In 2009 we were a bit surprised to hear that Stephen King was considering penning a sequel to The Shining. That book is one of King’s signature stories, thanks in part to the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation. (A film which King hated to such a degree that he made his own television version in 1997.) So there’s the question, is a sequel to The Shining sacrilege or long-awaited dream?

Regardless, it is happening. The title originally reported, Dr. Sleep, is in fact the name of the book, and the author is already out reading excerpts from it. Oh, and the story involves a band of, essentially, psychic vampires. I know this isn’t really movie news, but chances are it will be, perhaps sooner rather than later. So read a bit more about Dr. Sleep below.

King’s official website posted this yesterday:

It’s now official–Stephen is working on Dr. Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. This weekend Steve read an excerpt from this at his appearance at George Mason University. They have given us permission to post their taping of the event here on Steve’s site which we will do as soon as we receive the file. Dr. Sleep’s plot includes a traveling group of vampires called The Tribe which is part of the passage he read from.

A clip of that reading is at the bottom of the post, and we’ll update it if a better-quality one comes online. But first, here’s what Pete wrote in 2009 when Dr. Sleep was first mentioned,

According to the report from Torontoist… King breifly laid out his tenative plan for the novel, which would see the emotionally scarred Danny Torrance now a 40-year-old orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill in upstate New York. But Danny’s real job is to “visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers.” And on the side, Danny bets on the horse races, a trick he learned from his old friend Dick. The proposed title for the book is “Doctor Sleep.”

Now, here’s what King had to say in the past couple days, while appearing at GMU. (Video of this is also below.)