Stephen King



So, I'm doing this book signing for The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon at the Barnes & Noble on Manhattan's Upper West Side last week, and this woman comes up to me, gushing about how The Tommyknockers is her "absolute, all-time favorite book." The name really didn't ring a bell, but I figured I must have written it, seeing as this woman is bothering to tell me how it's her all-time favorite, so I just kind of play along like I know what the heck she's talking about.


"What Bobbi Anderson and the other people of Haven went through, well, that was just the ultimate in horror fiction," this woman said to me as I nodded along, clueless. "I must have read it at least 50 times, and I swear, not once has it failed to scare the living daylights out of me."

Anyway, when I got home, I looked up The Tommyknockers in this literature reference book I have and, sure enough, I wrote it in 1987. Apparently, it's the story of this woman in this small town in Maine who discovers a metal object that was buried for millennia, and the thing gives all the townspeople super-powers. But then there's this deadly evil that's unleashed by the object, and the town becomes a death trap for all outsiders.


After reading the plot synopsis, I sort of remembered it, but, then again, maybe it just sounded like something else I wrote. After your 50 or 60th one, it's all kind of a blur. But if I had to venture a guess, I'd say I probably did write The Tommyknockers. It sounds like my kind of thing, what with this invisible evil being unleashed on a town full of innocent people and all.

To be honest, that wouldn't be the first time I'd forgotten one of my books. I'm usually pretty good about remembering the early stuff, like Carrie and The Stand and so forth. And I never forget my most recent one. It's those middle-period ones, though, that always seem to slip my mind. Like, what's that one about the writer who uses a pen name, and then the pen name develops into this evil, Mr. Hyde-type alter ego and commits a brutal murder? The Dark Tower? The Dark Zone? I'm pretty sure it's the "Dark" something, but I could be wrong.


Oh, and then there was that one about the werewolf. I honestly don't remember anything about that one, except that there was some kind of killer werewolf attacking a whole bunch of people. Hopefully, no one will ever mention that one at a book signing, because I don't think I could fake it for even a minute. Like I said, it's all a big blur after a while.