KING OF STEVES

Stephen King is a guy you can't avoid if you're into horror, or books, or movies. He's the titan looming over my weird little niche within a niche of semi-educated rural creative-types who are into horror, reading, and rock n' roll. I mean, that's pretty much the encapsulation of what he is. I was so excited to get my first "adult" library card when I was about ten years old. I had to work for the damn thing, including getting a note from a teacher indicating I was trustworthy and sincerely reading well above my grade level. I also had to butter up the head librarians in no less than three one-room tiny farm town libraries (bless them) and try to convince each that I was merely interested in reading Jack London and Charles Dickens. Of course, the first three books I checked out from the adult section were INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and THE DARK HALF.

Me and Uncle Steve go way back. I spent a huge chunk of my adolesence curled up in some corner or another and reading his books. I kept that going through most of my young adulthood, and there was usually a dog eared King paperback in my lunchbox or my back pocket when I was headed to work. King and I didn't really part ways until I was fully entering my post-modernist phase and he got hit by a van.

Talking about King and his work was one of the few things my dad and I could reliably achieve together. We watched the TV miniseries of THE STAND on ABC back when it first came out, and it was an event in our household on par with the Super Bowl or a funeral dinner. Stephen King's work is one of those things that's always been around in one way or another. So I thought I'd start going back and seriously rereading some of the books that I fondly remember.

I'm starting with NEEDFUL THINGS, which was the first King book I ever read. I'm not sure yet if I'm doing full on reviews, walks down memory lane, or some kind of combination of both. But it should be fun, and I'm excited to see how much more I relate to King's work now that I'm a 40 year old father rather than a middle-school dork.