“How I Got A Job Working The Night Shift” by Brian Keene

Guest Essays

The Man-ThingLike a lot of kids who grew up in the Seventies and early-Eighties, I was introduced to horror fiction not through prose, but via comic books. The mid-Seventies were an especially fertile period for horror comics—the era of ‘The Marvel Age of Comics’ and ‘The DC Explosion’, among others, fondly remembered now as the Bronze Age. Every week, I’d peddle my BMX Mongoose bike down to the newsstand and grab the latest issue of Werewolf by Night, The Witching Hour, Tomb of Dracula, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and dozens more, including my personal favorite, Man-Thing (written by Steve Gerber).

It was Gerber’s work that first made me aware, at age eight, that writing was a job somebody could have when they grew up. And so, while every other kid my age wanted to be an astronaut or a police officer or The Six-Million Dollar Man, I was already planning on being a writer. I produced dozens of comic books, laboring over them with pencils and a box of crayons, scribbling them down on sheets of paper my father had brought home from his job at the paper mill, defective sheets with globs of pulp wood embedded in them. I invented monsters and superheroes of my own (including one in which an intelligent, amorphous blob from outer space attacks the Earth), but I did a number of pastiches, as well—writing (and less competently illustrating) new adventures of Captain America and the Falcon, Kamandi, The Defenders, Spider-Man, and more.
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Revisiting Night Shift by Richard Chizmar

Richard's Essays

THAT WAS THEN…

Night Shift by Stephen KingI can’t even begin to guess at how many times I have read this collection, nor can I remember the first time I picked it up. I know I was in college at the time, and I know it was summer break and I devoured many of the stories sitting in the shade of the weeping willow tree in my side yard, but that’s all that comes back to me.

Except for the stories, of course.

Always the stories.

It feels like they have always been a part of me. In fact, along with “The Monkey” (which was collected in SKELETON CREW), the 20 short stories that comprise NIGHT SHIFT are as responsible for my becoming a writer as anything else from my past.

I read em, I loved em, and I immediately wanted to write stories just like em; stories that would make other readers feel the same way I did.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that that was easier hoped for than done. And that’s part of the beauty of these 20 stories. They are deceptively simple tales. Nothing fancy. Nothing pretentious.

They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are: just good (or, in some cases, great) character-driven stories that are crisp and well written and, mostly, very scary.

I’ll do my best here to recount my initial feelings about each of the 20 tales (beware of spoilers): » Read more

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Graveyard Shift by Bev Vincent

Historical Context Essays

While recent experience told King that Doubleday didn’t want to publish more than one book by him a year, they most definitely wanted no less than a book a year from him, either.

Night Shift by Stephen KingAfter he finished The Shining, he spent a couple of weeks writing “Apt Pupil” and then returned his attention to the abandoned Hearst-inspired novel, The House on Value Street. He spent another six weeks on it, but the story still wasn’t taking off. Then he started work on one of his longest novels, The Stand, and realized early on that it wouldn’t be finished on Doubleday’s schedule. So, to bridge the gap between novels, King offered them a short story collection.

Night Shift assembles twenty stories. The earliest, “Strawberry Spring,” was first published in 1968 and the most recent, “The Man Who Loved Flowers,” came out in late 1977, shortly before the collection was published in early 1978. Four stories—“Jerusalem’s Lot,” “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” “Quitter’s Inc.” and “The Woman in the Room”—were previously unpublished. Nine were reprinted from Cavalier, and two each appeared in Ubris and Penthouse. The remaining three stories first appeared in issues of Maine magazine, Cosmopolitan and Gallery.

Bill Thompson took an active hand in helping King pick the best of the available stories for this collection. Among others under consideration were “The Blue Air Compressor,” “It Grows on You,” “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands,” “Survivor Type,” and “The Wedding Reception” (later published as “The Wedding Gig”) as well as some unnamed poems. In an editorial letter to King, Thompson referred to these rejected stories as being “too much ‘Steve-the-student writer’” stories—adding that “Survivor Type” was too grisly. He felt they could do him more harm than good.  “This is as important a book for you as a novel,” he said, believing Night Shift would generate more reviews than previous books and no “writing gaucheries” would be overlooked. King obviously listened, though he did allow a few of the stories to be collected subsequently.
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A Teacher’s Perspective on Rage by Norman Prentiss

Guest Essays

Rage by Richard BachmanI’ll preface by saying that I’ve got about a decade’s worth of college teaching experience, and recently spent nine rewarding years working at a private Baltimore high school, where I was also Chair of the English Department. I’ve also been a teacher and administrator with a well-respected academic summer program.

So I could say, in the words of Rage‘s school principal, Thomas Denver, that “I’ve been in the kid business” for more than 20 years.

That, and been a kid, too, as most of us can fairly say about ourselves.

And I write horror.

During those years when I taught at the high school level, I worried that the subject matter of some of my stories might cause trouble with school administrators, might raise concerns for a few cautious parents. After all, one of my stories implies at the end that a child is smothered by her father; in another, a homeschooled boy gives birth through his abdomen to Lovecraftian monsters.

In a recent collaboration with Brian James Freeman I wrote about creepy Halloween Children. And with Michael McBride I wrote The Narrator, about an eighth grade classroom that spirals into crisis due to bewitching stories they hear from a classmate.

Despite the usual gruesome subject matter, with protagonists who sometimes matched the age of students in my charge, I never received any criticism from the school community. In fact, my high school actually sponsored an event to celebrate the publication of my first book, and it was one of the most rewarding moments of both my teaching and my writing careers.
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“Speaking of The Shining…” An Interview with R.J. Cavender by Robert Brouhard

Guest Essays

R.J. Cavender is the managing editor of horror at Dark Regions Press, editor-in-chief at Cutting Block Books, and he is an Associate Member of the Horror Writers Association. He is best known for creating and co-editing the Horror Library series of anthologies. R.J. Cavender recently started organizing the Stanley Hotel Writers Retreat which is an author and artists retreat that is held at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado (this year’s will be October 22nd – 25th, 2015). Guests of honor this year include Jack Ketchum, Richard Chizmar, Kealan Patrick Burke, Tom Piccirilli, Michelle Scalise, Josh Malerman, and Trent Zelazny.

The Stanley HotelRobert: R.J., do you prefer to be called “R.J.” or something else?

R.J.: “R.J.” or “Cav” (short for Cavender)…either is fine. I started going by my initials in middle school to clear up any confusion when there were four of us students all with the same first name in one class. And no I won’t tell you what my first name used to be. Haha! I’ve had a legal name change since then and the last living person who called me by my given birth name was my Grandmother and she’s since passed away. But yeah, “R.J.” or “Cav” is fine…–“R.J.” is my actual legal first name.

Robert: I’ve read that your favorite novel is The Shining. Why?

R.J.: It was the first novel I ever read by Stephen King and it made a hell of an impression. It set the bar high, too, I’d say. It’s a modern classic haunted house tale.

Robert: When did you first read The Shining and how many times do you think you’ve picked it up since then? » Read more

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Getting It On by Bev Vincent

Historical Context Essays

Stephen King wrote the first forty pages of the novel that would later be published as Rage in 1966, when he was a senior in high school. One source claims the original title Getting It On was inspired by the T. Rex song “Bang a Gong (Get It On).” The timing is right: In 1970, King found the incomplete manuscript of Getting It On “moldering away” in a box in the cellar of the house where he grew up, and he finished the novel in 1971, when that song was a hit.

Rage by Richard BachmanIn his essay “My High School Horrors,” King discusses his constant fear of being alone and not being able to connect with people or make friends while in high school, and of being afraid but not being able to tell people he was afraid. Rage arose from the same sense of being an outsider as did Carrie.

Getting It On was almost his first published novel. Rather than submit it to the slush pile at Doubleday, he found a current novel that was similar in tone and sent it to “the editor of The Parallax View,” hoping that would get him a step farther up the submission ladder.

As it happened, that editor wasn’t available so the manuscript was passed on to Bill Thompson, who remembers the book as “a masterful study in character and suspense, but it was quiet, deliberately claustrophobic and it proved a tough sell within the house.” In a recent interview, he says, “It was very good, but nothing really happened in it. It was mostly interior, all about how these characters
changed and evolved under pressure. For me, it was very
compelling, and it had the ring of truth to it in terms of
storytelling. It was like you were right there. You were witnessing
the entire thing.” Thompson requested three rounds of revision, but ultimately Doubleday passed on it. In his formal rejection letter, Thompson offered to send it around to other publishers.

After he had a few books out and had developed some name recognition, King asked Doubleday if they would release some of his earlier books. However, Doubleday didn’t want to saturate the market by issuing more than one new book a year. There was a belief in publishing at the time that there was a limit to how many books by an author readers were willing to buy in any given year. New books cannibalized the sales of recent ones, and everything suffered. That was the theory, anyway, and Doubleday wasn’t willing to test it.
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Richard Chizmar’s Stephen King Top Ten (Share Your List, Too!)

News & Updates

Yessss, I’m finished reading RAGE.  As a matter of fact, I’m almost finished with NIGHT SHIFT, too.  I’m just a bit behind in posting my thoughts because: a) the holidays; b) I’ve been busy writing the title novella for my next collection, A LONG DECEMBER; and c) I love the holidays and everything that comes with them, so I have been lazy.

Stephen King Revival Author PhotoIt won’t happen again, I promise.

Okay, I lied.  It will probably happen again.

Maybe even sooner than later.

Apologies in advance.

And because Brian Freeman suggested it, and because Brian Freeman is the technical brains behind this project and I have to listen to him, I am offering up my Top Ten Stephen King novels listed below (novels only, no collections, and in no particular order):

1)  IT

2)  ‘SALEM’S LOT

3)  THE STAND

4)  THE DEAD ZONE

5)  THE SHINING

6)  CHRISTINE

7)  PET SEMATARY

8)  BAG OF BONES

9)  HEARTS IN ATLANTIS

10) FROM A BUICK 8

11)  LISEY’S STORY

12)  11/22/63

13)  THE GREEN MILE

(See?  I lied already.  That’s 13 picks, not 10.  And you can’t stop me!)

I’d love to hear your own Top Ten SK novels, so please post them when you get a free minute or two. I will be posting my thoughts on RAGE and NIGHT SHIFT in the next week or so. In the meantime, remember to follow me on Twitter if you do the Twitter thing.

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Excerpt from “My Magnificent Seven” by Robert McCammon about The Shining!

Guest Essays

Robert McCammon’s official website posted a new 3,100 word essay entitled “My Magnificent Seven” yesterday and it’s a “must read” in our opinion.

In addition to some intriguing updates about what McCammon is writing at the moment, he also went into great detail about seven books that he revisits from time to time.

Here is what he had to say about The Shining by Stephen King (and also a wonderful aside about Omniscient Third Person, a topic that’s probably a little too near and dear to our hearts), but please be sure to read the rest of “My Magnificent Seven” on the official Robert McCammon website because he highlights some really wonderful books you need to read if you haven’t already!

An excerpt from “My Magnificent Seven” by Robert McCammon:

Number Four: The Shining, by Stephen King, published by Doubleday in 1977.

The ShiningThis is The Complete Book. It has everything. It captures a small space of time for a family in crisis, but it really encompasses the entire lives of those involved. The creation of these characters and this situation is absolutely magnificent, and this has the best scene of an alcoholic who is “on the wagon” seeing the “flaws” of being “on the wagon” that will probably ever be written. The malevolent spirits (and Guiding Spirit) of the haunted hotel aside, this is just a great  book about a man trying to hold his life and family together. This is so rich in description, symbolism and themes that you’d have to write a book praising the book. And of course, one of the central elements is timeless, that of an Evil force finding a weakness and exploiting it. That was ever true and will be true until the end of time.

I will digress here for just a minute and say that The Shining would not work nearly as well without multiple viewpoints…the Omniscient Third Person (or “God”) viewpoint. On looking up “Omniscient Third Person” on the Net, you find a description that says this viewpoint technique is most identified with novels of the nineteenth century. In other words, according to this description, it’s considered creaky and old-fashioned.

What the &***???????
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Stephen King Revisited: General Discussion & Questions

News & Updates

Stephen King We Never Sleep We’re posting this as a general discussion and question zone where you can give us feedback on this website and ask any questions you might have for Richard, Bev, or myself.

What have you liked about the essays? Do you have any suggestions for future posts?

You can also use the comments section here to share any other thoughts you have about the books we’ve discussed so far: Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, and The Shining.

One of the comments that inspired this thread was Dawn’s comment about how she had noticed the phrase “the air is rare” appearing in several different Stephen King books, so if you have any general Stephen King thoughts, comments, or questions you’d like to toss out there for discussion, this is the place to be!

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