Rediscovering King

  This week my special guest is horror film critic Steve Hutchison (X: @terrorca...facebook.com/terrorca...instagram.com/terrorca).   He is the writer of a very interesting book called, The Dollar Baby: Reviews and Interviews . For those King fans of film who don't know what the Dollar Baby program was, it was a way for film students and aspiring filmmakers to adapt and make Stephen King short stories into films for only a dollar. The program, according to King's website, ended on December 31st, 2023. MM: I've known about the Dollar Baby program for a long time. How did you come across it? I had vaguely heard about the Dollar Baby program when director Corey Mayne sent me his screener for Willa. He provided context and explained the program's terms. Although I typically reviewed features rather than short films at the time, I decided to cover it anyway. Subsequently, I actively sought out more Dollar Babies to review and eventually compiled them into a book. MM: What is

  Last month, if you joined our blog, I had the pleasure of writing about Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft . While I learned more than I bargained for about writing itself– you won’t hear a complaint from me about that– I also learned about some of the inspirations of some of King’s most iconic works, namely Carrie . I remember reading it for the first time when I was in high school, and it was particularly difficult to get through some of it. As most if not all of you know, Carrie is a story about a very unfortunate but special girl with an abusive, hyper-religious mother and whose classmates bullied her relentlessly. After she started her first menstrual cycle, she became aware of a power she had forgotten she had access to: telekinesis.   In 1970, Stephen King began work as an industry launderer while his wife picked up shifts at a restaurant, and they had an infant and toddler to feed and clothe as well. King bravely regales us with familiar struggles: living paych

  Later , published in March of 2021 by the Hard Case Crime imprint, and is the third book of Stephen King’s to be published with this publisher.  This is a very short novel from King. It’s not one of his more memorable stories and I’m going to say that it’ll perhaps get lost in his extensive catalog as the years go by. Is it because it’s a bad story? Not at all. However, it’s sort of a story that’s kinda been told already—in a way.  In 1999, M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed a movie called The Sixth Sense which was one of the year’s best pictures that year. Its plot was about a child who could see dead people. King’s Later novel, has the same plot driver. That’s where this book loses its spark for me. Had this been an original King plot, wow! It would have been a home run! But as it is, it feels like a sequel to a movie some twenty-two years later. For those who have never seen The Sixth Sense , this book is really good. I would’ve given this novel a five-star review. But for me,

  When discussing the best of anything, especially lists of someone's body of work, the list is always subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's been a while since I've done a '10 Best' segment and figured it would be a good way to kick off March 2024. Do you agree with my assessments? Who knows? But what I do know, is that these 10 shorts are some of the best that King has to offer.  He's written a lot of short fiction over his career. Most of it, I dare say, is mid-range, meaning I've given most of his short stories a 3/5 rating. Which ain't bad. I have to say that I do enjoy his short stories a lot. Before I go on a rant here about the different formats of King's work, here is a past article I wrote on the subject back in 2021  https://www.rediscoveringking.com/2021/04/is-stephen-king-better-at-novels.html   What we have here today is his best of the best, the cream of the crop, the upper-class society of King's short stories. The

  In 1991, Stephen King published Needful Things with mixed critic reviews. The novel was not his best work, but it certainly was not his worst. To me, it lies somewhere in between...still does. I'm not here to write a review about that novel. I already did that here  https://www.rediscoveringking.com/2018/02/needful-things-book-review.html   What I'm here to talk about today is how the book's subject matter is still prevalent today, just as it was thirty-three years ago. King writes about people's drive to have what they have always wanted in terms of possessions. We are all guilty of wanting something, no matter the cost. The question is, what are we willing to give up to get our needful thing? And is it in fact, a needful thing, or just something we merely want? There is a huge difference between wants and needs . In the novel, King shows us characters who are willing to give up their souls for their heart's desire. This was true in 1991, true for hundreds of ye

  “I began to get an idea, and first with me, it’s usually an image that comes and stays and things begin to accrete around it; really is almost like building a pearl only in my case what I manufacture are black pearls rather than white ones. But there’s a road, it’s overgrown with palms and rhododendrons and a lot of foliage. I started to imagine a little dead girl standing on that road, twin dead girls, with their hands linked. And the image came from nowhere and it came around dusk, which is a spooky time of day anywhere but particularly on the coast of Florida. Years went by, literally, and every now and then I would think of, what I began to refer to as my girls, and the story of Duma Key grew up around them.”- SK  * Was a NYT bestseller for one week on the week of Feb 10th. * Won an Audie Award for Best Fiction Audio Book in 2009 with John Slattery narrating * Winner of the Black Quill Award for Best Dark Genre Novel in 2008 * Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 200