SK's Halloween message

Lou_Sytsma

"Science Fiction & Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman put a great idea up on Twitter a few days ago: 'This year make Halloween All Hallow's Read.' Neil suggests giving someone you love a scary book on the 31st. I think it's a great idea. It can be one of mine but it doesn't have to be. Have a great Halloween!"



--Steve



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Lou_Sytsma

Great idea!

BevVincent

What's on Stephen King's dark side?



The mega-selling scare-meister gives us a peek inside his head. "It's nice to push your limits a little bit."



It's Halloween, a time when ghosts, goblins and assorted ghouls are everywhere. So when better to check in with the master of horror himself, Stephen King, whose next book, four novellas called Full Dark, No Stars based around themes of retribution, arrives Nov. 9?



“They're all new and fairly powerful, I think,” says King, 63. “I suppose I'm prejudiced.”



While he plugs away on his next book at his estate in Bangor, Maine, King tells us about some of what's on his mind:



Romantic vs. not-so-much vampires



Guess which type King prefers? “Twilight and True Blood are about romance, they're about love,” says King, a fan of the bloodthirsty vamp. “The audience that the Twilight books reach, obviously it's turning their dials to 11, but for me, vampires are takers.”



Not so mad about



King calls critical TV hit Mad Men “by far the most overrated show on TV because it was really never anything but soap opera. There must be a reason that people like it — at least the critics do.” Instead, he'd rather watch old episodes of Lost or FX's Sons of Anarchy, on which he recently had a guest appearance.



All in his head



“People ask me whether I use a notebook, and the answer is no,” says King, author of more than 40 books. “I think a writer's notebook is the best way there is to immortalize really bad ideas, whereas the Darwinian process takes place if you don't write anything down. The bad ones float away, and the good ones stay.”



King of confidence



The king of horror doesn't stress about getting pegged. “I never liked this idea of some writers saying, ‘Well, I'm going to write a serious novel now,' or ‘I'm going to explore different characters or different methods of work.' I'm happy with where I am.”



Getting a buzz on



“I'd like to try everything that I possibly can, and when you do something different, sometimes it buzzes you all over again,” King says. “You know what, it's nice to push your limits a little bit.”

BevVincent

Why E-Books Aren't Scary



Stephen King has filled HIS share of printed pages: Since "Carrie" was accepted for publication in the spring of 1973, he has written more than 40 books and countless short stories. His latest work, coming Nov. 9, is a collection of four stories titled "Full Dark, No Stars." In an author's afterword, Mr. King notes that he wrote one of them, "A Good Marriage," after reading a piece about Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer" (for "bind, torture and kill") who murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. He wondered what would happen if a "wife suddenly found out about her husband's awful hobby."



Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed. In digital publishing, as a writer, he's what might be called an "early adopter." Back in March 2000, Simon & Schuster Inc. issued Mr. King's story "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book that was downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.



More recently, Mr. King's novella "Ur" was written exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader when the second generation of that device went on sale in February 2009. In the interview below, Mr. King discusses his thoughts on the future of digital reading and publishing:



The Wall Street Journal: Do we get the same reading experience with e-books?



Stephen King: I don't know. I think it changes the reading experience, that it's a little more ephemeral. And it's tougher if you misplace a character. But I downloaded one 700-page book onto my Kindle that I was using for research. It didn't have an index, but I was able to search by key words. And that's something no physical book can do.



What about people who love physical books?



I'm one of them. I have thousands of books in my house. In a weird way, it's embarrassing. I recently downloaded Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants," but I also bought a copy to put on the shelf. I want books as objects. It's crazy, but there are people who collect stamps, too.



Is the future of publishing all digital?



It's a hard subject to get a handle on. People like myself who grew up with books have a prejudice towards them. I think a lot of critics would argue that the Kindle is the right place for a lot of books that are disposable, books that are read on the plane. That might include my own books, if not all, then some.



Any drawbacks?



I wonder if one or two atom bombs went off, would electromagnetic pulses erase the world's reading material from the servers where they are stored?



How much time do you spend reading digitally?



It's approaching half of what I read. I recently bought a print edition of Henning Mankell's "Faceless Killers" and the type was too small. A paper book is an object with a nice cover. You can swat flies with it, you can put it on the shelf. Do you remember the days when people got up to manually turn the channels on their TVs? Nobody does that any more, and nobody would want to go back. This is just something that is going to happen.



What's going to happen to bookstores?



The bookstores are empty. It's sad. I remember a time when Fifth Avenue was lousy with bookstores. They're all gone.



Would you consider publishing one of your big books yourself online?



I've considered it, but not seriously. The thought has crossed my mind. I didn't do "Ur" for money. I did it because it was interesting. I'm fairly prolific. It took three days, and I've made about $80,000. You can't get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It's ridiculous.