In the beginning there was Stephen King.....

I was in middle school when I read my first Stephen King novel.  Maybe a bit young by some standards, but I was quickly outgrowing the young adult literature and felt up to a bigger challenge.  I happened to be at the public library one afternoon in the summer, and finally took the big step across the room into the shelves of Adult Fiction.  It felt like a graduation of sorts for me, and I knew exactly what I was looking for. 

My friend's older brother was an avid Stephen King fan, and he was always trying to scare us by describing the stories in all their gory details.  Because I was already mesmerized by the horror genre, I knew that I had to experience Stephen King for myself.  From the shelves I pulled down the massive hardcover edition of "Needful Things," a novel that was not well received by critics but became a national bestseller nonetheless.  That afternoon I sat down in the living room and began reading.  I was instantly hooked.  The writing was superb and the story was like nothing I had ever heard or imagined before.  I slowly began making my way through the Stephen King collection, although nearly 14 years later I am still not done.  That summer I completed "Needful Things," "The Tommyknockers," as well as "IT," a challenge in itself seeing as the book is over 1,000 pages long. 

There is not doubt that Stephen King has one of the largest fan bases in the world.  His writing has been entertaining people since the 1960s, and every year new readers emerge who become enraptured and start on a quest to read all the books from start to finish.  I think what I love the most about King is that he is, above all else, a storyteller.  There are so many aspects to writing:  character development, descriptions, dialogue, so many ingredients that need to work together or the end product turns out to be less than desirable.  While King does all this and more, at his core he tells stories that are, well, amazing.  Okay, to be fair, not all his books are out-of-this-world fantastic (I'm thinking of "Christine".....), but even the below par ones have a story that has never been told in that particular fashion.

I think that is what I struggle with in my own writing.  Sure, there are ideas, but they are ideas that hundreds of thousands of people have already written about.  They're not new, and I struggle to find ways to make them relevant.  Then I look at a writer like King and what he does with these books, and it just blows your mind.  Well, it blows my mind.  I think what King has mastered above all else is the art of the story.  Whether it's a novel or a short story, he can captivate like no other.

I have read and re-read King's books, and anytime I am on a quest to purchase new books I always head to his section on the bookshelf.  In a way, I almost hope I am never able to completely read all his books, because (and I'm sure fellow King fans can agree), knowing that there is a new story out there that could potentially become one's favorite Stephen King book.....well, that's an almost priceless feeling.