by Ivan Ideear
OXNARD, Calif.-- Everything you knew about your favorite horror fiction author is wrong. (Unless your favorite horror fiction author is Dean Koontz, and then ultimately you may be wrong.)
Millions of horror-fantasy fans were shocked on Saturday when it was revealed that "Stephen King" is the pen name for an 87-year old great grandmother who lives in Southern California.
"I mostly started out writing children's books, " said Bertha Granderson, sittting in the living room of her humble 2-bedroom rambler in Oxnard. "But once the editors got ahold of them, whew-eee did they ever get ahold of them."
Granderson said she had no idea what was happening to her works. But once she saw the edited copy of her first novel, she realized she didn't want her children and grandchildren to think she was obsessed with horrible things. She requested that the publisher change her name to something regal.
Stephen King was the name upon which they finally agreed.
"Christine? That was a 30-page book about a picnic in a grandfather's classic car," she said. "Green Mile? That was about a picnic in a nature preserve."
Granderson said that the Dark Tower series was probably her most challenging work, stating the books were loosely based upon the Chronicles of Narnia series.
"When I wrote It! I had this idea about several children on a camping trip near a mine shaft," she said. "It gets scary because they tell spooky ghost stories."
Granderson said the two books that most-closely resembled her original manuscripts are Misery (an author having a picnic with his biggest fan ) and 11.22.1963, which was about the birth of her youngest son, (the timing of which coincided with the Kennedy assassination.)
Granderson said she isn't ready to hang up the quill just yet.
"I'm pretty sure I've got a few more stories left in me," she said. "There's one about a picnic at an old abandoned carnival site. I'm sure that'll be good. And I think I'm going to do one about two groups of people having a picnic in the Antarctic."
Granderson added with a cackle that the latter would be a "real chiller."
But what of the man whose photos have graced the covers of your favorite fantasy/horror/thrillers?
Leonard Patrick DuFrense-Ackley is a Maine resident whose image was selected from several hundred "Stephen King Candidates."
DuFrense-Ackley, a self-published novelist in his own right, said he hopes this "big reveal" will help boost his own book sales.
You can find DuFrense-Ackley's novels on Amazon or his home page on Smashwords.
King/Granderson's newest novel Death Picnic will reach bookshelves in October.
No comments:
Post a Comment