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113-590: His fifth book, the Edgar Award-nominated novel How Lucky, was published by Harper in May 2021 and received an endorsement from author Stephen King . His sixth book, the novel The Time Has Come , was published by Harper in May 2023. His seventh book, Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride, will be published by Harper in May 2025. Leitch was born and raised in Mattoon , Illinois , which is also the setting of Catch . He attended

226-412: A Loser appeared on Ironminds, an online magazine that existed from 1999-2002. In January 2003, Leitch became a founding editor of the website The Black Table , with Eric Gillin, A.J. Daulerio and Aileen Gallagher. His Life As A Loser column ran online for five years and was ultimately compiled into a book of the same title, with a foreword written by Tom Perrotta . In September 2005, Leitch became

339-520: A Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk who noticed stylistic similarities between King and Bachman and located publisher's records at the Library of Congress that named King as the author of Rage . King announced Bachman's death from "cancer of the pseudonym". King reflected that "Richard Bachman began his career not as a delusion but as a sheltered place where I could publish a few early books which I felt readers might like. Then he began to grow and come alive, as

452-476: A West Virginia women's prison. King and Richard Chizmar co-wrote Gwendy's Button Box (2017). A sequel, Gwendy's Magic Feather (2019), was a solo effort by Chizmar. In 2022, King and Chizmar rejoined forces for Gwendy's Final Task . King made his screenwriting debut with George A. Romero 's Creepshow (1982), a tribute to EC horror comics . In 1985, he wrote another horror anthology film, Cat's Eye . Rob Reiner , whose film Stand by Me (1986)

565-466: A book of short fiction including " The Reach " and The Mist . He recalls: "I would be asked, 'What happened in your childhood that makes you want to write those terrible things?' I couldn't think of any real answer to that. And I thought to myself, 'Why don't you write a final exam on horror, and put in all the monsters that everyone was afraid of as a kid? Put in Frankenstein, the werewolf, the vampire,

678-463: A cave, a mirror and a mirage—we are sometimes able to see an old thing in a new and vivid way. Even if the result is mere clarity instead of beauty, I think writer and reader are participating together in a kind of miracle. Maybe that's drawing it a little strong, but yeah—it's what I believe." When asked if fear was his main subject, King said "In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's

791-414: A collection of four novellas, was his first major departure from the genre. Among the films adapted from King's fiction are Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), The Dead Zone (1983), Christine (1983), Stand by Me (1986), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Dolores Claiborne (1995), The Green Mile (1999), The Mist (2007) and It (2017). He has published under

904-484: A fight with his father over Virginia and leaves the house. Along the way, the boys trespass at the town dump and are chased by Chopper, the dump custodian Milo Pressman's dog. Teddy gets into a verbal skirmish with Milo when the latter insults Teddy's father (a WW2 veteran who was given a "Section 8" medical discharge for trauma related to the Normandy invasion) by calling him a "loonie". Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by

1017-425: A financial advisor to many of the prison’s guards and higher-ups through his encounter with prison guard, Byron Hadley, in which Andy advises him to use a loophole to avoid the taxation on the inheritance he recently received. Along with helping prison guards with their tax returns, loans, and any other financial advice, Andy begins to help some of the higher-ups with money laundering. Andy eventually begins working as

1130-417: A gang of hooligans led by John "Ace" Merrill have accidentally discovered the dead body of a missing boy named Ray Brower, who was hit by a train. Because the gang found the body while driving a stolen car, they elected not to report the body to the police. The boys get the idea to find the body "officially" so that they may become famous. In preparation for the expedition, Chris steals a gun from his father, and

1243-558: A haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury ." Later that year, he published Pet Sematary , which he had written in the late 1970s, when his family was living near a highway that "used up a lot of animals" as a neighbor put it. His daughter's cat was killed, and they buried it in a pet cemetery built by the local children. King imagined a burial ground beyond it that could raise the dead, albeit imperfectly. He initially found it too disturbing to publish, but resurrected it to fulfill his contract with Doubleday . In 1985, King published Skeleton Crew ,

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1356-450: A life of his own. In the author's note, King writes that "I am indebted to the late Richard Bachman ." In 1990, King published Four Past Midnight , a collection of four novellas with the common theme of time. In 1991, he published Needful Things , his first novel since achieving sobriety, billed as "The Last Castle Rock Story". In 1992, he published Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne , two novels about women loosely linked by

1469-656: A limited edition of 250 by the Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art . Alfred A. Knopf released it in a general trade edition. King co-wrote Throttle (2009) with his son Joe Hill . The novella is an homage to Richard Matheson 's "Duel". Their second collaboration, In the Tall Grass (2012), was published in two parts in Esquire . King and his son Owen co-wrote Sleeping Beauties (2018), set in

1582-449: A lot and write a lot." He emphasizes the importance of good description, which "begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary. I began learning my lessons in this regard by reading Chandler , Hammett , and Ross Macdonald ; I gained perhaps even more respect for the power of compact, descriptive language from reading T. S. Eliot (those ragged claws scuttling across

1695-459: A modern context. He recalls that while writing 'Salem's Lot , "I decided I wanted to try to use the book partially as a form of literary homage (as Peter Straub had done in Ghost Story , working in the tradition of such 'classical' ghost story writers as Henry James , M. R. James , and Nathaniel Hawthorne ). So my novel bears an intentional similarity to Bram Stoker 's Dracula , and after

1808-614: A newspaper clipping describing Dussander’s death and his true identity. Todd kills French in retaliation. Afterward, Todd goes on a killing spree and is eventually killed by police five hours later. Gordon "Gordie" Lachance reminisces about his childhood in Castle Rock, Maine. At that time, Gordie's elder brother Dennis (also known as Denny), whom his parents favored, had recently died, leaving Gordie's parents too depressed to pay much attention to him. In 1960, Gordie and his three friends − Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio − learn that

1921-555: A novel. She told him: "You've got something here. I really think you do." Per The Guardian , Carrie "is the story of Carrie White, a high-school student with latent—and then, as the novel progresses, developing—telekinetic powers. It's brutal in places, affecting in others (Carrie's relationship with her almost hysterically religious mother being a particularly damaged one), and gory in even more." The review of Carrie in The New York Times noted that "King does more than tell

2034-475: A novelist. Conversely, the novellas, which did not deal (primarily) with the supernatural, were very difficult to publish as there was not a mass market for "straight" fiction stories in the 25,000- to 35,000-word format. Thus, King and his editor conceived the idea of publishing the novellas together as "something different", hence the title of the book. The story takes place in Maine at Shawshank State Penitentiary and

2147-545: A pandemic and its aftermath. King recalls that it was the novel that took him the longest to write, and that it was "also the one my longtime readers still seem to like the best". In 1977, the Kings, with the addition of Owen Philip , their third and youngest child, traveled briefly to England. They returned to Maine that fall, and King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine . The courses he taught on horror provided

2260-521: A parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience, which holds him prisoner and dictates what he writes, on pain of death" while The Dark Half "is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his creative genius, the vampire within him, the part of him that only awakes to raise Cain when he writes." Introducing King at the National Book Awards , Walter Mosley said "Stephen King once said that daily life

2373-427: A patient, Sandra Stansfield, who was determined to give birth to her illegitimate child, no matter what, despite financial problems and social disapproval. McCarron comes to admire her bravery and humor, and the implication is that he has even fallen a bit in love with her. Sandra masters Dr. McCarron's unusual (for the 1930s) breathing method intended to help her through childbirth. However, when she goes into labor and

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2486-658: A podcast about University of Georgia football . He also cohosts the movie review podcast Grierson & Leitch with his lifelong friend and film critic Tim Grierson. The duo also write features for the entertainment website Vulture . Leitch also cohosts the St. Louis Cardinals podcast Seeing Red with Bernie Miklasz . Leitch lives in Athens, Georgia with his wife, designer Alexa Stevenson, and their two sons, William and Wynn. Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947)

2599-417: A recently widowed novelist. Several reviewers said that it showed King's maturation as a writer; Charles de Lint wrote "He hasn't forsaken the spookiness and scares that have made him a brand name, but he uses them more judiciously now... The present-day King has far more insight into the human condition than did his younger self, and better yet, all the skills required to share it with us." Bag of Bones won

2712-426: A ride- thus leading to him being sentenced soon after to serve three life sentences, one for each murder. One of Red’s most important aspects is that he’s “the guy who can get it for you” as his various connections allow him to easily smuggle contraband into the prison. Red describes meeting Andy Dufrense for the first time in 1948, one year after Andy was potentially falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover,

2825-399: A sequel to The Shining. During his Chancellor's Speaker Series talk at University of Massachusetts Lowell on December 7, 2012, King said that he was writing a crime novel about a retired policeman being taunted by a murderer, with the working title Mr. Mercedes . In an interview with Parade , he confirmed that the novel was "more or less" completed. It was published in 2014 and won

2938-456: A solar eclipse. The latter novel is narrated by the title character in an unbroken monologue; Mark Singer described it as "a morally riveting confession from the earthy mouth of a sixty-six-year-old Maine coastal-island native with a granite-hard life but not a grain of self-pity". King said he based the character of Claiborne on his mother. In 1994, King's story " The Man in the Black Suit "

3051-402: A story. He is a schoolteacher himself, and he gets into Carrie's mind as well as into the minds of her classmates." King was teaching Dracula to high school students and wondered what would happen if Old World vampires came to a small New England town. This was the germ of 'Salem's Lot , which King called " Peyton Place meets Dracula ". King's mother died from uterine cancer around

3164-400: A tendency to write in images because that was all I knew at the time." Regarding his interest horror, he says "my childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age, I wanted to be scared. I just did." He recalls showing his mother a story he copied out of a comic book. She responded: "I bet you could do better. Write one of your own." He recalls "an immense feeling of possibility at

3277-418: A tin roof and rusty screen door: "No matter what time of day you looked out that screen door, it looked like sunset... When it rained, being inside the club was like being inside a Jamaican steel drum." King writes that "The use of simile and other figurative language is one of the chief delights of fiction—reading it and writing it, as well. [...] By comparing two seemingly unrelated objects—a restaurant bar and

3390-429: A train while crossing a trestle. While at a resting point, Gordie tells his friends another story, "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan", in which the titular Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan exacts vengeance on the town locals for ridiculing his wide girth by downing a whole bottle of castor oil before engaging in the town's annual pie-eating contest and vomiting on the previous year's champion, which causes a chain reaction that nauseates

3503-487: A well-to-do golfer. Andy asks Red to get him a rock hammer, stating that he is a “rock hound”. A year later, Andy asks Red to get him a large poster of Rita Hayworth. Red also details the various encounters he had during his time in prison, detailing his initial trouble with one of the prison’s rape gangs. Red insinuates that Andy eventually paid off the prison guards to beat up the leader of the rape gang, Bog Diamond. Along with this, Red describes how Andy had become somewhat of

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3616-415: A while it began to seem I was playing an interesting—to me, at least—game of literary racquet-ball: 'Salem's Lot itself was the ball and Dracula was the wall I kept hitting it against, watching to see how and where it could bounce, so I could hit it again. As a matter of fact, it took some pretty interesting bounces, and I ascribe this mostly to the fact that, while my ball existed in the twentieth century,

3729-464: Is a collection of four Stephen King novellas with a more dramatic bent, rather than the horror fiction for which King is famous. The four novellas are tied together via subtitles that relate to each of the four seasons . The collection is notable for having three out of its four novellas turned into Hollywood films, one of which, The Shawshank Redemption , was nominated for the 1994 Academy Award for Best Picture , and another, Stand by Me ,

3842-412: Is a nod to Richard Stark, the pseudonym Donald E. Westlake used to publish his darker work. The Bachman books are grittier than King's usual fare; King called his alter-ego "Dark-toned, despairing...not a very nice guy." A Literary Guild member praised Thinner as "what Stephen King would write like if Stephen King could really write." Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym in 1985 by Steve Brown,

3955-705: Is about coming of age , a theme he has returned to several times, for example in Joyland . King often uses authors as characters, such as Ben Mears in 'Salem's Lot , Jack Torrance in The Shining , adult Bill Denbrough in It and Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones . He has extended this to breaking the fourth wall by including himself as a character in three novels of The Dark Tower . Among other things, this allows King to explore themes of authorship; George Stade writes that Misery "is

4068-447: Is an American author. Widely known for his horror novels , he has been crowned the "King of Horror". He has also explored other genres, among them suspense , crime , science-fiction , fantasy and mystery . Though known primarily for his novels, he has written approximately 200 short stories , most of which have been published in collections. His debut , Carrie (1974), established him in horror. Different Seasons (1982),

4181-421: Is an adaptation of King's novella The Body , named his production company Castle Rock Entertainment after King's fictional town. Castle Rock Entertainment would produce other King adaptations, including Reiner's Misery (1990) and Frank Darabont 's The Shawshank Redemption (1994). In 1986, King made his directorial debut with Maximum Overdrive , an adaptation of his story " Trucks ". He recalls: "I

4294-499: Is just fabulous at that, and also I tried to write more colloquially." Straub said the only person who could correctly identify who wrote which passages was a fellow author, Neil Gaiman . King and the photographer f-stop Fitzgerald collaborated on the coffee table book Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques (1988). He produced an artist's book with designer Barbara Kruger , My Pretty Pony (1989), published in

4407-482: Is on the way to the hospital on an icy winter night, her taxi crashes and she is decapitated. McCarron arrives at the crash site and realizes that Sandra is somehow still alive. Her lungs in her decapitated body are still pumping air, as her head, some feet away, is working to sustain the breathing method so that the baby can be born. McCarron manages to deliver the infant alive and well. On a sweet but haunting end note, Sandra whispers "Thank you"—her severed head mouthing

4520-416: Is small, a seashell. Sometimes it's enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same. King often starts with a "what-if" scenario, asking what would happen if an alcoholic writer was stranded with his family in a haunted hotel ( The Shining ), or if one could see

4633-439: Is small-town American life, often set in fictitious Derry, Maine; tales of family life, marital life, the lives of children banded together by age, circumstance, and urgency, where parents prove oblivious or helpless. The human heart in conflict with itself—in the guise of the malevolent Other. The ' gothic ' imagination magnifies the vicissitudes of 'real life' in order to bring it into a sharper and clearer focus." King's The Body

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4746-449: Is the frame that makes the picture. His commitment, as I see it, is to celebrate and empower the everyday man and woman as they buy aspirin and cope with cancer. He takes our daily lives and makes them into something heroic. He takes our world, validates our distrust of it and then helps us to see that there's a chance to transcend the muck. He tells us that even if we fail in our struggles, we are still worthy enough to pass on our energies in

4859-457: Is told from the first-person perspective of prisoner Ellis “Red” Reddings as he recounts his time in prison. His writings mainly focus on his friend and fellow prisoner, Andy Dufresne. Red opens by describing himself and why he was in prison- having staged a car accident in 1938 intended only to kill his wife after insuring his wife for a large amount of money, but incidentally also killed his neighbor and her child as his wife had offered to give them

4972-505: The 2007 NCAA Tournament , Leitch wrote a daily column for TimesSelect , the paid section of The New York Times . During the 2007 baseball playoffs, Leitch wrote a daily column for The New York Times ' web site. Leitch was also the host of The Will Leitch Show for Sports Illustrated for two seasons. Guests included Guy Pearce , Lea Thompson , Dale Earnhardt Jr. , Stephanie Beatriz , Andre Holland , Heidi Gardner and Sean Astin . Leitch also cohosts Waitin' Since Last Saturday ,

5085-522: The Bram Stoker and August Derleth Awards. In 1999, he published The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon , about a girl who gets lost in the woods and finds solace in listening to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox games, and Hearts in Atlantis , a book of linked novellas and short stories about coming of age in the 1960s. Later that year, King was hospitalized after being hit by the driver of a van. Reflecting on

5198-542: The British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. King recalls "I got the best reviews in my life. And that was the first time that people thought, woah, this isn't really a horror thing." King struggled with addiction throughout the decade and often wrote under the influence of cocaine and alcohol; he says he "barely remembers writing" Cujo . In 1983, he published Christine , "A love triangle involving 17-year-old misfit Arnie Cunningham, his new girlfriend and

5311-530: The Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel . He returned to horror with Revival , which he called "a nasty, dark piece of work". King announced in June 2014 that Mr. Mercedes was part of a trilogy; the sequel, Finders Keepers , was published in 2015. The third book of the trilogy, End of Watch , was released in 2016. In 2018, he released The Outsider , which features the character Holly Gibney , and

5424-694: The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign . While there, he was an editor at the university's paper, the Daily Illini . He now lives in Athens, Georgia . One of Leitch's first brushes with fame came when he appeared on an early episode of Win Ben Stein's Money . In his memoir, Life as a Loser , Leitch describes the experience of taping the episode within hours of being dumped by his fiancée (a fact that co-host Jimmy Kimmel included in Leitch's introduction). Life as

5537-475: The anti-war novel Sword in the Darkness , still unpublished. King recalls the origin of his debut , Carrie : "Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together." It began as a short story intended for Cavalier ; King tossed the first three pages in the trash but his wife, Tabitha , recovered them, saying she wanted to know what happened next. He followed her advice and expanded it into

5650-522: The 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters , the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the 2014 National Medal of Arts . Joyce Carol Oates called King "a brilliantly rooted, psychologically 'realistic' writer for whom the American scene has been a continuous source of inspiration, and American popular culture a vast cornucopia of possibilities." King

5763-961: The American Wild West as depicted by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone in their spaghetti Westerns . The first story, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger , was initially published in five installments in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman , from 1977 to 1981. It grew into an eight-volume epic, The Dark Tower , published between 1978 and 2012. King co-wrote two novels with Peter Straub , The Talisman (1984) and Black House (2001). Straub recalls that "We tried to make it as difficult as possible for readers to identify who wrote what. Eventually, we were able to successfully imitate each other's style... Steve threw in more commas or clauses, and I kind of made things more simple in sentence structure. And I tried to make things as vivid as I could because Steve

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5876-457: The Bullet , "the world's first mass e-book, with more than 500,000 downloads". Inspired by its success, he began publishing an epistolary horror novel, The Plant , in online installments using the pay what you want method. He suggested readers pay $ 1 per installment, and said he'd only continue publishing if 75% of readers paid. When The Plant folded, the public assumed that King had abandoned

5989-580: The Flies . It proved formative: "It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands—strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, 'This is not just entertainment; it's life or death.'... To me, Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels are for, why they are indispensable." He attended Durham Elementary School and entered Lisbon High School in Lisbon Falls, Maine , in 1962. He contributed to Dave's Rag ,

6102-588: The University of Maine, King earned a certificate to teach high school but was unable to find a teaching post immediately. He sold short stories to magazines like Cavalier . Many of these early stories were republished in Night Shift (1978). In 1971, King was hired as an English teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine . He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels, including

6215-422: The University of Maine. In the present day, Gordie tells how he learned of Chris's death after he was fatally stabbed while trying to stop an argument in a restaurant, about the deaths of Vern and Teddy (in a house fire and car accident respectively), about his successful writing career, and about his recent visit to Castle Rock, where he found that Ace has become an alcoholic and a worker at the town's mill. David,

6328-520: The World of The Dark Tower was published in 2016 under the pseudonym Beryl Evans and illustrated by Ned Dameron . It is adapted from a fictional book central to the plot of King's The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands . In the late 1970s, King began a series about a lone gunslinger, Roland , who pursues the " Man in Black " in an alternate universe that is a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth and

6441-468: The bank waiting for him once he got out of prison. Andy shares that he intends to use this money to move to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and open a small hotel. He implies that he wishes for Red to come with him when that day ever comes. On March 12, 1975, 8 years after Andy tells Red about his pseudonym, Andy is missing from his cell. They discover that he had used his rock hammer to create a hole in the prison wall through which he could escape and had hidden it behind

6554-466: The basis for his first nonfiction book, Danse Macabre . In 1979, he published The Dead Zone , about an ordinary man gifted with second sight . It was the first of his novels to take place in Castle Rock, Maine . King later reflected that with The Dead Zone , "I really hit my stride." In 1982, King published Different Seasons , a collection of four novellas with a more serious dramatic bent than

6667-412: The bodies in his basement. One night when Dussander is burying one of his victims he has a heart attack. He asks Todd to clean up and hide the body before calling an ambulance and being sent to the hospital. While in the hospital Dussander shares a room with holocaust survivor Morris Heisel. Heisel does not immediately remember Dussander’s identity but makes it known that he remembers his face. Todd visits

6780-449: The boys camp out in a nearby field. Over the course of the narrative, the adult Gordie recalls his first published story, Stud City, about the life of a simple man named Edward "Chico" May whose older brother also died. He has a girlfriend, Jane, who he does not have particularly strong feelings for. Chico knows that his stepmother Virginia slept with his brother before he died, but he hesitates to tell his father about it. One day, Chico has

6893-486: The character over Superman . In 2010, DC Comics premiered American Vampire , a comic book series co-written by King and Scott Snyder and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque . King wrote the backstory of the first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five-issues story arc. In On Writing , King recalls: When, during the course of an interview for The New Yorker , I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in

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7006-463: The collection Just After Sunset . In 2009, it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria . King's novel Under the Dome was published later that year, and debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Bestseller List . Janet Maslin said of it, "Hard as this thing is to hoist, it's even harder to put down." In 2010, King published Full Dark, No Stars , a collection of four novellas with

7119-453: The common theme of retribution. In 2011, he published 11/22/63 , about a time portal leading to 1958, and an English teacher who travels through it to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination . Errol Morris called it "one of the best time travel stories since H. G. Wells ". In 2013, he published Joyland , his second book for Hard Case Crime. Later that year, he published Doctor Sleep ,

7232-453: The contrary, I want them to do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it's something I never expected." Joyce Carol Oates called King "both a storyteller and an inventor of startling images and metaphors, which linger long in the memory." An example of King's imagery is seen in The Body when the narrator recalls a childhood clubhouse with

7345-471: The creatures of a writer's imagination so frequently do... He took on his own reality, that's all, and when his cover was blown, he died." Originally, King planned Misery to be released under the pseudonym before his identity was discovered. When Desperation (1996) was released, the companion novel The Regulators was published as a "discovered manuscript" by Bachman. In 2006, King announced that he had discovered another Bachman novel, Blaze , which

7458-598: The crimes he had committed lest he turn him in to the authorities. Todd then begins to go to Dussander’s house every day demanding to know the details of all of his crimes in excruciating detail. As months go by, Todd begins to have nightmares and his grades begin to slip. He resigns to forging his report card before giving it to his parents. Eventually, his school’s guidance counselor Ed French, requests to meet with Todd and his parents to discuss his failing grades. Todd, desperate for his parents not to find out convinces Dussander to pretend to be his grandfather and accompany him to

7571-517: The doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts." Joyce Carol Oates said that "Stephen King's characteristic subject

7684-470: The encounter, Dussander steals drugs from the hospital dispensary and commits suicide. Weiskopf along with police detective Richler then interviews Todd because of his connections to Dussander. Later, French meets with Todd’s real grandfather and realizes that he had been lying when he said that Dussander had been his grandfather. This leads French to check Todd’s report cards and discover that Todd had been tampering with them. French confronts Todd, showing him

7797-566: The end of World War II , living in a modest house in Scarborough. He is of Scots-Irish descent. When King was two, his father left the family. His mother raised him and his older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. They moved from Scarborough and depended on relatives in Chicago, Illinois ; Croton-on-Hudson; West De Pere, Wisconsin ; Fort Wayne, Indiana ; Malden, Massachusetts ; and Stratford, Connecticut . When King

7910-415: The entire audience. The next morning, the boys stumble upon a small pond and partake in a swim, but jump out in horror when they find that the pond is teeming with leeches. After a thunderstorm, the boys finally find the dead body. The body of Ray Brower was discovered to be mangled by the train while attempting to escape the locomotive's path. Ace's gang arrives shortly after. During an argument, Chris pulls

8023-516: The founding editor of Deadspin , which quickly became one of the most popular independent sports blogs on the web, and has been profiled in Sports Illustrated and The New York Times . Leitch announced on June 5, 2008 that he would leave Deadspin at the end of the month to become a contributing editor at New York magazine . Deadspin would later shut down after an ownership dispute, and its writers would create Defector Media . During

8136-502: The future. The story is set in Los Angeles in 1974 and is told in the third-person perspective. The story follows Todd Bowden from the age of thirteen up until he graduates high school. The story opens with Todd as he arrives at the doorstep of an elderly German immigrant, named Auther Denker, and accuses him of being Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander. Dussander does little to deny his identity and Todd insists that Dussander tells Todd about

8249-399: The ground, he said that he didn't believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed that I believe it. And I do. Stories aren't souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover

8362-495: The gun on the gang and forces them to leave, but Ace promises reprisals. Tired, depressed and fearing retaliation, the boys decide there is nothing more to be done with the body and return home. Subsequently, one of the gang members reports the body as an anonymous tip, and the gang members severely beat all four boys. The four friends eventually drift apart, but Gordie and Chris remain close. Chris decides to prepare for higher education, and with Gordie's support, they both graduate from

8475-451: The horror fiction for which he had become famous. Alan Cheuse wrote "Each of the first three novellas has its hypnotic moments, and the last one is a horrifying little gem." Three of the four novellas were adapted as films: The Body as Stand by Me (1986); Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption as The Shawshank Redemption (1994); and Apt Pupil as the film of the same name (1998). The fourth, The Breathing Method , won

8588-403: The hospital a few days later to tell Dussander that he would never visit him again, only for Dussander to tell Todd to be more careful with his murders. Eventually, Heisel realizes “Mr. Denker”’s true identity as the commandant of the concentration camp where his wife and daughter were killed. Heisel contacts a Nazi hunter named Weiskopf to visit Dussander and tell him he had been found out. After

8701-425: The idea, as if I had been ushered into a vast building filled with closed doors and had been given the key to open any I liked." King was a voracious reader in his youth: "I read everything from Nancy Drew to Psycho . My favorite was The Shrinking Man , by Richard Matheson —I was 8 when I found that." King asked a bookmobile driver, "Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" She gave him Lord of

8814-401: The incident, he said "it occurs to me that I have nearly been killed by a character out of one of my own novels. It's almost funny." He said his nurses were "told in no uncertain terms, don't make any Misery jokes". In 2000, King published On Writing , a mix of memoir and style manual which The Wall Street Journal called "a one-of-a-kind classic". Later that year he published Riding

8927-427: The meeting. Now aware of his failing grades, Dussander uses this as blackmail to force Todd into studying during their meetings. Todd’s grades begin to improve and he decides he no longer has any need of Dussander and plots to kill him and make it seem like it was an accident. Todd tells Dussander that should anything happen to him he has a friend he gave a letter to listing all of Dussander’s crimes that will be mailed to

9040-400: The miniseries Rose Red (2002); The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2001) was written by Ridley Pearson and published anonymously as a tie-in for the series. He also developed Kingdom Hospital (2004), based on Lars von Trier 's The Kingdom . King collaborated with Stan Winston and Mick Garris on the music video Michael Jackson's Ghosts (1996). He co-wrote

9153-490: The mummy, the giant creatures that ate up New York in the old B movies. Put 'em all in there." These influences coalesced into It , about a shapeshifting monster that takes the form of its victims' fears and haunts the town of Derry, Maine. He said he thought he was done writing about monsters, and wanted to "bring on all the monsters one last time…and call it It." It won the August Derleth Award in 1987. 1987

9266-476: The musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (2012) with T. Bone Burnett and John Mellencamp . A soundtrack album was released, featuring Taj Mahal , Elvis Costello and Rosanne Cash , among others. In 1985, King wrote a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men . He wrote the introduction to Batman No. 400, an anniversary issue where he expressed his preference for

9379-464: The narrator of the frame tale, is a middle-aged Manhattan lawyer. At the invitation of a senior partner, he joins a strange gentlemen's club where the members, in addition to reading, chatting and playing billiards and chess, like to tell stories, some of which range into the bizarre and macabre. One Thursday before Christmas, the elderly physician Dr. Emlyn McCarron tells a story about an episode that took place early in his long and varied career: that of

9492-411: The newspaper his brother printed with a mimeograph machine , and later sold stories to his friends. His first independently published story was " I Was a Teenage Grave Robber ", serialized over four issues of the fanzine Comics Review in 1965. He was a sports reporter for Lisbon's Weekly Enterprise . In 1966, King entered the University of Maine at Orono on a scholarship. While there, he wrote for

9605-472: The novel was influenced by his experiences with addiction: "Annie was my drug problem, and she was my number-one fan. God, she never wanted to leave." He published The Tommyknockers , a science fiction novel filled, he says, with metaphors for addiction. After the book was published, King's wife staged an intervention, and he agreed to seek treatment for addiction. Two years later, he published The Dark Half , about an author whose literary alter-ego takes on

9718-519: The novella Elevation . In 2019, he released The Institute . In 2020, King released If It Bleeds , a collection of four novellas. In 2021, he published Later , his third book for Hard Case Crime. In 2022, King released the novel Fairy Tale . Holly , about Holly Gibney was released in September 2023. In November 2023, the short story collection You Like It Darker , featuring twelve stories (seven previously published and five unreleased)

9831-507: The ocean floor; those coffee spoons), and William Carlos Williams (white chickens, red wheelbarrow, the plums that were in the ice box, so sweet and so cold)." King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most". Other influences include Ray Bradbury , Joseph Payne Brennan , James M. Cain , Jack Finney , Graham Greene , Elmore Leonard , John D. MacDonald , Don Robertson and Thomas Williams . He often pays homage to classic horror stories by retelling them in

9944-425: The outcome of future events ( The Dead Zone ), or if one could travel in time to alter the course of history ( 11/22/63 ). He writes that "The situation comes first. The characters—always flat and unfeatured, to begin with—come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded a set of characters that they do things my way. On

10057-422: The people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I've told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation... We understand that fiction is a lie to begin with. To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one's own work in particular." In On Writing , King says "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all: read

10170-444: The police upon his death. Dussander realizes Todd’s plot, however, and tells him that he wrote his statement and placed it in a safe deposit box so that if Todd were to kill him, the authorities would know he was willingly conversing with a war criminal. These statements prevent them from killing each other despite both of them lying about the ‘evidence’ they had on one another. As the months go by, Todd begins killing homeless people on

10283-520: The poster he hung up in his cell. Nine months after his escape, Red receives a blank postcard from McNary, Texas, and assumes that it is from Andy and that he has successfully crossed the border. In 1977, Red was released on parole. He finds a note addressed to him from “Peter Stevens” inviting Red to join him in Zihuatanejo along with $ 1,000. The story ends with Red deciding to join Andy and sharing his hope for

10396-469: The prison’s librarian and expands it past its original location, a small room that was originally used to store paint. It is during this time that he meets prisoner fellow Tommy Williams. Tommy tells Andy that his former cellmate at the previous prison he was in, a man by the name of Elwood Blatch, had confided in Tommy that he had been the one who killed Andy’s wife and her lover. Andy uses this information to go to

10509-602: The prison’s warden, Samuel Norton, as a means to try and gain his freedom. Norton denies Andy’s request, stating he is far too valuable as an asset and that he knows too much since he aided the administration in money laundering. Norton sentences Andy to twenty days in solitary confinement and transfers Tommy to a different prison during his sentence. Four years after his time in solitary confinement, Andy confronts Red and tells him about his pseudonym- “Peter Stevens”. Andy had sold all of his assets to this pseudonym before getting sentenced to prison, stating he had upwards of $ 370,000 in

10622-591: The project because sales were unsuccessful, but King later said he had simply run out of stories. The unfinished novel is still available from King's official site, now free. In 2002, King published From a Buick 8 , a return to the territory of Christine . In 2005, he published the mystery The Colorado Kid for the Hard Case Crime imprint. In 2006, he published Cell , in which a mysterious signal broadcast over cell phones turns users into mindless killers. That same year, he published Lisey's Story , about

10735-641: The pseudonym Richard Bachman and has co-written works with other authors, notably his friend Peter Straub and sons Joe Hill and Owen King . He has also written nonfiction, notably Danse Macabre (1981) and On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000). Among other awards, King has won the O. Henry Award for " The Man in the Black Suit " (1994) and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller for 11/22/63 (2011). He has also won honors for his overall contributions to literature, including

10848-406: The pseudonym Richard Bachman. He explains: "I did that because back in the early days of my career there was a feeling in the publishing business that one book a year was all the public would accept...eventually the public got wise to this because you can change your name but you can't really disguise your style." Bachman's surname is derived from the band Bachman–Turner Overdrive and his first name

10961-510: The street as it helps alleviate his nightmares. Years pass and Todd visits Dussander less and less. Todd greatly enjoys the thrill associated with killing, stating that he believes it to be better than sex. However, he is uncertain if he dislikes sex in comparison to the thrill of killing simply because he enjoys killing more or if sex with his girlfriend is unenjoyable because she is Jewish. Similarly to Todd, Dussander has also begun to have nightmares and kills homeless people to relieve them, burying

11074-449: The student newspaper, The Maine Campus , and found mentors in the professors Edward Holmes and Burton Hatlen . King participated in a writing workshop organized by Hatlen, where he fell in love with Tabitha Spruce . King graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and his daughter Naomi Rachel was born that year. King and Spruce wed in 1971. King paid tribute to Hatlen: "Burt

11187-448: The survival of humanity." In his acceptance speech for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, King said: " Frank Norris , the author of McTeague , said something like this: 'What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth.' And that's always been the bottom line for me. The story and

11300-519: The time ' Salem's Lot was published. After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado . He paid a visit to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park which provided the basis for The Shining , about an alcoholic writer and his family taking care of a hotel for the winter. King's family returned to Auburn, Maine in 1975, where he completed The Stand , an apocalyptic novel about

11413-496: The wall was very much a product of the nineteenth." Similarly, King's Revival is a modern riff on Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein . King dedicated it to "the people who built my house": Shelley, Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft , Clark Ashton Smith , Donald Wandrei , Fritz Leiber , August Derleth , Shirley Jackson , Robert Bloch , Straub and Arthur Machen , "whose short novel The Great God Pan has haunted me all my life". Different Seasons Different Seasons (1982)

11526-554: The widow of a novelist. He calls it his favorite of his novels, because "I've always felt that marriage creates its own secret world, and only in a long marriage can two people at least approach real knowledge about each other. I wanted to write about that, and felt that I actually got close to what I really wanted to say." In 2007, King served as guest editor for the annual anthology The Best American Short Stories . In 2008, King published Duma Key , his first novel set in Florida, and

11639-402: The words, which are distortedly heard from the throat jutting from her headless body. McCarron is able to tell her that her baby is a boy and to see that she has registered this before she dies. McCarron and his office nurse pay for the woman's burial, for she has no one else. The child is adopted, and despite the confidential nature of adoption records, McCarron is able to keep track of him over

11752-429: The years. When the man is "not yet 45", and an accomplished college professor, McCarron arranges to meet him socially. "He had his mother's determination, gentlemen," he tells the club members, "and his mother's hazel eyes." The second episode of the seventh season of the 2016 American television series Billions featured a copy of the book in the possession of a prisoner character played by Clancy Brown . Brown played

11865-443: Was 11, his family moved to Durham, Maine , where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. After that, she became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King says he started writing when he was "about six or seven, just copying panels out of comic books and then making up my own stories ... Film was also a major influence. I loved the movies from the start. So when I started to write, I had

11978-454: Was an unusually productive year for King. He published The Eyes of the Dragon , a high fantasy novel which he originally wrote for his daughter. He published Misery , about a popular writer who is injured in a car wreck and held captive by Annie Wilkes, his self-described "number-one fan". Misery shared the inaugural Bram Stoker Award with Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon . King says

12091-637: Was born in Portland, Maine , on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, a traveling vacuum salesman after returning from World War II , was born in Indiana with the surname Pollock, changing it to King as an adult. King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury). His parents were married in Scarborough, Maine , on July 23, 1939. They lived with Donald's family in Chicago before moving to Croton-on-Hudson, New York . King's parents returned to Maine towards

12204-533: Was coked out of my mind all through its production, and really didn't know what I was doing." It was neither a critical nor a commercial success; King was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for Worst Director, but lost to Prince , for Under the Cherry Moon . In the 1990s, King wrote several miniseries: Golden Years (1991), The Stand (1994), The Shining (1997) and Storm of the Century (1999). He wrote

12317-507: Was nominated for the 1986 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay . At the ending of the book, there is also a brief afterword, which King wrote on January 4, 1982. In it, he explains why he had not previously submitted the novellas (each written at a different time) for publication. Early in his career, his agents and editors expressed concern that he would be "written off" as someone who only wrote horror. However, his horror novels turned out to be quite popular and made him much in demand as

12430-433: Was published by Scribner in May 2024. The book debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times fiction best-seller list for the week ending May 25, 2024. King announced an upcoming novel named Never Flinch on November 18, 2024. The novel is set to release on May 27, 2025. King published five short novels— Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984)—under

12543-588: Was published in the Halloween issue of The New Yorker . The story went on to win the 1996 O. Henry Award . In 1996, King published The Green Mile , the story of a death row inmate, as a serial novel in six parts. It had the distinction of holding the first, fourth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, and fifteenth positions on the New York Times paperback-best-seller list at the same time. In 1998, he published of Bag of Bones , his first book with Scribner , about

12656-526: Was published the following year. The original manuscript had been held at the University of Maine for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication. King has used other pseudonyms. In 1972, the short story " The Fifth Quarter " was published under the name John Swithen (a Carrie character) in Cavalier . Charlie the Choo-Choo: From

12769-501: Was the greatest English teacher I ever had. It was he who first showed me the way to the pool, which he called 'the language pool, the myth-pool, where we all go down to drink.' That was in 1968. I have trod the path that leads there often in the years since, and I can think of no better place to spend one's days; the water is still sweet, and the fish still swim." King sold his first professional short story, " The Glass Floor ", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. After graduating from

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