New Stephen King story, now with extra portions of supermodel

“Give that girl a (book) jacket”:

“The July issue of Esquire features a new story by King, ‘Morality,’ the first few lines of which have been lovingly painted across the bod of Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli. The story is about a writer struggling in an economic recession and the lengths he is willing to go for financial solvency. Not sure how Israeli supermodels work into the plot, but let’s just assume they do.”

Esquire editor Ross McCammon was “tasked” with checking Refaeli for spelling errors: “I had to read her three times because the first read was a wash — I felt disoriented, I wasn’t used to the medium, I was rapt by King’s wordsmithing. So the real work began on the second and third passes.”

And we all thank Mr. McCammon for his diligence.

Snarking aside, I like this story for a couple of reasons. First, because I completely understand the idea of writing on a person’s skin. In my novel The Dirty Secrets Club, Jo Beckett has to find out why a dead woman has the word Dirty written on her thigh in lipstick. And in The Memory Collector, published next week, a man with severe memory loss scrawls messages to himself on on his own body in black ink. Things like, “They die.” You know, as you do. When you’re an ex-mercenary hunting down your enemies in San Francisco.

Second, I think this new medium is fantastically inventive. I think maybe I should try it. But I’m writing another novel, not a short story, so my prose would cover more skin. One model wouldn’t be enough. I’d need more. And let’s be gender-inclusive.

I wonder if these guys are available.

(Thanks to Maxine for the link.)