Writer's Block: Light reading

Stephen King is the Lord Mayor of transnational flights. Pop a King book into your bag the next time you travel and the time will fly by.

You know what? I think he's really one of the most underrated writers. He has even referred to himself as "the Big Mac of the literary world", because you always know exactly what you're going to get, which is true, in some part. But it's also not true by the same token; Horror is pretty much seen as a junk genre, it's not taken very seriously and there aren't a whole bunch of real horror fans out there (though they're all die-hard!!). But it's hard to do real horror well...None of this sparkly vampire bullshit, lol.

In Misery (my favourite Stephen King book so far) a crazed woman takes this writer hostage, claiming to be his number one fan (scary), and there's this amazingly detailed, scarily intense scene where she cuts his fucking foot off. Reading that was the only time that I actually had to put the book down for a second and look away. In another book...Uh...*checks bookshelf*...'Salems Lot, I think, there's this scene where a kid gets tied up in a really complex way by a bad guy and you can pretty much see exactly where the knots are and you can understand exactly how the kid escapes, so clear is King's writing.

So, yeah. Stephen King's books are an easy read, but there's no harm in that. Not everything has to be Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights (both of which make me want to beat my head against a wall). The reading is easy, the images are clear and intense, the characters are interesting and the story always goes somewhere...But fuck, his work is scary. And that's why I like him. It's so, so hard to find a genuine horror writer. It's so hard to find a writer that loves horror and understands it as much as his readership does.

So...Go read a book.