I was lying on my back, deathly ill, in Kathmandu, Nepal. I had contracted a rather devious strain of the Asian flu. My fever came and went. My body was weak and my mind, fuzzy. I slid to the furthest side of the bed. The day’s last ray of sunlight warmed my face. I looked down. My roommate’s copy of Stephen King’s revised edition of The Stand was leaning against my nightstand. I picked it up. I typically preferred Mr. King’s short stories to his novels, “What the Hell. I’ll probably be dead in a week anyway,” I thought as I opened the book to the introduction. The preface was split into two parts. The first is a rather amusing explanation of why he bothered to revise the book. In the second part, Mr. King presents his argument for including chapters originally cut from the early editions. A particular line from the second part stood out to me,“I’ll spare you the story of how The Stand came to be… For readers who are interested, the story is told in the final chapter of Danse Macabre….”

I spent the next week, reading The Stand, and not dying. While recovering, Mr. King’s tease in the introduction stuck with me. When I was well enough, I tracked down an English bookstore that carried Danse Macabre. I skimmed to the last chapter and read the aforementioned section. It was only a few pages long but I was captivated. The process by which ideas can coalesce into a novel fascinated me. Also, his inclusion of his personal experiences, while writing, was touching. Before I knew it I had opened a Word document and was writing down ideas.

Upon returning to the states I bought Mr. King’s On Writing memoir. It was filled with more advice, stories, and writing challenges. I completed his writing challenge and put it in a drawer. I wrote another story, then another, then another. I was hooked. It wasn’t until I graduated from college that I decided that I was destined to be a fiction writer.

I was always a writer. After all, you can’t get degrees in English and History without writing a few words on paper. But the magic of creating characters and worlds is unlike anything I had done before. My two literary tutors are Stephen King (obviously) and Ray Bradbury. They both preach the same thing, “Read a lot and write a lot.” If you can’t do those two things then you can’t be a writer. I do both every day, without fail, and my life has never been fuller. Seriously, can you think of anything better than being a writer? Maybe, being an archaeologist? But I’m allergic to poison ivy.

 

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