Stephen King

I never really cared too much for Stephen King.
When I was a kid, I'd find a writer I really liked, and then I'd try to read all their books.

Like, I loved Mark Twain, so I tried to read all his books.

I enjoyed Amy Tan, so I read quite a few of her books.

I'd go through fazes where I would read only Charles Dickens, or Tolkien.

I mean, I skipped around, but once you find a good writer, who has written a book you like, you hope that they are pretty consistent with the good writing and that they will keep cranking out good books.

So after I read Misery, by Stephen King, I went out and found another one of his books right away, because Misery is a good book, and I enjoyed it.

What I read next was called, "Gerald's Game," and it was such a bad book, it turned me off Stephen King still to this day.

That book sucked. That book was so bad; I didn't even think it was really written by Stephen King at all.

Of course, Stephen King was cranking out books at one time at a remarkable rate. I'm sure some of those books were bound to be bad, just because.

I can't remember where I read this, so this could be faulty information, but Stephen King did a lot of cocaine when he first got famous. He would stay up for days, writing streams of pages, while he had cotton balls stuffed up his nose to stop the bleeding caused by all the cocaine he'd snorted.

He had beer cans piled up so high; he couldn't even get to his front door. He had to wade thorough piles of old cans that smelled like nasty fish to get out of his home.

He also chain smoked constantly, as many writers do because they think it's 'cool'.

A fascinating side note is that Mark Twain actually died of a nicotine overdose. Many writers smoke, I don't know why.

Anyway, Stephen King's family finally staged an intervention, and it saved his life, for he surely would have died if he had continued on with his chosen life style.

There's nothing worse than writing a novel with a coke spoon in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and cotton balls stuffed up you nose.

He said that there were pages and pages of writing that he never even remembered writing at all.

He once wrote a whole book he has no memory of writing, and it was probably Gerald's Game, 'cause that's how bad that book sucked.

Anyway, the reason why I was thinking of Stephen King is because he was out walking one day, trying to get some exercise, when he was struck down by one of the characters from his own book.

I'm not sure if I remember the story exactly, but here's how I think it goes.

This guy was driving his truck down the road, coming up to a curve.

He was trying to feed his little dog a bit of his candy bar, when he accidentally dropped it on the floor of the truck. He bent down to rescue the candy bar, so that he could give it back to his dog, when he accidentally struck Steven King down.

Man, was Stephen King pissed off. You could tell. In his book, "On Writing," He was like, "I'm fucking Stephen King. STEPHEN KING. All right? You're gonna run my ass over because you dropped your little dogs candy bar?"

He seemed to think that a character from one of his books had run him over.

It wasn't just the general type of anger that one would have after being stuck down by a car. It was simple indignation.

Like, "Who the hell are you to run my ass over."