Read A Brief Guide to Stephen King for Free Online

Bullet
as an e-book, and the response was phenomenal: within twenty-four hours of its release, the book was downloaded 400,000 times. (In the Scribner office pool, King thought it might make 16,000.)
    As a result of
Riding the Bullet’s
success, King resurrected
The Plant
, a story which he had sent out in parts to friends as Christmas gifts in the early 1980s, and made that available on an honour system: readers could donate a dollar each for most instalments (some were two dollars). ‘My friends – we have the chance to become Big Publishing’s worst nightmare,’ he announced on his website. Over three-quarters of those who read the book did pay, but King lost interest in the story, and although he promised there would be further chapters from the summer of 2001, none has ever appeared.
    In contemporary interviews, King regularly referred to his life post-accident as ‘the bonus round’, and he was determined to complete the ‘Dark Tower’ saga. The final three volumes were written together, and published between November 2003 and September 2004, incorporating a famous author called Stephen King as an integral part of the plot. The cliffhanger ending to the penultimatevolume was a news report of King’s death in an accident. King was unrepentant about what was seen as self-indulgence by some, and also about the way in which the story closed.
    From A Buick 8
was published in 2002, although King had completed the draft of it a few weeks before the accident; since it begins with someone killed by a car in the sort of drive-by in which King was involved, Scribners felt it might be inappropriate to release it straightaway.
Rose Red
appeared on ABC the same year, for which King worked with Ridley Pearson on a tie-in prequel novel. However, a lot of attention was paid to comments King made about his impending retirement – and for a time, many fans believed that the final ‘Dark Tower’ volumes would mark the end of King’s writing career. King clarified that he meant retiring from publishing the material he wrote, rather than ceasing to write altogether, and there were many who believed that he never really had any intention of packing up, and that this was simply a long-running joke he was having with his fans.
    For someone who was contemplating retiring, starting work on a new column for a popular magazine might seem a contradictory step. King’s regular contributions to
Entertainment Weekly
which started in August 2003 were subtitled ‘The Pop of King’ and showcased his favourite items of pop culture. No doubt there were those who thought of these pieces when they expressed their amazement at the news that King was to receive the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters that November.
    It may have made some critics apoplectic, such as Yale professor Harold Bloom, but attending the ceremony nearly killed Stephen King. He was still not properly recovered from the accident, and had contracted pneumonia, but he was adamant that he was going to attend the ceremony. He gave a speech defending the role of popular literature,wondering if people felt they got ‘brownie points’ for not keeping in touch with the keystones of their own culture. In response, Australian author Shirley Hazzard opined that they didn’t need a reading list from Stephen King.
    The pneumonia was caused by the bottom part of his lung not properly reinflating after the accident, and he then contracted a bacterial infection, keeping him hospitalized for weeks, during which time Tabitha reorganized his office. This gave him the inspiration for
Lisey’s Story
, a tale of a writer’s widow dealing with her grief, which he worked on as he recovered his strength. He was also heavily involved with the adaptation of Lars von Trier’s 1995 Danish miniseries
Riget
about a haunted hospital, incorporating his own experiences into the single-season
Kingdom Hospital
that ran from March to August 2004. This