God'll Get Ya

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

I've been listening to a lot of Stephen King lectures. 

This is for the podcast. I like to try and find items of interest that I can just throw in there. And people have been recording him giving speeches for about 40 years now. 

He's an affable, jovial fellow. I like listening to him. He's remarkably modest and down to earth, and puts up politely with being asked the same questions over and over. "Where do you get your ideas?" and "But WHY horror?"

Apparently in one interview he said something like, "Oh, I don't know I'm just a little warped, I guess". And then the interviewer asked why people read his stuff, "I guess they're a little warped too," he laughed.

STEPHEN KING SAYS OWN READERS ARE WARPED read the headline the next day. 

The poor man. It can't be easy.

But he told a funny story which I can't use in the podcast, so instead it will be my blip story for the day. He said the first time he felt famous was when he saw someone reading one of his books for the first time. 

He was on a flight and a woman was reading "Carrie", his first novel. This made him feel good about himself, and wanting to feel even better, he decided he would go and ask her how she liked the book and when she told him how much she was enjoying it, he could follow up with, "Well - ah - I just happen to be the author of that book, if you'd like me to sign it for you."

So it went like this - 

KING: Sooooo... how are you enjoying the book?
WOMAN: It's really shitty.

He slunk back to his seat. 

When his plane landed, he was speaking at an event along with Kitty Kelley and afterward the two writers were given a "rubber chicken dinner". It was halfway through the meal his stomach gave a low rumble and he realised something had gone horribly wrong.

He dashed off to the bathroom at the venue (which was a posh hotel). He said he found himself in a "Babylonian" bathroom, marble on the floor and an ancient old bathroom attendant with brushes, perfumes and balms by the door.

But there was no time to appreciate it. He ran to the first toilet, only to find that the one thing this place was missing was doors on the stalls. But there was no time for THAT either. He did what he had to do.

"And it was at that point, the absolute LOWEST point," he said, "with sweat pouring down my face, my pants around my ankles and my head in my hands, just wanting to go home when I saw the elderly man approaching me with one of my books in his hand and a pen in the other."

And that was how he gave his very first autograph. 

"God'll get ya that way," he said. 

He says people recognise him all the time now. Well, sort of. He gets, "Aren't you Steven Spielberg?" a lot. He usually claims that he is. 

But on another occasion, he was assailed by a little old lady in a book store. "You're that Stephen King!" she said. "You write all those HORRIBLE books!"

He apologised and admitted that he was.

"I don't care for that sort of thing," she sniffed. "I prefer uplifting stories like, 'The Shawshank Redemption'."

"Well... um... I wrote that too," he said.

The old lady thought for a minute.

"NO YOU DIDN'T!" she bellowed, and flounced off.

Actually these stories are pretty good. Maybe I WILL use them in the podcast. I'm sure he won't mind.

S.