Posted on 12/26/2018 9:34:31 PM PST by RArtfulogerDodger
Ironically, the reason is that the novel was so very, very bad, including absolutely awful hyper-stereotyped depictions of Christians, that I was forced to put the book down after a few chapters. I asked the giver of the book for the receipt, she gave it to me, and I took it to Barnes & Noble to return it for full value and exchange it for one written by a Christian writer of horror novels - Frank Peretti.
That fortuitous choice led me to buy & read every one of Peretti's books then available. So I can credit King's awful writing for my discovery of a truly great author of horror novels!
Almost every new fiction author is rejected multiple dozens of times. (I know this from personal experience)
Getting a work of fiction published is hideously hard. There are actually many people trying to do it and most of them never manage it even with the help of professional editors and writing coaches.
You can refer to a white person as a chimp, monkey, ape, etc. all day long and it’s not racist because NO racist comment hurled at a white person can be racist. They used to call G.W.Bush a chimp all the time.
I never could stand Stephen King and I never thought he wrote all those books. He looks evil enough to have written them but not smart enough. I imagine chimps actually have a higher I.Q. than he does.
“Getting a work of fiction published is hideously hard. There are actually many people trying to do it and most of them never manage it even with the help of professional editors and writing coaches.”
That’s how I think King got all his books, by buying them, the rights and silence from unknown authors.
King stopped signing autographs many years ago. This really pissed off some of us fans who would liked to have him sign (I had a joint photo of him and George Romero that Romero gladly autographed).
While I can understand the demand of receiving many requests, it is a shame for young collectors not to be able to get them any more.
Romero was funny as hell, esp. when we were all talking together with Malcom McDowell, esp. about other directors.
GR - RIP. King - STFU!
This sentence is completely false. King was a successful writer before his books became movies, and some of the bad ones are now cult classics. King's writing style doesn't easily lend itself well to television and movies.
The Stand was the last thing I liked.
King’s Tommyknockers was a derivative pile of crap based on the much older theory that elves, angels, fairies and the like were actually ancient aliens.
Read a book about it in the 70s.
He must have read it, too.
/and the deal with the Beagle abuse killed the rest of his crap for me, as he also featured dog abuse in Needful Things.
the chimp looks smarter. Maybe the glasses?
If you colored his face light green, he’d be the Grinch.
As someone who reveres Shirley Jackson, Henry James & even HP Lovecraft, I would say he can’t even write decent horror fiction. Shirley never had to stoop to haunted washing machines.
The Democrat is small and mean.
While his book called, “On Writing” was decent. It told a story of a drug addled and broken man. There is nothing in past that supports his ability to give advice to anyone.
You should also try out Stephen Koontz. Although he largely avoids coming out and declaring characters as Christian, his good guys and girls are thoroughly Christian when the rubber meets the road - even the one's with crosses to bear.
I highly recommend "Odd Thomas" or if you are disturbed by the current deep-state that President Trump is up against, there's his excellent cautionary thriller about the same in his "Jane Hawk" series.
Playing around with the demonic as life work is bound to affect you at some point
Why would he think his political opinions were any deeper?
Dean Koontz.
He’s had a few, but most of his work from the mid1980s has been crap.
I stopped reading his stuff years ago when it seemed like he’d get a good story going, lose interest in it, and use aliens to finish it off.
Yikes! Yes Dean, not Stephen. K not C. I must have had A-6 Intruders on the mind. :^)
I don’t want to cite the particulars because discussions of grammar and the like on FR turn into their own rancorous (and largely erroneous) threads.
But the head of the copyediting department at a VERY prestigious house was so annoyed with the mistakes he made that she sent him a letter about them, and he refused to change his “rules.”
As for the quality of his books, in his genre they were the best. Imitators just couldn’t cut it. The timing of the horror was exquisite—it’s a talent in its own right. They were usually huge mothers, and difficult to work on, especially after you had read them through once and knew the story.
In contract, Saul Bellow loved the work of his copyeditor so much that he had it written into his contract that she must always be the copyeditor on his books. He gave her gifts.
At one point Harper & Row had Webster’s 11th Unabridged written into their contracts to try to avoid the endless disputes on spelling that self-important authors would get into with the copyediting department. Of course the boilerplate was negotiable for each book contract, so some got away with deleting that sentence from the contract.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.