Stephen King Revisited

I’m trying to keep the number of footnotes in my historical background posts to a minimum, reserving them for amusing or informative asides that would otherwise interrupt the flow.

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t pay credit where credit is due. Here are the books from which I have derived much of the information in my essays. I will update this list as I use new resources in subsequent entries.

1. Stephen King: The Art of Darkness by Douglas E. Winter. This 1984 biography/analysis is among the earliest but it remains relevant and informative. Winter had great access to King and includes many direct quotes from his interviews with him.
2. Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror With Stephen King, edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller. Wherever possible, I prefer to rely on King’s own words rather than those of others. Even King’s recollections of events change with time, but it’s better to go straight to the source.
3. Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller. This contains some of King’s earliest interviews, dating all the way back to 1973, so the memories are fresher.
4. Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen King, edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller. This one contains mostly essays about King rather than by him, but one of the entries is by Bill Thompson about his work on Carrie and another is by the guy who made the connection between King and Richard Bachman.
5. Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing. Especially King’s essay “On Becoming a Brand Name,” but I’ll be returning to this again for “How It Happened” and other essays and transcripts.
6. Danse Macabre by Stephen King. The book has an autobiographical section, and King also talks about some of his earliest works in it.
7. On Writing by Stephen King. Again, there’s a significant autobiographical component to this book, including his inspirations for Carrie White.
8. Stephen King: Man and Artist by Carroll F. Terrell. A fairly rare book written by one of King’s university profs. King showed him some of his very early works while in progress, including The Long Walk and Sword in The Darkness.
9. “Shine On” by Douglas E. Winter, published in Phantasmagoria 6, GB Publishing, 1997. A fine retrospective on The Shining, covering the novel, movie and miniseries.
10. Stephen King as Richard Bachman by Michael Collings, Starmont House, 1985.
11. The Many Facets of Stephen King by Michael R. Collings, Starmont House, 1985.
12. Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak, Thomas Dunne Books, 2008.
13. Beyond Fear: Reflections on Stephen King, Wes Craven, and George Romero’s Living Dead by Joseph Maddrey, BearManor Media, 2014.
14. King’s introductions to his novels, including those written many years after the books were originally published, and author’s notes and afterwords.
15. Keys to the Kingdom, The Bill Thompson Interview by Jason Sechrest. Part 1 | Part 2. King’s first editor provides some interesting details about his work on the early books. Used to update several posts.