Lilja's Library

by Hans-Ake Lilja

  Lilja: I noticed that Edgar, the main character, is in a lot of pain in the book. Did you draw from your own experience when you wrote that?

  Stephen King: I did, but I thought that nobody would mistake Edgar for me since his injuries are so much worse than mine were. He loses his arm. But I know enough about pain to wanna write a little bit about that, to wanna write about getting better. The only time I have ever actually written about my own pain was in On Writing, so it was a chance to explore some of that and basically what I wanted to write about that, was on my mind was…about three years after the road accident I had pneumonia. This was around the time of the National Book Award and I had an intestinal bug that was a hospital germ that I picked up, and when I was done with all that it was like my memory kinda took a hit. It was hard to remember things and that was really scary and I wanted to write about that.

  Lilja: You did a really good job. You really feel for Edgar when you read the book.

  Stephen King: Well, thanks. The other thing is I have a friend, his name is Frank Muller, who read books on tapes, he read a lot of my books on discs and tapes, and he had a motorcycle accident and he really…he is never gonna be normal again. I don’t think he’s ever going to regain his thought processes, but one of the things about Frank is that you have to be careful around him now because he goes into rages. Apparently this is pretty common in frontal brain injuries. To get angry and strike out against the ones they love, so I thought I wanted to write about that too.

  Lilja: In the book Edgar becomes a painter, and you have also used painters quite often in your later work. Have you developed an interest in painting yourself?

  Stephen King: I can’t even draw a cat [laughs] but I like pictures and I have had some stuff to do with artists, particularly with The Dark Tower books, and I’m interested in the way they work, but it was also a chance to get away from the idea of everyone saying “All you ever write about is writers.” I like to write about what I know; there is a comfort level there. There are more ways to write about art and the creative impulses than just writing about writers. To me, even after thirty-five years—most of my life—of writing stories, the process itself is a total mystery. I have no idea how creativity happens or why it happens or what it does to the person who creates it, except it makes you feel good while it’s going on.

  Lilja: So you haven’t started painting your own paintings?

  Stephen King: No, I haven’t started painting my own paintings, but you know Edgar’s paintings are like my work and that’s one thing that nobody said in the reviews or the discussions of the book. Edgar paints sunsets, which are clichés, and he changes them from clichés to something else by adding one object that has no business to be there. And what I do is that I write about ordinary people and add something that’s surreal or horrible or out of place in the story and that changes everything, so in that sense Edgar really is like me.

  Lilja: Speaking of paintings. I really like the cover for the book. I think it’s actually one of the best covers for your books.

  Stephen King: Do you?

  Lilja: Yes. Do you have a lot to say when it comes to the covers of your books or is that left to the publisher?

  Stephen King: No, I got quite a lot to say about it and we talked about that and I said that I thought it would be great if they could have the ocean with a big shell in the foreground and some tennis balls, so they got all those things in it.

  Lilja: Have you done a lot of promotion for Duma Key?

  Stephen King: No.

  Lilja: No? I thought there was less than usual.

  Stephen King: I didn’t go out a lot. I’m working on a new book and I wanted to do that and I’m assuming it’s gonna be a long book, a really long book. Like The Stand or IT or something like that, I think. A very long book. And I talked to the people at the publisher and said, “You have your choice. Either I can work on this book and maybe you can have it in a year or two, or I can go out and promote and do all these things that you want me to do and you won’t.” So, eventually they saw reason.

  You know I did this thing at Radio City with J.K. Rowling and she is a great person, she is very vivacious and she is very lively and very much with it, but when we had a run through for the thing I could see that one of her publishers from Scholastic was talking to her and Jo Rowling came back to me and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” and I said, “Sure.”

  And she was really steamed and I said, “What’s the matter?” and she said, “They don’t understand, do they? They really don’t understand. They think these things write themselves.” Because she told them she was coming to New York, she was going to do this benefit reading and then she was going to work on the seventh Harry Potter book, and they took the opportunity to ask her to do all these other things and that’s the fact, this goes back to that whole business of creativity and what it is and what it isn’t. They don’t understand. They think somehow that this stuff just occurs by magic.

  Lilja: But you have spoiled your publishers with a lot of books over the years, so they think you can write really fast.

  Stephen King: Well, I can, but I have to be left alone to do it.

  Lilja: Do you like doing promotion if you have the time?

  Stephen King: Hate it!

  Lilja: Hate it? So, you won’t be going back to the U.K. for a tour any time soon?

  Stephen King: I don’t have any real plans to go back, but you know I hate the promotion and when I go to the U.K. they really work me hard, they really want you out there, pushing…but the other side of it is that I love those people at Hodder and it’s very difficult for me to say no to them.

  Lilja: So, they just have to ask you in the right way then?

  Stephen King: Yeah, exactly.

  ****

  Stephen King, Part 2

  Posted: February 21, 2008

  PART 2—Just Past Sunset, The Dark Tower and The Stand

  “When I finally settled on the title, I thought, ‘Gee, Unnatural Acts of Human Intercourse, that is a really good title,’ but they had a shit-fit.”

  “Well, I’d like to do something original in that field at some point.”

  Lilja: You also have a collection of short stories coming out.

  Stephen King: I do.

  Lilja: Will it be out this year?

  Stephen King: I think it’s gonna come out in…November. We went back and forth about the title. I wanted to call it Unnatural Acts of Human Intercourse.

  Lilja: Yeah, I remember reading about that and also Pocket Rockets?

  Stephen King: Yeah.

  Lilja: Are there usually this many titles flying around?

  Stephen King: You know, books with short stories are hard to title unless you name them after one of the stories, and when I finally settled on the title, I thought, “Gee, Unnatural Acts of Human Intercourse, that is a really good title,” but they had a shit-fit. [laughs]

  Lilja: [laughs] Yeah, I read that the publisher thought they would have a really hard time promoting it.

  Stephen King: Yeah, “We can’t sell this, we blah, blah, blah,” and I said, “Well, look in your dictionary, man, intercourse doesn’t even have anything to do with sex.” It’s what we’re doing right now. We’re having a conversation back and forth.

  Lilja: Yeah, I liked that title. I was hoping for it, but I guess Just Past Sunset is good as well…

  Stephen King: Yeah, it’s like Night Shift and Four Past Midnight. It has some of that vibe to it, so if they like that, it’s fine.

  Lilja: Is it easier to name books that aren’t collections?

  Stephen King: Yes! Cause the titles always kinda suggest themselves after a while. The only time I ever had a problem was the vampire book I wanted to call Second Coming and someone said it sounded like a sex manual.

  Lilja: [laughs]

  Stephen King: So, we ended up calling that one something else.

  Lilja: Will all the previously published but uncollected stories be in the collection?<
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  Stephen King: Now, I’m not supposed to talk to you about that very much…I think there’s like thirteen stories in the collection, which is a good number of stories for a collection of scary stories.

  Most of them are the ones that have been published in magazines, but haven’t been collected. There is one story that is brand new that is called “N.” Just the letter N with a period after it, and that’s a long story, and you know, you could guess. The long stories like “The Gingerbread Girl” are gonna be in there, and there is one other long one that hasn’t been published yet that’s called “A Very Tight Place,” so those will be kind of the cornerstones and the anchors to it and the other ones…the stories that aren’t going to be in there are the ones that developed into novels, “Lisey and the Madman”and “Memory.” They won’t be in there.

  Lilja: The first story arc of The Gunslinger comic is finished. Are you happy with how it turned out?

  Stephen King: I loved it.

  Lilja: Yeah?

  Stephen King: Yeah, I really loved it. They are going to do The Stand, I think, if we can work out arrangements.

  Lilja: Yeah, I remember there were talks about The Stand about a year ago, or two.

  Stephen King: Doubleday has the rights to most of that, so it’s gonna go on for a while before we get that worked out, but hopefully it’ll happen.

  Lilja: You should also do Eyes of the Dragon. It would fit well as a comic.

  Stephen King: Well, I’d like to do something original in that field at some point. You know, cause there are a lot of those graphic novel things that I really like. There is one called Y: The Last Man that’s really nice. And I’d really like to try that sometime.

  Lilja: Yeah, it would be really interesting to see an original Stephen King comic. What are your feelings about the next story arc, The Long Road Home?

  Stephen King: I like the way…well, first of all, let me say this. The first issue is terrific and the way that the arc is outlined is very good. I like that a lot. It really just takes off from the previous one, so that’s nice. And Peter David and Robin Furth have really started to click and work together really well, so I think it’s gonna be OK. You can never tell because, it’s like the movie, once a lot of people start working together it’s always a little unpredictable what’s going to happen, but we’ll see.

  Lilja: How much input have you had in it since it’s not based on something you have previously written?

  Stephen King: Well, with the first one I had a lot of input because it was basically Wizard and Glass, but my feelings about stuff like this are the same whether it’s movies or something like a graphic novel. The comic books are very similar to movies in a lot of ways. They become more and more cinematic as years go by, wouldn’t you agree with that?

  Lilja: Yeah, I really like the widescreen format of the comics, that the frames are covering the entire page.

  Stephen King: Yeah, and I love Jae Lee as an artist. I think he rocks!

  Lilja: Yeah, he is very talented.

  Stephen King: Yeah, terrifically talented guy. Very quiet, very modest, but my idea is that either you get right in there and write the damn thing or you stand away and let people do their best work and don’t…“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” as the saying goes, and there you are.

  Lilja: Yeah, I can’t wait to see what they have done with it. Do you know if all the story arcs are mapped out? Have you given them some guidelines to navigate by?

  Stephen King: Yeah, I gave them some overall guidelines and I can tell you what it is basically. You know the story Wizard and Glass, Roland and his friends are basically kids. They have just gotten their first guns and they are sent away to this cattle area called Mejis and they have all these adventures and then they go back and Roland actually shoots his mother by mistake. Which is a spoiler, I guess, technically, but anyone who doesn’t know that hasn’t read the stories anyway so…The next time in chronological order we see Roland of Gilead is when he is in the desert chasing the Man in Black and all these years have gone by. We don’t even know how many years, but it’s a lot more than a normal man’s lifespan, and what I said when we sat down with Marvel was “This is the area you wanna focus on,” the young manhood of Roland and his friends with the overall story of The Crimson King and this guy who is working to overthrow all of civilization, and they just took to that like ducks to water and started to build these arcs around that and I just thought it was terrific and after that I just kind of walked away from the project and I look at it and I’m really sort of an outsider at this point and that’s fine. I gave them my little railroad trains to play with and they’re doing their thing.

  Lilja: Robin is very involved in The Dark Tower now; she probably knows more than you do?

  Stephen King: She does, there’s no “probably” about it.

  ****

  Stephen King, Part 3

  Posted: February 22, 2008

  PART 3—The Gingerbread Girl, The Mist and The Talisman 3

  “Well, I’d never say never. I would think about it if it ever came up, but so far it hasn’t.”

  “The ending was obviously gonna be controversial, but he had to put an ending to it.”

  Lilja: Some time ago there were also talks about a movie version of The Dark Tower by J.J. Abrams?

  Stephen King: Yeah, I think they are still interested in that, but, you know, for me it was a way of actually…how can I say this…it was a way of stopping a lot of requests and a lot of speculation I was getting from people. I’d get calls from producers. “Have you sold this? Have you thought about selling this?” Fans would write and try to cast the movie, got this one to play Roland and that one…and all that stuff, so…J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who are the people that do LOST, came up to Maine and we had a roundtable discussion that Entertainment Weekly put on and Maine was the logical place to do it because I live there and J.J’s wife comes from Brewer, which is right across the river from where I live so…we started to talk about The Dark Tower and they expressed an interest, and based off what I had seen of LOST they were just the people to do it, and whether or not it ever gets made is another question because it would have to be something that would bend over an arc of many movies, and in the case of The Lord of the Rings and the C.S. Lewis Narnia series…those experiments in what I call long-form movies, long-form cinema, have been very successful, but then people tried the Philip Pullman thing, his dark material, and that was a flop, so it’s risking a lot of money on a format that’s very iffy, so we’ll see if anything happens, but in the meantime I don’t have to answer as many questions as I used to.

  Lilja: What is your gut feeling about it? Could it be transformed into a movie?

  Stephen King: Yeah, sure.

  Lilja: I guess it was about the same time that you had the meeting with the people from LOST that there was a rumor that you were going to write an episode for LOST.

  Stephen King: [laughs] Just rumors. I mean, they got that pretty well in hand. There is a guy called Brian K. Vaughan who’s a comic guy that has done some work for them and he’s been terrific. I think they got that well in hand.

  Lilja: So you don’t feel the urge to try?

  Stephen King: Well, I’d never say never. I would think about it if it ever came up, but so far it hasn’t.

  Lilja: Are there any other TV series that you felt like writing an episode for like you did with The X-Files?

  Stephen King: Well, with The X-Files…that was kind of a strange experience because I was re-written so heavily by Chris Carter that it was really very odd, a very odd experience. I don’t know whether, was it William Gibson who did an episode of The X-Files as well…one of those cyberpunk writers did one and I just wondered…I always thought I’d like to get in touch with him to find out what his experience was with Carter because I got re-written pretty exhaustively. You know, I like TV and I like long form, but as far as actually writing an episode of a show…I can’t think of anything that is on TV
right now that would interest me that way.

  Lilja: It must be hard to write about characters that already have their history and you have to adapt very much to what’s already happened.

  Stephen King: Well, it can be fun…

  Lilja: Yeah?

  Stephen King: No question about that, but I’m more interested in original stuff, I’d say.

  Lilja: Speaking of original stuff, you’re also working with John Mellencamp on the musical The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County.

  Stephen King: It looks like it’s actually going to be an out-of-town…We’re gonna get this play up and running probably in April 2009. We’re going to do another workshop this summer in New York, put the finishing touches on it, and somewhere, probably on the east coast, maybe Miami or Atlanta, somewhere down south, it’ll be on next April, I think, quite sure of that.

  Lilja: Do you plan to release it as a DVD or something for people not living in the U.S.?

  Stephen King: [laughs] Ah, it’s very hard to say. With almost every show that actually makes it to Broadway there is a soundtrack album, so it would be that, and I can very easily visualize a soundtrack album that had the playbook bound into it, but it’s really too early to say.

  Lilja: What else are you working on now? Is the new book taking up all your time or…

  Stephen King: Yeah, it’s basically the new book. I don’t wanna talk about it because it always feels like bad luck to do that, but it’s a long book and it’s set in Maine, not Florida, and I think that it’s OK so far.

  Lilja: In the past you have also written some scripts based on your books…

  Stephen King: Yeah…

  Lilja: Is that something you enjoy?

  Stephen King: Sometimes…I wouldn’t wanna say that I really enjoy it, but I did a script for The Gingerbread Girl and that is in what I would call “development hell” right now. It’s basically in the hands of Craig Baxley, who directed Storm of the Century and Rose Red, and Mark Carliner, who produced The Shining miniseries and some of those other things, and I would like to see that as a theatrical. I think it would make a good movie. Offers are out to various actors and actresses, so now that the strike is over maybe something will happen or maybe nothing will happen. You just never know.