Horror Reanimated… the home of Bloody Books

On how Stephen King influenced me and what that really means by JD’L

November 11th, 2008

There’s no doubt that Stephen King has affected the writer in me. But he affected the reader in me first.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on which of his works have impressed me the most. I use the word impressed very deliberately. It’s only those tales that psychically ‘pushed into’ me I’m going to talk about, those works whose touch is still upon me. It would be very easy for me to go and pick some of them off my shelf or call them up online to refresh my memory but that would be cheating. I want to comment only what remains with me after all these years.

I was about 13 when I discovered Stephen King. I read his work with commitment and loyalty for many years. The novel I loved the most was The Stand. There was a tale to get lost in if ever such was written. Not only that, aged 14 or 15 by that time, I truly believed the end of the world was coming one way or another. The world in The Stand was therefore all the more real for me to enter and dwell in.

Yet, it wasn’t usually Stephen King’s novels that truly affected me. It’s my belief this gentleman of fiction is primarily an extraordinary craftsman of the short story and it is in those works that I really connected with his imagination – or his connected with mine. Many of his best works were collected in the 1978 anthology Night Shift – in there you can even find one of the seeds that went on to become The Stand; a post viral apocalypse tale called Night Surf.

It was also in Night Shift that I discovered Stephen King didn’t write horror exclusively. He also unearthed incredibly tender tales of the tragedy in human relationships – I’m talking here about The Woman in the Room and The Last Rung on the Ladder, both of which brought tears to my otherwise cynical and jaded adolescent eyes. The most ‘fun’ story in Night Shift was Battleground, a wonderful tale in which a hired assassin confronts a box of animate and very well equipped toy soldiers in his apartment (and comes off poorer for it).

The tales in Night Shift were so imaginative and so varied I never forgot them. It must be rare that an anthology by a single author could have this effect. It’s certainly rare in my case – I can’t name another book like it.

Two other SK works dented me permanently. Again, they weren’t novels but they weren’t really short stories either. However, their effectiveness still proves, to me at least, that he’s a master of the shorter form. First of these was The Long Walk. I’m sure you all know the story but for those who haven’t read it, it’s the tale of an annual ‘marathon’ with 100 male children as the competitors. If you haven’t read this one, get out there and find it. Being a teenage boy when I discovered it galvanised my rebellion against the mindless authoritarianism I faced in school every day.

Finally, and perhaps best of all, was a cross-genre piece by the name of The Mist. Damn, that was one all time classic tale. I read it as the tail-end-charlie in a Kirby McCauley anthology titled Dark Forces and it was the one story in there that really blew me away. Once again, it was the only one I still remember. Needless to say, many of these superb stories have gone on to form the basis for successful feature films.

Did I say impressed? Did I say dented? When it comes to what he did to my imagination, harpooned is a far better word.

But what does really it mean to be influenced? Simply that I tried to write like Stephen King? That I decided to write stories with similar themes and monsters?

I don’t think ‘influence’ can ever be that simple a matter. What happened wasthis: I realised the potential of the imagination – both for the writer and the reader. I understood it was possible to write in different genres and still excel. And my interest in the bizarre was profoundly deepened.

As all writers do, I’ve fantasised about seeing my books on the shelves of bookstores. I’ve hoped – and still do! – that I could make a living writing books. But never in my most intense dreams did I imagine that one day Stephen King would read one of my books and like it enough to give me a quote for the jacket. Never, never, ever.

Thank you, Mr. King.

Entry Filed under: The Infection Spreads