An Open Letter To Stephen King

Dear SK

Stephen King you make everything better.

I discovered you in 6th grade. My brother and I would spend a weekend with my Dad's mom every month or so. These weekend trips were part awesome/part sucky. Sucky because my grandmother is a fiend about cleaning so her house is a showplace, and when you are 11 and 7 respectively, that's not what your life is about. But awesome because Dad would give us each $20 for our trouble and $20 to this 6th grader was a fortune. Grandma Jessie's 2 favorite stores are JCPenney and WalMart. JCPenney is resereved for things like Christmas gifts. WalMart was for our weekend trips. The best thing about Grandma Jessie and WalMart is that she didn't pay attention to anything so my brother and I could really spend our $20 on whatever we wanted.

That one winter weekend back in 1992 I spent $5.99 of my $20 on a little book of yours called Carrie.

Since maybe 4th grade I had been obsessed with the darker side of life. I loved scary movies and books and I absolutely loved writing scary stories. In 5th grade my best friend Katie and I teamed up and I wrote the scary stories and she drew the illustrations. One I definitely remember was about a girl who's sister gets sucked into hell and when she comes back out she's possessed and proceeds to kill her whole family. There was a line that read "Teresa looked over the bush" and Katie was like "do you know what a bush is?" And that's how I learned that.

But back to my love affair with you SK.

I bought Carrie and I was done with it by the time my parents picked us up on Sunday. 2 things happened after that. 1) I started spending Tuesdays at the library (that was the only day it was open til 9 instead of 6--my mom didn't get home til 630) 2) I managed to work my way through every Stephen King book there by the time I reached 7th grade.

The summers of 1993-1996 were Stephen King Summers. I discovered The Stand in 7th grade and it became a tradition to read it every June. Sometimes I want to be Fran. Tom Cullen? That's my boy. And deaf Nick? Love affair SK. LOVE AFFAIR. The stories from Night Shift and Skeleton Crew got me through days when I was over my friends, over my family and over school. There's nothing like a story about an actual boogeyman to make a girl feel okay again. When I felt left out and different and I was being teased because my voice was too white, I could open up Salem's Lot and be glad that at least my town wasn't full of homicidal vampires. I left behind Ann M Martin and Judy Blume and fell into the waiting arms of The Tommyknockers and The Dark Half. My family uprooted me to a new town and school but I could always escape to the Overlook Hotel or over to Little Tall Island.

SK you address your readers in your intros as Dear Constant Reader. And that is exactly what I am.

I can honestly say that I've read every book you've ever written with the exception of the Dark Tower series. I'm not into sci-fi but I'm not saying I won't give those a chance. If anyone can make me like sci-fi, it's you SK.

Under The Dome came in the mail yesterday and I'm already 150 pages in. I love you for writing another long book--I saw that it was over 1000 pages and I had to actually tell myself to slow down and not just devour the thing whole. (I get insane about books--I'm sure you understand) I'm already invested in the strange goings on in Chester's Mill and am now secretly kind of afraid of crushing my face into a force field with every step I take. I love your books that have a lot of characters!! The creepy Mr. Leland Gaunt and his store Needful Things still happily haunt my dreams sometimes. My favorite of your newer books is Lisey's Story--I cried throughout the last half and the word "piebald" makes my skin crawl.

So....in short...thank you for writing. Your books are awesome and I will actually fight anyone who says otherwise.




xoxo

Brandy


PS I miss Castle Rock. How about just one more story?