It is at the end of a long, deserted road, surrounded by woodland and in a GPS dead zone this, after a week of rereading King novels, is unrelaxing. We are at a house in Maine that his assistant, opening the door, drily refers to as 'spare' it's one of several King properties in the area, on a lake, and designated vaguely as a summer house. And I thought, well, let's find out.'Īt 65, King is a big, shaggy presence, towering despite his slightly stooped shoulders and with an air of affable amusement at the vastness of his success and all that comes with it. Specifically: what the story would have looked like if Danny's father – mad 'white-knuckle alcoholic' Jack Torrance – had 'found AA.
But when they ask what happened to Danny Torrance, the boy from The Shining, he always found himself wondering.
When fans ask what happened to Charlie McGee in Firestarter, for example, King isn't interested. Now and then, a story lingers in his mind long after it's published. Still, he says, when people say, 'Steve, your books are uneven', he's confident 'there's good stuff in all of 'em'. Stephen King has written a lot of books – at 56 novels, he's closing in on Agatha Christie – some of which have been great, some of which less so.
