A Brief Guide to Stephen King Read Online Free Page B

for much of the time. In the trailer for the movie, on the DVD, the most frightening thing is the state of the author himself.
    Yet still the stories flowed. King saw
IT
, published in 1986, as his final statement on many of the themes which had punctuated his writing over the years, and the following year’s books –
The Eyes of the Dragon
(originally written for his daughter Naomi after she wouldn’t read his other books); the second ‘Dark Tower’ book,
The Drawing of the Three
; and
Misery
– were very different in style.
    However, the
Castle Rock
newsletter, which had been set up to provide information for King’s fans, announced in March 1987 that Stephen King was going to retire – but then quickly had to backtrack, and explain that King was actually simply going to be writing less, so he could spend more time with his family. Many fans weren’t impressed with
Misery
, published shortly after this news becamepublic, particularly in its depiction of fans, and there was a generally negative reaction from readers and critics to
The Tommyknockers
, which arrived in November that year.
    King himself wasn’t happy. Nor was Tabitha, who had reached the end of her tether over her husband’s alcoholism and drug dependency. Something would have to change.

3
RISING FROM ROCK BOTTOM
    Stephen King credits his wife with saving his life. The intervention which she, family members and friends carried out late in 1987 – showing him the detritus of various different addictions, which by now included Listerine, cigarettes and NyQuil as well as alcohol and cocaine – led to a period where he ‘was looking for a détente, a way I could live with booze and drugs without giving them up altogether’, but in the end he realized he had to give up completely. As with many addicts, it was all or nothing – and Tabitha’s ultimatum that she ‘wouldn’t stick if I didn’t clean up my act’ was clear.
    King’s lifestyle changed completely, and with it went his agent, Kirby McCauley. His new personal manager, Arthur B. Greene, negotiated a fresh contract with NAL, tying King to one book each year for the next four. King revamped WZON onto a non-commercial footing, and became more heavily involved with his son Owen’s Little League team.
    Although initially he suffered from writer’s block, after nine months or so he discovered that the writing was enough of a drug on its own. As he was sobering up, he completed work on
The Dark Half
, and then reworked the original manuscript of
The Stand
to incorporate all of the material cut at Doubleday’s insistence, as well as updating it and adding a new start and finish (particularly as Randall Flagg, the book’s villain, was already appearing in other works).
    The same year that
The Stand
reappeared, 1990, saw King start to be taken more seriously by some of his literary peers. He wrote a non-fiction piece, ‘Head Down’, for the prestigious
New Yorker
literary magazine, about the Little League team, which he described as ‘the opportunity of a lifetime’. A couple of years later, the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation provided the money to build a regulation AA baseball field for teenagers near Bangor, one of many charitable donations that the Kings made to benefit their local area.
    Although the Kings had to tighten up their home security as a result of a break-in by a mad fan who insisted King had stolen the plot of
Misery
from him, their routines continued, even if the types of stories that King produced was starting to change. He completed the third volume of the ‘Dark Tower’ series,
The Waste Lands
, and brought the saga of Castle Rock to an end (or so he believed) with the satirical
Needful Things
. His first original TV series,
Golden Years
, was produced by CBS, but cancelled at the end of its debut season, finishing on a cliffhanger (resolved in the eventual video release), and he began a long and fruitful relationship with a young director named Mick Garris who