Stephen King

Oh baby would I like to interact with Stephen King and I'll tell you why.

Growing up, my mind was fed with a constant diet of comics that stirred my interest in reading and gave me an appetite for the written word. They were beautifully illustrated too, Classics Illustrated, now sadly long forgotten thrilled me with all the great adventures that were presented in such a way that I couldn't get enough.

As I aged I moved on to DC Comics and fell in love again, with Superman, Batman and The Green Lantern, they even had the adventures of Superboy and his dog Krypto. They featured evil villains that always got caught in the end and one tricky customer called Mr Mxytptlk (hope I got that right).

Then came the new kid on the block, Marvel Comics featuring the great Stan (the man) Lee and Steve Ditko who took my reading to new levels with The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Spider-Man and the incredible Watcher.

Then I grew up, and these great, legendary comics were put to one side, and books took over. I was forever haunting my local library for all the great Classics which I devoured, book after book, it was an incredible time.

Then came paperbacks, whole books that you could afford to buy and collect and store on your shelf at home, and just delve into them without the worry of having to return them to your library. They cluttered the house and drove my mom wild, but I cherished them.

Then, I discovered horror.

I loved them all, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, the amazing Catcher In The Rye, anything and everything to do with horror I craved.

Then I saw a movie advertised at my cinema, it dealt with horror (which fascinated me), it told the story of a young girl who had strange powers and a psychotic mother and it featured two actors I'd never heard of but would grow to love, John Travolta and Sissy Spacek. It was called Carrie.

My introduction to the workings of Stephen King had begun. The movie shocked me with its violence, and creepy atmosphere of revenge that, surprisingly, came out of the blue. I had to read the book, and I was amazed at how differently this Mr King treated his audience - he lulled you into loving his story, then hooked you with supernatural evil that gripped and terrified you, and kept you turning the pages right until the end.

He was different. He gave me nightmares.

I devoured all of his works, and all the movie versions of his books and I developed an admiration for the craft of writing through him.

Yes, I could spend many hours picking his brain on how to structure stories, plot twists, character development, and his art of terrifying people. But most of all I would shake his hand and buy him a whisky for giving me the scariest story I ever read.

It became a movie (of course). It terrified everyone who read it and it put me off having pets forever.

Pet Cemetery.

Have you read it? Go on, read it. The Shining was scary, but Pet Cemetery is in a whole new league.