• Author: Bev Vincent
• Publisher: Epic Ink
• Publishing year: 2022
• Number of pages: 240
• ISBN: 978-0760376812

Review:

Even though I have read so many articles and books about the life and inspiration of Stephen King, I’m always up for another book concerning the man that made me start reading books!

And Bev Vincent is one to know the writer better than anyone else in my opinion, having already written a book called ‘The Dark Tower Companion’, a guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy! (the green book in the picture down below is the Dutch translation of it)

So when I saw this book being published: A complete exploration of his work, life and influences, I knew I needed to have it!

And it is actually what it says it is: a complete biography of the ‘King of Horror’, decade per decade and book per book, explaining the inspiration that came for those books and the way King himself came to a story and even how some books came to be (sometimes exactly as he wanted them, sometimes completely changed)

Of course the Bachman years are a huge part of this book as well, the pseudonym King wrote under in the seventies and eighties.

This book also contains a huge amount of background and photo material from King’s personal collection (photos along the years, contracts, first scripts…) which makes this a great book for the fans to see how his life and work evolved and developed! It makes me feel jealous because that means Mr. Vincent just had access to all this material!

This is a must have for every Stephen King fan, let’s be honest! And Bev Vincent has added lists in the back: every book and short story written, every movie made, every tv-show and episode based on a story or screenplay by the man who changed horror forever!

And reading this has just made me want to pick up my personal ‘Stephen King revival’ which is reading every book he ever wrote in chronological order. I started it a few years ago and somehow lost touch with it (I stopped mid-eighties so the next book is The Tommyknockers) and at the same time I started rewatching every movie adaptation as well… (Next: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining so keep an eye on this blog for the review of that one!)

I just cannot get enough of King, I never will. Even though I keep returning this his earlier work, just because I think that were his best books. But that will never keep me from reading anything he is publishing! Oh yes, I just recently bought ‘You just like it darker’ twice… the UK and the US edition (love that crocodile island cover!) and I’m sure that I will buy more editions of his older work when I see something I love! The man changed my life (and he doesn’t even know it!) when I was thirteen… I had never really been a reader, unless comics. And then a friend of mine gave me one of his books (it was a Dutch translation of Skeleton Crew with The Mist) and ever since I read that… I was hooked! So thank you to that friend, thank you to Mr. King and thank you Mr. Vincent for this elaborate and well documented biography!

And now, I am going to stumble over a spaceship somewhere in the woods, I guess!