BOOM! So Stephen King is a MASTER!

See, I would never ever want to say, "I told you so."  Or suggest I was ahead of the curve.  But. . . now that Revival is out, people are starting to note that King makes a lot of connections to other masters of the craft.  In particular, H.P. Lovecraft.  Why does this matter to me?  Because I put a book out this Summer (before Revival came out) discussing King and the enduring nature of his work as serious literature.  I also discussed connections between King and Lovecraft.

Note this article posted at oregonlive.com.  Before diving in to King's use of Lovecraft in Revival, the writer says, "He seems to be trying to make sure his own pop fiction lasts by going even darker than he has before, into the realm of earlier horror masters Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft."

What Douglas Perry (the author of the article) totally misses is that King didn't just wake up and decide to start shadowing some of these people.  He didn't just decide to get more serious with Revival.  King's work has been consistently serious literature; it's just the critics who have been reading him wrong.  It's time they gave the Stephen King library another read.

Perry nicely summarizes some recent reviews of Revival:

The New Statesman calls "Revival," King's 58th novel, a "serious book by a major writer," insisting that it "reads like a populist sequel to Sinclair Lewis's evangelical satire 'Elmer Gantry.'" 

The New York Times calls it "a well-built book that unfolds on a big canvas." The paper adds, teasingly, scarily, that the novel "winds up with the idea that to be human, you must know what it is to be inhuman." 

That sounds like Shelley's influence, but The Guardian says "it is Lovecraft, and the quote 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons, even death may die,' that reverberate throughout the book." 

King, 67, happily admits he's been influenced by "everything" Lovecraft has ever written.

In chapter 1 of Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters, I included a portion titled, "The eyes of H.P. Lovecraft."  I noted not only similarities in their writing, but biography as well.  I also looked at how the two are very different.  

  King’s Lovecraftian stories include such titles as Jerusalem’s Lot, I am the Doorway, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, N, and Crouch End. In the documentary, Fear of the Unknown, Peter Straub compared The Mist to Lovecraft. “Tentacle things break in from another dimension, that’s just pure Lovecraft.” 

Gardner, Brighton (2014-05-04). Stephen King A Face Among The Masters 

What I find in Revival  isn't a brand new Stephen King.  This King was with us in Full Dark, No Stars.  He was there in the pages of The Dark Half and especially Desperation.  The depressing tone of the book mirrors very much the narrative style of the novella 1922.  

So to put it simply, I'm excited.  I'm so glad that King's novel, Revival, is being taken as serious literature.  Because I think it will force some others to look back at the work of Stephen King.  All along King has been giving us serious literature; we were just having so much fun reading it, we didn't realize how great it was.  I believe someday, future generations will study Stephen King the way we study Lovecraft, Dickens, Poe, Twin and  Shelly.

YOUTUBE: A Face Among The Masters

amazon.com

My Book About Stephen King

My copies of Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters, came today.  Mostly copies to send for review -- and one for Annie. I dedicated the book to her, and the first copy came on what seemed like the worst day of her life.  (It wasn't trust me) But to see her name in print brought a huge smile to her face on a gloomy day.

You can buy it here: amazon.com/Stephen-King-Face-Among-Masters

90 pages

Kindle Edition  $7.50     

Paperback  $8.90 (if you buy the paperback, the Kindle is just $1.00)

The purpose of the book is not so much to tell you brand new things about Stephen King.  Did you know Stephen King wrote his own father into the pages of The Stand?  Yes, I discuss that -- but that kind of information isn't the thrust of  what I wanted to deal with.

Of the many emails I get, very few (none) are asking me questions about King himself.  Usually I get more literary questions.  Of interest to me was to compare King's work and life to the work of other great writers, artist and directors of the past.  Alfred Hitchcock's movies will be studied for years to come; will future generations regard King the same way?

So actually, the book is as much about OTHER artist as it is Stephen King.  It looks at those who inspired him and looks at direct connections between his work and theirs.

Why I wrote under a pen name:
Because I also write other things and did not want to confuse my authors page at Amazon.

I chose to self publish because it was actually the easiest avenue to offer exactly the content I wanted.

There are some things I discovered in the journey:

1. There are no public domain pictures of Stephen King.  

After sending my manuscript to my editor, Kristin, I wrote to a woman who does cover art.  "No  way!" She said at once.  "I can't do anything that has a picture of Stephen King."

I realized I would need someone who didn't just design covers, but who actually had the ability to draw.  That lead me to France (yeah, France) and a young woman named Misha.  She had a lot of ideas, but became a little panicked when she realized that there are indeed NO public domain pictures of Stephen King.  None.  Zip.  

Often cover art is done using stock photos, manipulated in such a way as to make them look original or unique.  So a lot of book covers are really collages.

You can get public domain pictures of Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Dickens, H.P. Lovecraft and even Mr. Poe.  But not Stephen King.  The artist shared that she felt she could draw freehand a picture of King that would be unique to the cover.  

"Are you sure this doesn't break copyright or something," I asked.
"Well, no way," she wrote back.  "I drew it with my own hand.  It's not a photograph, it's a drawing.  More important, it's my drawing."

I felt better.  Nah, actually, I felt really excited!

2. The name Stephen King cannot be used as a search word on Amazon.  

Really? . . . REALLY!  Amazon dinged the book upon review, indicating that  they do not allow authors names or references to other books to be used as keywords.

Wait a minute.  What if the book is actually about Stephen King?

This lead to an exchange of emails.  "What about books that are biographies?" I asked.  Ah, that seemed to raise an eyebrow.  The next day I got an email indicating my search words were A-Okay.  I wrote back, just to be sure exactly which search words were okay.  I got an email from Amazon indicating that they reviewed the book and decided that the name "Stephen King" was indeed an appropriate search term for the subject matter.  I felt like I'd won some kind of small victory.

3. Editing is important.

I didn't learn this -- I knew it; but I think it's worth sharing.  Everything we write needs editing.  Blogs need an editor -- but no one wants to pay someone to edit a blog!  I think it's funny when someone says, "I have an aunt who's  an English major, and she's editing my book."

I had my wife read through the book as I wrote, and then a second time once it was complete.  She caught a lot of things -- but it still had to go off to Kristen House.  I think it's important to find someone who is a professional at editing and who you don't know.  After all, people you know are a little more forgiving.  What's more, people who know you also know how you speak.  That means that when reading, they sometimes fill in words or sentences the way their mind remembers you speaking, not the way the words actually appear on the page.  That's also why you can't edit your own work; you don't see what's on the paper, you see what you remember writing.

A copy edit goes through the entire book, looking for not only spelling errors, but content and clarity of the manuscript.  It also identifies awkward sentences and works to restructure them.

The scary part is fact checking.  As a current post by Bryant Burnette will point out, even fans get facts wrong.  The process of fact checking was constant.  Also, when I sent the small book over to the editor, I had a list of words that were supposed to be spelled wrong.  "Mother Abigail is spelled ABAGAIL," one note read.  And, "Please do not correct Sematary in Pet Sematary."  

Under The Influence

At his goodreads page, Stephen King lists the following writers as his inspiration: Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Charles Dickens, Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, John D. MacDonald, Richard Matheson, J.R.R. Tolkien

My book, Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters, discusses King and 5 of these writers and their connection to Stephen King:

• Ray Bradbury in chapter 6, The Man Who Scared Stephen King.
• Charles Dickens in chapter 3, Stephen King, A Modern Charles Dickens
• H.P. Lovecraft in chapter 1, The Long Shadow Of Stephen King
• Richard Matheson in chapter 5, Shivering Through The Twilight Zone
• and J.R.R. Tolkien (briefly) in chapter 7, Dark Theologian.

I am surprised King did not list: Poe.