10,000 Magazines: Disney Adventures

I read an article recently titled "Who's Helping Who In The Cover Blurb Game?" (HERE) Author Anthony Horowitz writes, " I even turned up on a self-help book I hadn't read – the publishers took my name and helped themselves."  Funny!

After giving us an almost circular  parade of authors praising one another's books, Horowitz concludes: "the overall impression is simply that big writers like big writers and my reaction is – so what?"

When it comes to Stephen King, he does like big writers.  Who wouldn't?  But he also supports first time writers.  His recent enthusiastic endorsement of The Passage is evidence of that.  How about this, King has even been known to point his readers toward people they haven't heard of at all.  He did this in the past by offering intro's to collection books or first time novels.

I really enjoyed Disney's October 1992 edition of "Disney Adventures," in which King served as a judge for a kids writing competition.  It is neat to see him encouraging young people's writing.

Ten Thousand Magazines #10,000

Disney Adventures, October, 1991

By the way,  this magazine is fantastic!  The cover  itself  makes you want to read it.  The magazine is full of color,  and I had trouble keeping my kids hands off of it.  "Stop it!" I kept saying.  "That's a Stephen King book!"  They didn't  care.


Here is King's letter to the kiddos:

A Warning From . . .Stephen KingDear Scary Story Fans, 

There are always a few frumpy grown-ups out there who like to go around moaning that kids are too busy watching TV and playing Nintendo to read anymore, let alone write stories.  It’s pretty clear to me that the current crop of grumps missed the Scary Stories Contest in Disney Adventures magazine, because if they ahd seen the six final entries that I saw, they would have changed their minds in a hurry.  Tommi Lewis, the editor in charge of taking care of the contest entries, told me there were over seven hundred stories in all, and if the ones I saw were any indication of how much good writing kids are doing. . . wow! 

I liked Kyle Chistenson’s “One Night In The Museum,” a story that explains just how deadthings sometimes get in the Egyptian Wing, and Keegan Buckingham’s “Attack of the Killer Hose,” where a vampire garden-hose wakes up and goes looking for its ghoul-friend (or was that its girl-friend?), but the best of the bunch – for me, at least – was “Mr. Tilmore,” by Aaron N.  Carmichael.  You may think your own little town is boring, but until you read Aaron’s freaky fable, you won’t have any idea how dead things can get on summer vacation. 

Okay, enough jokes.  I just want to say that this story really is good.  The adults who run the world always make allowances for kids, as you know; that’s why Little league fields are smaller than regular baseball fields and the baskets are sometimes lowered when the Pee Wee Basketball teams play.  We make thesame allowances when it coems to painting pictures, playing music, writing poetry. . .  Or making up scary stories.  But if you think the story you are about to read is going to be scary “for a kid,” you may be in for a surprise. . . and you may findyourself remembering Mr. Tilmore, that slightly strange fellow next door, after you turn the lights off tonight.  You may even – heh-heh-heh – imagine he’s there in the room with you.  Fairwarning, okay?   My congratulations and admiration to all the finalists, including David Tamakiin Cresskill, New Jersey; Jeffery Winter in Partlow, Virginia; and Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, in Linthicum, Maryland. . .  But my special congratulations to aron Carmichael, who wrote a story that’s not just “scary for kids” but is “scary for anybody, even Stephen King.” 

And for the rest of you, just remember that the best way to fight fire is with fire, and the best way to fight fear is with fear.  In other words, keep writing those scary stories. 

Gruesomely yours, Stephen King