Tag Archives: Stephen King
6 Famous Authors With Shocking Beliefs | Inverse
Source: 6 Famous Authors With Shocking Beliefs | Inverse
When we fall in love with a novel, we sometimes believe we come to know its author just by reading the book. From reading the Harry Potter novels one can easily conclude that its author — J.K. Rowling — is intolerant of oppression, politically progressive, a strong believer in diversity, and most certainly, British. All of these things about Rowling are overwhelmingly true, though if we found out she hated children, we’d probably be totally scandalized. (She doesn’t, thankfully).
Similarly, if you read Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land you might erroneously assume the author was a free-love hippie, when in fact, Heinlein’s libertarian and conservative views couldn’t be further from the tone of that particular novel. With Robert Heinlein and Stranger in a Strange Land, it’s almost as if the novel’s free-love protagonist offers a mirror image to the novelist — it’s Dr. Jekyll to a Mr. Hyde, say — something that is true of other writers on this list. Here are six super-famous writers with beliefs that are either inversions of their literary reputations, or just straight-up fascinating.
Philip K. Dick Thought He Was a Robot and, Also, the Spirit of Elijah
Okay, so this one isn’t too shocking. In addition to believing he was contacted by intelligences from beyond, the prolific and visionary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick also toyed with the idea that he may, in fact, have been a robot. While the events of many of his novels (notably Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) certainly check with this passing fancy of Dick’s, he also flirted with the idea that he was possessed by the spirit of the biblical prophet Elijah. So, next time you’re at a Seder, ask if you can leave something out for Philip K. Dick and see if anyone gets it.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Believed in Fairies
In Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” the protagonist — the great Sherlock Holmes — says, “This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghost need apply.” Throughout the 56 short stories and four novels chronicling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, never once does the stoic detective flirt with a belief in the supernatural or paranormal. And yet, late in his life, the creator of the uber-rational Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, asserted frequently that he had seen fairies and other supernatural creatures. Perhaps when Conan Doyle attempted to kill off Sherlock Holmes, he was attempting to destroy his rational side to have more fun with fairy thoughts. Either that, or fairies are totally real.
Anne Rice Found God
The author of Interview With the Vampire briefly became extremely pious, and even authored Christian texts (including her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt). While the steamy and grotesque nature of her vampire books seems to be in stark opposition to traditional Christianity, as of 2010, Anne Rice maintains that she is still “committed to Christ.” But to be clear, Rice did officially leave the Catholic Church because she felt that being a “Christian,” was “quarrelsome” and “hostile.” It’s unclear if there are any parallels between her feelings about quarrelsome religious folks and the frequently quarrelsome vampire, Lestat.
James Joyce Thought Radio Controlled the Weather
In Sylvia Beach’s excellent memoir, Shakespeare and Company, the publisher and proprietor of the famous Parisian bookstore recounts her fascinating dealings with the late author of Ulysses, James Joyce. One interesting tidbit was Joyce’s growing impatience with the rise of radios in culture. Specifically, Joyce thought there was obviously some kind of correlation between the surge of radios use and rainstorms in France. Climate change deniers, take that! Or actually, don’t. Let James Joyce have it.
Hemingway Wanted to Work for the KGB?
While this one is disputed, there is some indication that Ernest Hemingway was recruited by the KGB in 1941 and that he was a secret agent named “Argo.” The only problem is that apparently Hemingway was really bad at being a double agent — assuming he really wanted to be one — as he never really supplied the KGB with any good intelligence. While we tend to think of Hemingway as an American man of his time (as he’s portrayed in Midnight in Paris), his real-life political leanings were certainly all over the place. While it might be surprising that Hemingway had communist beliefs in the ‘40s, it’s not totally implausible.
Stephen King Hates Adverbs
Stephen King may be the undisputed master of horror, but there’s only one thing truly fears: adverbs. King maintains that adverbs were created with “the timid writer in mind.” He may be an extremely creative guy, but I don’t want to even think about how many grotesque and sickening adverbs I’ve overzealously employed to get my points across throughout the years.
Five questions with Stephen King
Stephen King answers 5 questions from the BDN
Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2016/04/28/living/stephen-king-answers-5-questions-from-the-bdn/
Stephen King
We’re always curious about what best-selling author and Bangor resident Stephen King is doing. To find out, the BDN (Bangor Daily News) emailed him five questions Thursday morning. Sixteen minutes later, we had his answers.
1. What are you working on today?
“Just thinking about a new story. That’s always the first step.”
2. What keeps you awake at night?
“Nothing, currently.”
3. Are you a glass half empty or half full person?
“Three quarters full. I like to relish the good stuff and take care of the bad stuff as best I can. Or let it go, if I can’t. Most of my worries look silly a month later.”
4.What is it about Bangor that keeps you here, at least some of the time?
“I love the neighborhood, and seeing people I know at the Corner Store, the Fairmount, the baseball field, and downtown. Not to mention strawberry pancakes at Nicky’s Cruisin’ Diner.”
5. If you could have a 5-minute conversation with anyone living or dead, who would it be?
“I’d talk to Lee Harvey Oswald (but I’d keep him at a distance, and make sure he was unarmed). It wouldn’t take five minutes, just a four-word question: ‘Did you do it?’”
Stephen King on writing
Stephen King Used These 8 Writing Strategies to Sell 350 Million Books
The best-selling novelist shares his secrets to selling so many books.
by Glenn Leibowitz
Stephen King is one of the most prolific and commercially successful authors of the past half century, with more than 70 books of horror, science fiction, and fantasy to his name. Estimates put the total sales of his books at between 300 and 350 million copies.
Author offers advice.
16 years ago, King shared everything he knows about writing in a book that instantly became a bestseller: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Part memoir, part codification of his best writing strategies, the book has become a classic among writers.
I discovered – and devoured – it a dozen years ago, when I was trying to take my writing to the next level. I recommend it to all of my writer friends.
You don’t have to be a fan of King’s writing to appreciate the wisdom within the pages of this book. Nor do you have to be a novelist: The book has highly practical strategies that writers of nonfiction can immediately apply to their writing.
Here are eight writing strategies King shares that have helped him sell 350 million books:
1. Tell the truth.
“Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all… as long as you tell the truth… Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work… What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave.”
2. Don’t use big words when small ones work.
“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up your household pet in evening clothes.”
3. Use single-sentence paragraphs.
“The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story… to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.
The single-sentence paragraph more closely resembles talk than writing, and that’s good. Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?”
4. Write for your Ideal Reader.
“Someone – I can’t remember who, for the life of me – once wrote that all novels are really letters aimed at one person. As it happens, I believe this.
I think that every novelist has a single ideal reader; that at various points during the composition of a story, the writer is thinking, ‘I wonder what he/she will think when he/she reads this part?’ For me that first reader is my wife, Tabitha… Call that one person you write for Ideal Reader.”
5. Read a lot.
“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books – of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite, the john.”
6. Write one word at a time.
“In an early interview (this was to promote Carrie, I think), a radio talk-show host asked me how I wrote. My reply – ’One word at a time’– seemingly left him without a reply. I think he was trying to decide whether or not I was joking. I wasn’t. In the end, it’s always that simple.”
7. Write every day.
“The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday (at my age you try to ignore your goddam birthday anyway)… When I’m writing, it’s all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned good.”
8. Write for the joy of it.
“Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it… Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side – I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”
Filed under 2016, Uncategorized, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
Monday morning writing joke: “Maine frame of mind”
There once was a writer from Maine /
Who wrote about the strange and insane. /
“Your writing reminds me of King.” /
Those words would always sting, /
Until he stuffed their remains down the drain.
***
A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”
Filed under 2015, Monday morning writing joke, poetry by author
Writing tip Wednesday: “Five from on high”
Writers Can Learn A Lot From Writing Tips Offered By Stephen King
Source: http://www.learnu.org/writers-can-learn-a-lot-from-writing-tips-offered-by-stephen-king/
Author offers advice.
There are a ton of invaluable tips and tid bits of advice for writers and it was nearly impossible to pick just a select few to cover today. After much consideration we were able to narrow down what we found to be incredibly useful information for our writer readers.
In his book, King said “I can’t lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.” Well, he has a point…a blunt point, but a point all the same. So, with that in mind, here are some of our favorite tips from the “King of Horror”:
1. Put down the remote and pick up a book.
King calls television the “poison to creativity” and he’s pretty much spot on. TV is known to suck out the imagination and dull the senses, which are two very important things to writers. He suggests doing away with the TV and picking up a book instead.Reading allows you to constantly learn and challenge your brain.
2. Don’t shy away from editing.
Cutting out bits and pieces of your writing is a rather hard part of the job, but an unavoidable one. King tells writers to, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” You heard him, folks! Don’t be afraid of the delete and backspace keys.
3. Cut yourself off from external distractions when writing.
“Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open,” King says. That sounds about right to us, too. Nothing can jam a writers creative flow quite like a heap of distractions. Writing is an internal activity that often requires the writer to sink into a zone that needs to be maintained.The best way to stay in the zone is to tuck yourself away in a corner without your phone, access to any social media sites and a note on your door asking for privacy.
4. Adverbs and long paragraphs should be avoided like the plague.
And, by the way, so should cliches.
5. Perfect the art of description, but don’t give away too much.
Read more: http://www.learnu.org/writers-can-learn-a-lot-from-writing-tips-offered-by-stephen-king/
Filed under 2015, Writers on writing, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
Twenty-four things about publishing…
24 Things No One Tells You About Book Publishing
Ten years ago, my first novel Prep came out. Three novels later, here’s what I’ve learned about the publishing industry and writing since then.
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Writing is only part of the mystery.
- When it comes to fellow writers, don’t buy into the narcissism of small differences. In all their neurotic, competitive, smart, funny glory, other writers are your friends.
- Unless you’re Stephen King, or you’re standing inside your own publishing house, assume that nobody you meet has ever heard of you or your books. If they have, you can be pleasantly surprised.
- At a reading, 25 audience members and 20 chairs is better than 200 audience members and 600 chairs.
- There are very different ways people can ask a published writer for the same favor. Polite, succinct, and preemptively letting you off the hook is most effective.
- Blurbs achieve almost nothing, everyone in publishing knows it, and everyone in publishing hates them.
- But a really good blurb from the right person can, occasionally, make a book take off.
- When your book is on best-seller lists, people find you more amusing and respond to your emails faster.
- When your book isn’t on best-seller lists, your life is calmer and you have more time to write.
- The older you are when your first book is published, the less gratuitous resentment will be directed at you.
- The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.
- The farther you live from New York, the less preoccupied you’ll be with literary gossip. Like cayenne pepper, literary gossip is tastiest in small doses.
- Contrary to stereotype, most book publicists aren’t fast-talking, vapid manipulators; they’re usually warm, organized youngish women (yes, they are almost all women) who love to read.
- Female writers are asked more frequently about all of the following topics than male writers: whether their work is autobiographical; whether their characters are likable; whether their unlikable characters are unlikable on purpose or the writer didn’t realize what she was doing; how they manage to write after having children.
For the other eleven, go to: http://www.buzzfeed.com/curtissittenfeld/things-no-one-ever-tells-you-about-the-publishing-industry?bffbbooks
Filed under publishing, publishing news
The Sexiest Hard Case Crime Book Covers (PHOTOS)
The Sexiest Hard Case Crime Book Covers (PHOTOS).The Sexiest Hard Case Crime Book Covers (PHOTOS).
Old pulp paperbacks fetch a handsome price on the antique market. It’s no wonder why; they feature artwork that incorporates everything good and pure about American culture—namely saucy dames, square-jawed men, brutal violence and raunchy sex. Even if you can’t throw down the cake for a vintage copy of Faulkner’s The Sanctuary, you can get the latest releases from Hard Case Crime, a retro fiction imprint with books you can judge by their covers. Check out some of our favorites on the following pages.
Filed under book covers
Stephen King announces new novel: “Revival”
Source: http://www.stephenking.com/index.html
Revival
Release Date: November 11th, 2014
Revival cover
In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs—including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister, Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.
Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age of 13, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from his family’s horrific loss. In his mid-thirties—addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate—Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.
This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written. It’s a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Filed under authors
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