2) What is the next King book to be published?
Well, King has a serial of 96 pages books (6 of them in all) starting
in March, called The Green Mile, concerning life on death row.
Current publishing info:
Part 1: The Two Dead Girls, March 25th
Part 2: The Mouse on the Mile, April 29
Part 3: Coffey's, Hands May 27th
Part 4: The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix, June 24th
Part 5: Night Journey, July 29th
Part 6: August 26th
There is a web site about The Green Mile.
King's next full length novel is Desperation, and it will hopefully come out on August 1st 96 (limited edition). After that comes The Regulators, in October 96.
3) Does Stephen King have an email address?
Well, obviously it's impossible to prove he doesn't, but if he does,
he's keeping it very secret. (Understandable, really)
4) Does Stephen King read alt.books.stephen-king?
He has once, and posted back. To read the post, check out the Stephen King FAQ
5) What is King's most recent book?
His latest published book is Rose Madder, a novel about a woman
on the run from her murderous husband.
6) Is Stephen King losing his touch?
Personally, I'm both surprised and ashamed that I really need to put
this in a FAQ. As far as I'm concerned, he's as strong as ever. Many
people have not enjoyed his recent work as much as his earlier books,
but I just think he's changed his style over the last twenty years.
Really, to answer this question for yourself you just need to read his
recent books.
7) What is King's address?
Stephen King
49 Florida Ave.
Bangor, Maine, 04401
USA
8) What has happened to Castle Rock (the newsletter)? What was
Castle rock? Is it still around?
Let's let Bev Vincent answer that best...
The old Castle Rock newsletter was NOT supported or endorsed by King. It was run by his sister-in-law at first, later on Christopher Spruce took it over until it stopped publishing in December of 1989. The first six issues of CR contained the short story "Dolan's Cadillac", its first appearance. No other King story was published in those pages, but King did write a couple of non-fiction pieces over the years.
The first few issues were not the tabloid format into which CR evolved, but rather 8-1/2 x 11 photocopies. Let me stress again -- King had NO direct involvement in this newsletter, financial or otherwise.
There has been talk about a revitalized CR newsletter, but no sign or recent word.
Bev
There is now another newsletter, written by George Beahm, called Phantasmagoria. For more information, check out http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~pace/king/phantas.html
9) Can I have a list of King's books with dates please?
How handy this should be asked, as I happen to have here that exact
same list, courtesy of Dani K, long may she be able to post. Where
no date, is given, Dani has had to work out where in the sequence
it has come, but can't find the actual date. If you find a mistake
or omission, please email me.
In Dani's order...
Carrie 1974
'Salem's Lot 1975
The Body {Different Seasons}
Night Shift 1976
Rage {The Bachman Books} 1977
The Shining 1977
Apt Pupil {Different Seasons)
The Stand 1978
The Long Walk {The Bachman Books} 1979
The Dead Zone 1979
Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption {Different Seasons}
Firestarter 1980
Danse Macabre 1981 {Non-fiction}
The Breathing Method {Different Seasons}
Cujo 1981
Roadwork {The Bachman Books} 1981
The Running Man {The Bachman Books} 1982
Christine 1983
Pet Semetary 1983
Cycle Of The Werewolf 1983
Thinner {As Bachman, but published solo} 1984
The Talisman 1984
Skeleton Crew 1985
IT 1986
The Eyes Of The Dragon 1987
Misery 1987
The Tommyknockers 1987
The Langoliers {Four Past Midnight}
My Pretty Pony 1989 {Also in Nightmares & Dreamscapes}
The Dark Half 1989
Secret Window, Secret Garden{Four Past Midnight}
The Library Police {Four Past Midnight}
The Sun Dog {Four Past Midnight}
Needful Things 1991
Gerald's Game 1992
Nightmares & Dreamscapes 1993
Delores Claiborne 1993
Insomnia 1994
Rose Madder 1995
Last, because the series is still unfinished, The Dark Tower Series.
The Gunslinger 1982
The Drawing Of The Three 1987
The Wastelands 1991
10) How was The Talisman written between Peter Straub and
King?
Well, thanks to the fact that we now have the honour of Mr. Straub's
company on alt.books.stephen-king, we can now have the story from the
source... (thanks to Antti Matikka for sending me a copy) Over to Mr.
Straub...
Soon after we had become friends, King came over to my house for dinner. (We were both living in England at the time, 1977 or 78.) Late at night and after many beers, he said that we might have a lot of fun if we wrote a book together. I agreed - it did sound like fun. Besides that, collaboration was an interesting way to alleviate the loneliness inevitable in writing. The first thing we did was to work out when we could begin - it sounds absurd, but we found that existing contracts for books meant that neither one of us would be free for another four years. So we made a kind of provisional date to begin thinking seriously about it four years later. When the time came, Steve and I spent a lot of time talking about what sort of book we'd do. (Most of the crucial stuff was decided during a series of hapless journeys back and forth from his country house to Portland, I think about 30-40 miles away, in the course of which we kept forgetting something or other, thus making it necessary to do the whole trip all over again. This happened three times, maybe even four, so we had a lot of time to talk.) Soon after that, he came to my house in Westport and we began writing the book together at my computer, purchased especially, as was his, for this project. We ripped and roared through something like 50 pages, I think, and Steve drove back to Maine while I wrote an outline for what was to come. This turned out to be 75 single-spaced pages long, and we kept to it for about four months. He wrote pages, not to any preset plan but simply uhtil he felt like stopping, then sent them to me via modem - lots of jiggery-pokery & adjustments here, because he had a Wang and I had an IBM, both of them dumb clunky old-style hideously expensive word processors - at which point I picked up the thread and wrote until I felt ready to hand it off to him.
Eventually we cut the outline in half; later, in what we called "the Thanksgiving putsch," we cut the remaining half in half. We had written something three hundred pages and were on something like page two or thre of the outline; imagine a Talisman 5,000 pages long. We couldn't.
Things went on as before, pages whipping through the ether between
Maine and Connecticut, until we were within about 100 pages of the
end, about which we knew virtually nothing. I went to his place, and
we spent about 8-10 writing the ending on his computer. He sat down,
banged away, stod up, I sat down and banged away, more slowly. When he
wrote, his record, by Eddy Grant, played; when I sat down, mine, by
Zoot Sims and Phil Woods, did. I have to say that this was an
extraordinary period. It was a rich, rich experience, beautiful in a
way, and I came away, when it was over, with even more respect for
King than I'd had before. A while later, when we'd cooled down, we got
together again in Maine with the editor & wrangled about what to take
out & what to change. All this ended amicably, and we were both
pleased with the book. I even got to sort of like Eddy Grant - bop
down to Electric Avenue, I guess that's what we did.
Peter