or Twitter.

Enjoy!

Lilja

January 21, 2011

www.Liljas-Library.com

Part 1—Introduction

Lilja’s Library: Introduction

Bev Vincent

I don’t know Hans-Åke Lilja. We’ve never met. We’ve never spoken on the phone. Though I have seen pictures of him, I probably couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup.

And yet we’ve corresponded for over a decade. I’m not sure when we first started e-mailing each other, but my archive contains messages that date back to 1997. I couldn’t possibly guess how many notes we’ve exchanged over the years. Thousands, certainly.

When you think about it, his website, Lilja’s Library, is an astonishing accomplishment. Started in the mid-90s during the internet boom, it was just one of a vast number of sites that gathered and posted news about Stephen King’s upcoming publications, films, interviews and reviews.

Who would have guessed that, all these years later, a website in Sweden would be the one that survived? More than survived—flourished. Its success is a tribute to its creator’s devotion to the subject.

The look of Lilja’s Library has evolved over time. Its top banner currently features a new mascot, Marv the Library Policeman, designed by Glenn Chadbourne, whose illustrations you will find within these pages—and an interview with him, too. At its core, though, the site has remained true to its original vision—as a place where fans can find out what’s going on in the Stephen King universe. Outside of stephenking.com, Lilja’s Library is the go-to place for up-to-date news.

Publishers, directors, and authors have come to respect Lilja’s Library. British publishers sending galleys to a reviewer in a foreign country—unheard of. American television publicists mailing advance screeners of highly anticipated projects to a fan in a country where they will never be aired—simply amazing. King himself has mentioned the site as a place he visits on the internet, and it was recently featured in a “cameo” in the Marvel adaptation of The Stand. These are all indicators of how Lilja Library’s reputation has grown.

Lilja (as most of us know him) has landed interviews with a dizzying array of people, including two lengthy interviews with King. Among his other conquests are interview-shy people like King’s personal assistant, Marsha DeFilippo, directors Frank Darabont and Mick Garris, authors Stewart O’Nan and Peter Straub, and actors from Ed Begley, Jr. to Steven Weber. He has interviewed the entire creative team behind the Marvel Dark Tower graphic novel series, one at a time.

Did I mention that he did all this from Sweden?

Lilja would be the first to admit that English isn’t his first language. For all I know it isn’t even his second or third, but his command of English is much better than he gives himself credit for, and it’s vastly superior to my Swedish, which is at about the same level as the chef from The Muppets. He has communicated with people like King, Darabont, and Straub over the telephone in a foreign language, across half a dozen time zones, and always come away with interesting and informative results.

These interviews, conducted over the past nine years, take up the first half of this volume. He never dilutes them with commentary or context—he simply presents them as raw question and answer sessions, verbal tics and asides included. His zeal and fascination with his subject shines through in every transcript.

The rest of The Book of Lilja contains his reviews of books, movies, TV shows, and audio books. Lilja approaches reviewing from the fan’s perspective. He places himself front and center and writes in a conversational tone. He’s not interested in literary merit or overly concerned with cinematography. Does he like something and does he think fans will like it—those are the questions he tries to answer. If there’s anything about a work that he doesn’t care for, he makes no bones about it. (For the record, I would have preferred footnotes to endnotes in The Road to the Dark Tower, too, but I was outvoted.)

What lies ahead for the little website that could—and did? Who knows? In the meantime, enjoy your time exploring The Book of Lilja. I have no doubt that you will come away from this volume with a new respect for the accomplishments of the guy who single-handedly built the most popular Stephen King fan site on the internet.

In Sweden.

Amazing.

Part 2—Interview with Lilja

By Bev Vincent

Bev Vincent:
When did you first start reading Stephen King’s work? Did you start reading him in English or in Swedish?

Lilja:
I started to read King in the mid-80s when I got a copy of
Carrie
in Swedish. I think I actually got it as a Christmas gift. Then I read other books, but not that regularly. It took maybe a couple of years until I started to seek out his other books and read and collect them.

Bev Vincent:
At what point did you decide to start a website?

Lilja:
The main reason I started the site in 1996 was because I didn’t think there was a site that was good enough. There were some good sites out there, but none of them had as much information as I wanted from a good King site. Also, I thought it would be fun to work on the site and see it grow.

Bev Vincent:
Did you start in Swedish only, and if so, when did you start translating it into English as well?

Lilja:
The site has always been in English, but between 1996 and 2003 there was actually a section of the site dedicated to Swedish news (in Swedish). Unfortunately the news from Sweden decreased until it wasn’t even worth reporting. King had a down period here during that time, which didn’t help.

Also in 1998 a friend and I started a Scandinavian Stephen King Fan Club called
Följeslagarna
(which is the title of the first Swedish translation of
The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three
), so all Swedish news was covered there. Let’s say that the Swedish section wasn’t the most popular part of the site.

When I started the website it was really, really small and not very good-looking. It looked like every other site on the Net that dealt with horror in the mid-90s. It was black and had red text and spinning skulls and sawblades and such…It really wasn’t very good-looking. And everything was on one long page that you had to scroll…Definitely not my best work.

The site’s weakness probably comes from my writing in English. Since it’s not my first language, there are grammatical and spelling errors on the site. I often get mail about them from very kind people and I try to improve my English, but some errors remain. I hope, though, that they are fewer and fewer as time goes by.

Bev Vincent:
Did it start out as a news site, and if so, how did you get your news?

Lilja:
It did. At first it only had news, but then I added more and more. I added lists of books, movies, etc. The news I reported on back then—well, let’s say I probably wasn’t first with it. I got a lot from SKEMERs newsletters and a lot from other King sites. I tried to take news from all the different locations and put it in one place.

As the site grew, people started to notice it and started sending me mail with news they had found. That made the site even more up-to-date, which drew more readers to it and also more people who sent in news…and then the snowball effect started. Now I get several pieces of mail each day with different information. Most of it ends up on the site.

Bev Vincent:
Was it
Lilja’s Library
right from the beginning? If not, when did you decide to name your site and why that name?

Lilja:
As long as the site has had a name it’s been
Lilja’s Library
. In the beginning, it didn’t have a name but as soon as it did it was
Lilja’s Library
. Lilja is my last name, which I use when I communicate on the Internet. My first name is Hans-Åke, but since the letter “Å” only exists in the Scandinavian languages it’s no good to use online, so I used my last name, Lilja. The problem with that was that a lot of English-speaking people thought I was a female…I could tell you some funny stories in that area…

Sometimes, though, I feel that I should have taken a name that reflects more that the site is about Stephen King and his work. The full name of the site has always been
Lilja’s Library—The World of Stephen King
, but when anyone speaks about it—including me—it’s almost always just
Lilja’s Library
.

Bev Vincent:
What has inspired you to keep up with the site for over a decade now?

Lilja:
Several things have inspired me to keep the site going. One, I still think it’s a lot of fun. King’s work is my hobby and I enjoy reading his books, seeing his movies and reading about the man himself—I would do that even if I didn’t have the site. [Another inspiration is the mail I keep getting from people who’ve visited the site and then take the time to send me mail telling me they really like it, that they enjoyed an interview or a review, that it has helped them with a school project or helped them get tickets in time to a King reading because I got the news out. That is probably the most rewarding thing.]

Bev Vincent:
How has viewership changed over the years? Do you see spikes in page views when new King works come out or do you have a fairly constant daily profile? Do you think that viewership will flatten out or keep growing in the future?

Lilja:
My readers have increased in number over the years in addition to their locations. At the beginning they were mostly from the U.S., but now I get mail from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and so on. I have a fairly set number of visitors (at the moment it’s about fifteen hundred unique visitors a day), but the number is steadily rising. I have had peaks, the biggest being when Mick Garris sent me the first images from
Desperation
. That day I had over thirteen thousand unique visitors on the site.

Besides the peaks, there is a steady increase in the numbers. One big leap occurred when King’s official site linked to
Lilja’s Library
, and another when I got the interview with King. I think those events introduced the site to many fans who came back on a regular basis.

So far I have only seen the numbers rise. Sometimes a bit slower and sometimes faster, but there haven’t been any signs of them flattening out or dropping…yet.

Bev Vincent:
Do you have long-term plans for
Lilja’s Library
?

Lilja:
The long-term plan is to keep the site up and running like it is today and to keep improving it. To add more to it and keep offering the one place where you can find all the news about Stephen King and his work. I also hope to be able to keep having contests, to keep reviewing books and movies, to keep getting interviews with interesting people. In short, I want to keep the site growing and improving. I would like to think that I’ll be able to do that as long as there is an interest in King’s work out there…and I predict that will be the case for a long time to come.

Bev Vincent:
Have you ever considered branching out to cover other writers, or will it always be just King?

Lilja:
No, actually I haven’t. Partly because I don’t have the time (even if it would probably be fun). Maybe if someone offered to do it as a real job. Not in my spare time, though. Also, I think that in order to keep a site like
Lilja’s Library
running, you need to have a big interest in what the site is about, no matter what the subject is—and I don’t have that kind of interest in any other author.

Bev Vincent:
Who are some of your other favorite writers—in English or Swedish?

Lilja:
When it comes to reading, I actually don’t have that many other authors who I read frequently. I do enjoy books by Peter Straub, Joe Hill, Jan Guillou (a Swedish author) and Stewart O’Nan, even though I don’t feel I have to read everything they have written. I also enjoyed
Walpuski’s Typewriter
by Frank Darabont. It’s a funny little book that I really enjoyed reading.

Bev Vincent:
How much time does it take to keep up with all the news and keep the site updated?

Lilja:
Well, it takes quite some time since I run the site all by myself. I would guess that I spend about an average of one hour per day on the site, but it’s hard to say. If I read an article or a review online and then link to it on the site, adding the link may take just five minutes but reading the article or review itself might take fifteen minutes, so it depends on what you count. I also spend quite a lot of time answering and sending e-mail that are in some way connected to the site. It also varies quite a lot depending on what’s happening in the King world. If there is a new book or movie being released, there is often a lot more to report about and the time it takes to keep the site up-to-date increases.

Bev Vincent:
How have you managed to secure interviews with all these people over the years?

Lilja:
Interviews are always tricky. There are a lot of people I would like to interview that I haven’t yet. Usually, I search the Internet for contact information and, when I find it, I write a nice letter to the person in question, introducing the site and asking if an interview is possible. I have been extremely lucky—I really don’t think more than one or two people have actually said no. As I have gotten to know more and more “big names” in the King community, they have been kind in forwarding mail to people they know, making my own circle of contacts grow. In turn, it’s easier to find other people.

I also hope I have proven myself through interviews I have already done, so the people I want to interview feel comfortable letting me interview them and know I’m serious and worth spending time on.

Bev Vincent:
Is it difficult to convince American and British publishers to give review books to someone in Sweden, which is not normally part of their territory? I assume there is some King material that is difficult for you to gain access to in a timely manner—such as movies or TV adaptations.

Lilja:
When it came to books, I struggled in the beginning to get publishers in the U.S. and the U.K. to send stuff. The U.K. was a bit easier since it’s a lot closer to Sweden. At the beginning, I managed to get a book, review it and apparently do a good job on it. I’d get another book and do the same thing, and so forth. Today, I’m fortunate to have very good relationships with King’s publishers in both the U.S. and the U.K. They are very kind when it comes to sending books.

Movies are a bit harder. I have been extremely fortunate when it comes to TV, though. I have good relations with most U.S. TV channels and they are usually nice enough to send screeners of series and movies as if I were a reviewer stationed in the U.S.

Feature movies and DVDs are more difficult. I get some DVDs but there are stricter rules with the different regions. Feature movies are impossible, though, because you have to attend a screening at a theatre, which obviously I can’t.

But all in all I have very good relations with both publishers of books and distributors of movies. I hope and think it’s because I have proven to be a reliable partner to work with.

Bev Vincent:
What was it like to have King on the phone for all that time? Tell us about the experience.

Lilja:
Well, what can I say? It was a dream come true. I had to work for it, though. I had been asking for five years until I got a “yes.” They didn’t say “no,” though, during that whole time, which kept me motivated. I kept asking every three to six months or so, and finally they said OK, you can have fifteen minutes with Stephen on the phone.

When we set up an exact date, Stephen said he would give me forty-five minutes instead of fifteen, and I was just floored. I’m not sure exactly why he granted me that much time, but I’d like to think it’s because he liked the site and thought I’d do a good job interviewing him. He later said he thought it was a good interview. At the time, though, I had a very hard time understanding that I was going to speak to Stephen King for forty-five minutes on the phone.

When the day came I was so nervous I couldn’t work or anything. He was supposed to call me at 5 p.m., so I had to go the entire day waiting for it. I sent my girlfriend and two kids to a friend’s so I wouldn’t be disturbed. Five minutes before he called I was so nervous I almost got physically sick. Then the phone rang, I answered and heard: “Hello Hans? Steve King…”

The first few minutes I was still extremely nervous, but his kindness and down-to-earth persona soon made me feel like I was on the phone chatting with a friend. The forty-five minutes just sailed by. It was an amazing experience.

Bev Vincent:
What are some of your other favorite moments from your years working on the website?

Lilja:
The day-to-day highlight is when I get e-mail from people who read and like the site. It really makes my day to get mail from people saying they enjoy the site or they found something they could use or didn’t know before.

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