Read A Brief Guide to Stephen King for Free Online Page B

prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy? – for his 2011 blockbuster novel
11/22/63
, as well as indulging his love of baseball in the novella
Blockade Billy
, which first appeared in 2010, alongside a dark collection of novellas
Full Dark, No Stars
. At the same time, he was writing his first comic book series,
American Vampire
, after its creator Scott Snyder approached him for a blurb, and King asked if he could contribute more fully.
    Another long-running project finally came to a head in 2012: King was approached in the late 1990s by rock legend John Mellencamp to assist with writing a musical about a cabin haunted by the spirits of two brothers. Progress was slow but steady across the decade, with Mellencamp involving record producer T-Bone Burnett, and King writing the book for the show, which they titled
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
. Every so often it would look as if it was close to being staged, but the creative forces were keen for it to be right straight out of the gate. Eventually a production was mounted in Atlanta in April 2012, with an album, containing King’s full script, released in June 2013.
    For a man in his mid-sixties, King is showing little signs of slowing down. He contributed a second story for theHard Case Crime series,
Joyland
, and while promoting the release of the CBS adaptation of
Under the Dome
during the summer of 2013, he revealed that he had completed work on the first draft of his next novel (currently titled ‘Mister Mercedes’) and was halfway through the next (‘Revival’). Interest in his work continues: as well as a fourth season of
Haven
, and the
Under the Dome
TV show, a new film of
Carrie
is hitting cinemas not long before the fortieth anniversary of his first novel, with
A Good Marriage
, based on the novella from
Full Dark, No Stars
, in front of the cameras ready for release in 2014.
    King dismissed his own work at the start of
Bag of Bones
as the ‘literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries’. That’s unfair on the body of work he has created – and on his own legacy, as one of the true storytellers of our age.

2. THE NOVELS OF STEPHEN KING

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THE BASICS OF HORROR:
CARRIE
TO
FIRESTARTER
    Carrie
(Doubleday, April 1974)
    1980: an investigation is taking place into a wave of deaths in the town of Chamberlain, Maine, following the prom attended by Carietta White’s year group. Through witness testimony of various kinds, a picture comes together of a troubled child whose telekinetic gifts were displayed from an early age. An outsider among her class at Thomas Ewen Consolidated High School, Carrie is teased mercilessly after her first period, which she simply does not comprehend. Her fundamentalist Christian mother is no more sympathetic, and further antagonism is aimed at Carrie after her teacher, Rita Desjardin, punishes those who teased her.
    Some of her classmates – particularly Chris Hargensen, who is banned from the school prom because she won’t serve the detention punishment – decide to teach Carrie a lesson and humiliate her at the prom. Another classmate,Sue Snell, befriends Carrie and persuades her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the prom. Carrie and Tommy are crowned king and queen, in a rigged vote, and buckets of pigs’ blood, set up by Chris and her boyfriend, are dropped on them from above the stage. Carrie proceeds to kill everyone in the gym, then starts to destroy the town, wreaking her revenge on Chris and her boyfriend along the way. After her crazed mother stabs her, Carrie stops her heart, but Carrie is dying. After speaking to Sue, accepting that she was not involved in the prom incident, she expires.
    Although Stephen King had sold a number of short stories to various men’s magazines, and had penned novel-length stories that had yet to sell, his real success dated from the publication of
Carrie
. It is dedicated to his wife Tabitha, who encouraged him to complete the story after he had written the shower scene at the