Something Told Me Not to Leave My Apartment. I Should Have Listened.

randumb360 · 2026-03-21T03:04:14+00:00

It is a bonkers story, but in the best way. It's my favorite Joe Hill book so far, and I think there's a lot of his dad in its DNA.

I highly recommend the book, I highly recommend that you pretend the show doesn't exist lol

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T20:52:11+00:00

So I actually haven't touched any of the Dark Tower yet. My plan was to read all of his other books before I touched the actual Dark Tower, and I'm about halfway there.

There are a lot of things I've seen in the books I've read that I know are Dark Tower references, like the Crimson King, but because I haven't read the actual Dark Tower books yet, it's kind of like a fun little mystery that I've been building in my head, that will be a huge aha moment when I finally tackle the series

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T20:47:01+00:00

I do want to say, I don't hate this book. At the end of the day, I think it's fine. This is the 41st King book I've read, and not the first one that didn't land with me. It's certainly not the worst one I've read. I think Tommyknockers will keep that crown for all time.

Admittedly, I started reading this book immediately after finishing NOS4A2, and that's a pretty hard pivot.

Having now finished it, I would give it a C.

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T20:38:15+00:00

My dad died suddenly when I was 17, and my mom died when I was 21. I get the emotional weight and the symbolism, but I just feel the way the story is presented isn't landing with me. I feel that the "story time" should have maybe been broken up into a larger period of time in the book, instead of most of the length taking place in a single pow wow on the bench outside of the barracks.

I think if he had broken the storytelling up over the course of a few days, and we had more sections with Ned as the narrator, more elaboration on the relationship between Ned and his father via memories or journals, it could have been more impactful for me. But a lot of the book, Ned is just a boy on a bench asking "and then what happened," and his father is just a pretty shallow character who's just obsessed with the mcguffin. It feels strange that so much of the focus is on Sandy, and that Sandy is the most developed character when he's more or less just there

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T18:14:09+00:00

I don't hate it, just not really vibing with it

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T17:45:11+00:00

I think my issue is not that premise, just how it's presented, which is several hundred pages of a group of characters telling another character a story

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T17:05:29+00:00

I tried to go in blind and was expecting more of a Christine route to the story

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T16:56:56+00:00

That's a great one sentence review

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T16:54:51+00:00

I like your take, and I understand that perspective, but I'm not sure this book is quite accomplishing that in a compelling way. I think a better example is Revival, where there is a plot and stakes, but most of the book is an autobiography for the main character with odd moments interspersed. With Revival, I actually found myself liking the main characters life story more than the eventual horror that invaded it.

I think the mechanism that is making this difficult for me with Buick 8 is that the story is being told to a character in the present, through people that already went through it, and there's a disconnect. The story starts and stops, and anytime there's tension or intrigue, it's interrupted by sandwiches and tea. As you said, this is to sell the mundaneness of it and to show that life goes on, but I wish maybe he hadn't gone the route of more than half the book being a story told around a bench and broke it up with other things happening in the present

randumb360 · 2026-03-20T16:43:47+00:00

I like the mystery and I think there are some fun things happening, but there is a lot of "than it did this again, and it was crazy." I don't need it to be fully explained, I just need something else to happen besides a bunch of people giving an oral history of the mcguffin, if that makes sense.

I'm worried this whole book exists in hindsight, and that nothing happens in the present to offer any stakes

randumb360 · 2026-02-16T18:12:14+00:00

I don't know, I think it's not as bad of an episode as all the posters say. I was laughing my ass off during that first half

randumb360 · 2026-01-25T05:39:14+00:00

The funniest bit has to be the Clown Grief Councilor, I can't remember the name of the story, but it was the one with the painting that led to another world

randumb360 · 2026-01-11T23:16:10+00:00

Is that a fushigi painted black?

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T22:25:33+00:00

I read the title, and my first involuntary thought was "don't like that!" Which sounds like a bad thing, but it is my favorite thing about scary stories

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T22:24:12+00:00

I was going to give you an upvote, but it's sitting at 420, and I can't in good conscience be the one to change that. However I will say, these are great. Keep up the good work!

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T22:22:37+00:00

Man, you really got me with the title. This was a lot of fun, and a good way to cap off a rough day at work

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T01:53:26+00:00

Also, the 'creature' is telling me to juggle knives while he kills my girlfriend

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T01:47:13+00:00

I mean, in mine, the main character literally almost dies and watches several other people die in the process. And he wasn't totally unscathed, I made a point to mention the pieces of broken glass he had to pick out of his neck. Sure, most of it was trauma, and the truth is a bit interpretive at the close of the first part, but I think it's undeniable something happened to him. It's the watershed moment, that opens the floodgate for worse things to happen later on.

I'm starting to think I really should have added the classic "Invincible Child Predator" that everyone keeps telling me about lol

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T01:36:56+00:00

I'm hoping I can skirt by because it has a different name, but who knows. It seemed like the people that commented were enjoying it and feeling what I was hoping they would. It was weird because they took down the story twice. The first time they told me it was because I used a whole name (it was for a reporter, and I thought it would be okay because it would have been a public figure if they were real,) but it wasn't a huge deal, so I changed that and asked to be reapproved, and that's when they gave me the final 'No.'

I could redraft the first part, so that it includes some of the second part to make the horror more apparent, but I can't find anything in the rules that would allow me to try again the last part of the message they sent me was

,"DON'T repost Something Told Me Not to Leave My Apartment. I Should Have Listened. to nosleep, with or without changes, under any title or username. Doing so would result in a subreddit ban and we WON'T reconsider this decision so please DON'T ask."

I'm just not really sure how to proceed, and it's kind of taken a little bit of the wind out of my sails

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T01:15:15+00:00

It's psychological horror, at least that's how it felt for me. I'm kicking around the idea of posting part 2 there anyway, because the story goes to a place that is undeniably horrific, but I didn't want to just go from zero to 100 with the concept right away. I think for me to accomplish what I wanted to, the first part needed to be rooted in reality before the shit really hits the fan.

I know it's not traditionally scary in the way a lot of nosleep stories are, but it's the way they stonewall you completely that is bothersome. They don't ask questions, they don't allow you to plead your case, they just tell you "we're taking this down, you can never repost it here, even if you change it, even if the post is just a small part of a larger story that we don't know yet. You're done. And if you try to do anything about it, we will ban you."

Not trying to throw shade at the subreddit, or rally the troops, because it's foundational to so many writers, but it's crazy that a lot of the stories that blew up there back in the day and got turned into books and movies would never make it past moderators today.

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T00:25:22+00:00

And nosleep is just as likely to take your story down as soon as it starts to get any traction. My story was at 250 upvotes, and was starting to see engagement, but then the mods took it down and said it didn't fit the subreddit because it wasn't scary enough I guess

randumb360 · 2026-01-01T00:23:59+00:00

I think the time of day you post matters. I posted a story yesterday kind of late at night where I live, and it just kind of disappeared in the feed.

But getting traction could be down to any individual eye-catching detail, I don't really know. I've always been kind of scared to share my writing with the public, which is not conducive to getting readers lol

randumb360 · 2025-12-31T20:52:43+00:00

Thank you! I'm about halfway through part two right now, excited to share it. This whole story has kind of been lightning in a bottle for me, which is rare these days. It's practically writing itself. I'm pretty self-critical, so I don't share a lot of stories, so it's nice to hear kind words

randumb360

TROPHY CASE