Book Review: Trust Me by Angela Clarke 

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AngelaClarke-TrustMe

I read this fantastic book review of Angela Clarke’s Trust Me by Sophie Hedley, and now I am even more excited to read the book – I am currently making my way through all three of Anglea’s books and highly recommend them. Read this review and you will totally understand why:

Trust Me is the third book in Angela Clarke’s Social Media Murder series following book one, Follow Me, and book two, Watch Me. I mentioned all three in my Top Ten Social Media Books post because I couldn’t choose a favourite and they are all really credible, smart and up-to-date representations of social media and the dangers it possesses.

In Trust Me, the social media of choice is Periscope, where Kate stumbles upon a live video on her laptop of a girl being raped. Kate is absolutely stunned but knows she needs to do what she can to help the victim, even though she may not have survived the attack. The thing is, the video soon disappears, Kate knows nothing about the people who were in it and nobody really believes Kate can really have seen what she says she’s seen.

That is where Freddie and Nas come in. Though they are busy investigating a missing persons case, Freddie is the first person to give Kate’s story a proper listen. She’s the first person to truly believe Kate, and as Kate goes public about what she saw, Freddie and Nas begin to wonder whether their missing person’s case and the video Kate saw may be linked.

As with the other books in the series, Follow Me and Watch Me, Trust Me is pure brilliance. The author’s grasp on social media and the way she utilises it to create shocking yet realistic crimes with storytelling full of twists and turns – it’s irresistible reading. Even though I still can’t pick a favourite of the series, this one did hook me instantly and I was fascinated by how things would play out. Each book in the series seems to have got darker than the one before and I love how thought-provoking the themes always are. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I saw something as awful as Kate did through a video on social media, yet it was entirely plausible. There’s all sorts of horrific photos and videos posted up online, and there could be a time when you see one and you can’t just scroll past and try and forget about it. Kate’s story left me thinking even when I’d put the book down.

Putting the book down was something I found difficult though as I was very engrossed in the story. I loved being back with Freddie and Nas and seeing the challenges they faced this time. Their development runs along nicely side by side with the main story and the investigation of the crimes in Trust Me made for gripping reading. With each book in the series I find that I view social media a little differently afterwards. Social media can be perfectly harmless escapism or it can be a grim and dangerous place and the author depicts this well. With short yet perfectly hard-hitting chapters, Trust Me is gritty crime at its best. It’s complex yet convincing, proper edge-of-your-seat reading.

Via: http://socialmediastories.co.uk/reviews/book-review-trust-me-by-angela-clarke/

The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling

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When an English archaeologist named George Smith was 31 years old, he became enchanted with an ancient tablet in the British Museum. Years earlier, in 1845, when Smith was only a five-year-old boy, Austen Henry Layard, Henry Rawlinson, and Hormuzd Rassam began excavations across what is now Syria and Iraq. In the subsequent years they discovered thousands of stone fragments, which they later discovered made up 12 ancient tablets. But even after the tablet fragments had been pieced together, little had been translated. The 3,000-year-old tablets remained nearly as mysterious as when they had been buried in the ruins of Mesopotamian palaces.

An alphabet, not a language, cuneiform is incredibly difficult to translate, especially when it is on tablets that have been hidden in Middle Eastern sands for three millennia. The script is shaped triangularly (cuneus means “wedge” in Latin) and the alphabet consists of more than 100 letters. It is used to write in Sumerian, Akkadian, Urartian, or Hittite, depending on where, when, and by whom it was written. It is also an alphabet void of vowels, punctuation, and spaces between words.

Even so, Smith decided he would be the man to crack the code. Propelled by his interests in Assyriology and biblical archaeology, Smith, who was employed as a classifier by the British Museum, taught himself Sumerian and literary Akkadian.

In 1872, after the tablets had been sitting in the British Museum’s storage for nearly two decades, Smith had a breakthrough: The complex symbols were describing a story. Upon translating the 11th tablet, now widely regarded as the most important part of the story, Smith told a coworker, “I am the first person to read that after 2000 years of oblivion.” The U.K. Prime Minister at the time, William Gladstone, even showed up to a lecture Smith later gave on the tablets, whereupon an audience member commented, “This must be the only occasion on which the British Prime Minister in office has attended a lecture on Babylonian literature.”

Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives, a form of existential problem-solving.

The story on the 11th tablet that Smith had cracked was in fact the oldest story in the world: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh has all the trappings of a modern story: a protagonist who goes on an arduous journey, a romance with a seductive woman, a redemptive arc, and a full cast of supporting characters.

Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, sharing them orally even before the invention of writing. In one way or another, much of people’s lives are spent telling stories – often about other people. In her paper “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar found stories’ direct relevance to humans: Social topics, especially gossip, account for 65 percent of all human conversations in public places.

Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world. They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness. Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives – a form of existential problem-solving. In a 1944 study conducted by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel at Smith College, 34 college students were shown a short film in which two triangles and a circle moved across the screen and a rectangle remained stationary on one side of the screen. When asked what they saw, 33 of the 34 students anthropomorphized the shapes and created a narrative: The circle was “worried,” the “little triangle” was an “innocent young thing,” the big triangle was “blinded by rage and frustration.” Only one student recorded that all he saw were geometric shapes on a screen.

Stories can also inform people’s emotional lives. Storytelling, especially in novels, allows people to peek into someone’s conscience to see how other people think. This can affirm our own beliefs and perceptions, but more often, it challenges them. Psychology researcher Dan Johnson recently published a study in Basic and Applied Social Psychology that found reading fiction significantly increased empathy towards others, especially people the readers initially perceived as “outsiders” (e.g. foreigners, people of a different race, skin color, or religion).

Interestingly, the more absorbed in the story the readers were, the more empathetic they behaved in real life. Johnson tested this by “accidentally” dropping a handful of pens when participants did not think they were being assessed. Those who had previously reported being “highly absorbed” in the story were about twice as likely to help pick up the pens.

A recent study in Science magazine adds more support to the idea that stories can help people understand others, determining that literary fiction “uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences.” That’s to say, if you read novels, you can probably read emotions.

But why start telling stories in the first place? Their usefulness in understanding others is one reason, but another theory is that storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive.

Storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive.

The theory is that if I tell you a story about how to survive, you’ll be more likely to actually survive than if I just give you facts. For instance, if I were to say, “There’s an animal near that tree, so don’t go over there,” it would not be as effective as if I were to tell you, “My cousin was eaten by a malicious, scary creature that lurks around that tree, so don’t go over there.” A narrative works off of both data and emotions, which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone. In fact, Jennifer Aaker, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into narratives “up to 22 times more than facts alone.”

The value humans place on narrative is made clear in the high esteem given to storytellers. Authors, actors, directors – people who spin narratives for a living are some of the most famous people in the world. Stories are a form of escapism, one that can sometimes make us better people while entertaining, but there seems to be something more at play.

Perhaps the real reason that we tell stories again and again – and endlessly praise our greatest storytellers – is because humans want to be a part of a shared history. What Smith discovered on that 11th tablet is the story of a great flood. On the 11th tablet – or the “deluge tablet” – of Gilgamesh, a character named Uta-napishtim is told by the Sumerian god Enki to abandon his worldly possessions and build a boat. He is told to bring his wife, his family, the craftsmen in his village, baby animals, and foodstuffs. It is almost the same story as Noah’s Ark, as told in both the Book of Genesis and in the Quran’s Suran 71.

Humans have been telling the same stories for millennia. Author Christopher Booker claims there are only seven basic plots, which are repeated over and over in film, in television, and in novels with just slight tweaks. There is the “overcoming the monster” plot (Beowulf, War of the Worlds); “rags to riches” (Cinderella, Jane Eyre); “the quest” (Illiad, The Lord of the Rings); “voyage and return” (Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland); “rebirth” (Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol); “comedy” (ends in marriage); and “tragedy” (ends in death).

Helpful as stories can be for understanding the real world, they aren’t themselves real. Is there such a thing as too much fiction? In Don Quixote, Cervantes writes of main character Alonso Quixano, “He read all night from sundown to dawn, and all day from sunup to dusk, until with virtually no sleep and so much reading he dried out his brain and lost his sanity …”

The next morning, however, Alonso Quixano decided to turn himself into a knight. He changed himself into Don Quixote, deciding he would pave his own journey. Then he went off, “seeking adventures and doing everything that, according to his books, earlier knights had done.”

***

Via: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-psychological-comforts-of-storytelling/381964/

14 Love Lessons From Jane Austen (who kind of knew what she was talking about)

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Jane Austen Article

Even now, centuries after her works were published, Jane Austen’s wisdom remains very much alive, gracing the pages of calendars, postcards, posters, canvas bags… oh, I don’t have to tell you, because you own it all. And some of the best advice Austen ever gave? In the department of love. It makes sense, though, right? Relationships are at the core of Jane Austen’s works, after all: relationships between siblings, fathers and daughters, and friendships. Perhaps the most interesting and memorable relationships in her novels, though, are the romances. There’s simply no author who writes about love quite like Austen does.

Austen’s own love life has always been a bit of an enigma – she never made it to the altar herself, which can often seem at odds with her books. In fact, the writer’s romantic life is a source of fascination, of boundless speculation: numerous works have tried to assign her a romantic history, including the charming movie 2007 Becoming Jane.

Regardless of Austen’s own backstory, we see ourselves in her pages – and her words tell us that she understood deeply the thrills and challenges of falling in love. What is so powerful about the romantic relationships in Austen’s novels is that love is a form of growth and self-knowledge – the experience of falling in love frames her characters’ coming-of-age stories, or prompts their later-in-life reinventions. That’s why the love stories of Darcy and Elizabeth, or Knightley and Emma, continue to feel both so powerful and so relevant. By now, most of Austen’s best romantic couples are household names, and her plot lines have inspired echo after echo of modernized retellings, from Bridget Jones’s Diary to Clueless to the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (PSA: those of you who haven’t yet watched the webseries and its cousin, Emma Approved, do it now. Everything else can wait.)

Even if your copy of Pride and Prejudice is, by now, frayed and over-underlined, it never hurts to revisit Austen’s works – and re-experience the humbling, empowering love stories that drive each of her books. Here are 14 Love Lessons From Jane Austen:

1. Try not to judge at first sight

I’m going to open with the obvious. As any self-respecting Austen fan would know, Pride and Prejudice was initially titled First Impressions, and this is a central theme in the book. We all know how it goes: when Darcy and Elizabeth first meet, they judge one another pretty harshly, but as the novel unfolds, they both come to realise that there’s a lot more to the other — and to themselves — than what first meets the eye. The plot of Pride and Prejudice is, by now, a romantic comedy trope: two people who hate each other realise that they have more in common than they thought and perhaps without really meaning to, fall in head-over-heels in love. Pride and Prejudice follows the internal growth of each of these iconic characters — for Darcy and Elizabeth, the experience of falling in love is humbling and requires a great deal of soul-searching.

2. The right kind of love is the love that makes you want to become a better person

True love does not come easily to Darcy and Elizabeth. Both of them must, in their own way, rise to the challenge. Yes, the book ends in their marriage, but their marriage is only possible because they’ve both grown enough to admire and respect one another, flaws and all.

3. Don’t let a third party meddle in your relationship

Jane and Bingley, I’m looking at you. Even accounting for 19th century social conventions, these two are incredibly gun-shy, and both of them let their flaws get the best of them. Jane allows her shyness and reserve to be interpreted as lack of interest, and Bingley yields to his own insecurities, letting himself be convinced that she doesn’t care for him. (Caroline Bingley: 1, Jane: 0.) Maybe if they had communicated better, this almost-catastrophic misunderstanding could have been avoided — but then again, that would totally ruin the plot of Pride and Prejudice.

4. Don’t marry for money (but having money doesn’t hurt!)

I’ve always loved the passage in Pride and Prejudice in which Elizabeth teases Jane about when she first realised she had feelings for Darcy. “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began,” she says “But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” (Sigh. I can almost see the twinkle in her eye.) While Elizabeth is clearly joking, there is some truth to her flippant response. Seeing the place where someone grew up and meeting people who knew them when they were children can speak volumes about their character — and there’s a special kind of affection that comes from learning about how someone’s past has made them who they are.

5. Love isn’t like it is in the movies

Or the novels of the 18th century. Back when Austen was writing Northanger Abbey, novels were seen much the same way we see bad TV (or actually, probably worse). Intellectuals (specifically male intellectuals), worried about what reading novels might do to women’s oh-so-fanciful minds. Austen both rejects and embraces this sentiment in Northanger Abbey, setting out to prove that just because gothic novels like Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho are sensationalist and implausible (but still fun!), doesn’t mean that novels can’t represent and examine reality. In fact, as Austen sets out to prove, true emotion can be as painful and scary as getting kidnapped by a crazy, obsessed suitor. The same is true of love. While Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland’s story is hardly sweep-you-off-your-feet romantic (though it is pretty sweet), it’s based on mutual understanding and shared experiences.

6. Do not trust words over actions

This is a lesson for Catherine as much as it is for her brother James. Both of them are taken by the charming, airy Isabella Thorpe — and it takes them a little too long to realise that she’s only in it for the money. (Boy, does Isabella miss the mark.) Don’t make excuses for people’s actions — more often than not, people’s actions tell you a lot more about their true intentions than their eloquently expressed, oh-so-profound emotions. (And yes, that is Carey Mulligan and Felicity Jones.)

7. Be patient and steadfast

You’ve got to give Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price props for all her patience. She stood by Edmund Bertram through his awkward, misguided crush on Mary Crawford (a fascinating character in her own right.) Yes, some might argue that Fanny is a bit too passive, too willing to wait on the sidelines for her cousin (yes, I know) to notice her. Still, there’s something to be said for the way Fanny allows Edmund make his own mistakes and come to the conclusion that she’s the best person for him on his own. (Right?) To be honest, I’ve always admired Fanny. Like many of Austen’s other heroines, she is strong-minded and stands by her convictions — and these are traits any of us can raise a glass to.

8. It’s OK to be impulsive, but keep a good head on your shoulders

Emotions are as powerful as they are important. But as Marianne Dashwood learns in Sense and Sensibility, when people show us who they really are, we need to pay attention, and not allow ourselves to be completely taken over by emotion.

9. Don’t be so scared to say what you feel

It is a truth universally acknowledged that rejection stings. A lot. But Sense and Sensibility’s Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars would have gotten a lot further if they’d just admitted their feelings to each other — hell, even to themselves. I know, I know, it would have violated social conventions and all that (and Elinor is nothing if not a stickler for proper manners), but come on, they would have saved themselves so much unnecessary suffering.

10. Keep an open mind

Marianne is broken-hearted when Willoughby shows his true colors, but she eventually manages to open her heart to Colonel Brandon — who ends up being exactly the kind of husband that she needs. Still, it takes more than Elinor’s levelheaded prodding to get her to give Colonel Brandon a chance. Keep your eyes open — you never know who you might be overlooking.

11. It’s never too late for a second chance at love

Second chances are, in fact, at the core of Persuasion. When Captain Wentworth reappears in Anne Elliot’s life after eight years apart, she is floored. She and Wentworth have a history: a short-lived romance in their early twenties that came to an abrupt and painful ending. Despite being completely in love with him, 19-year-old Anne rejected his marriage proposal based on her trusted friend Lady Russell’s advice, because Wentworth could not provide her with the life that she was used to — and also, due to fear of holding him back in his career. Though it takes these two some time to make their way back to each other, Anne and Wentworth eventually discover that their feelings have not changed through the years — in fact, getting to know each other again as adults only deepens their love and understanding. Wentworth eventually swallows his pride to ask the woman he loves, once again, if she will spend the rest of her life with him — writing the famously impassioned line: “I am half agony, half hope.”

12. Don’t give up on the person you love

Yes, Anne had said no to marrying him, but even Wentworth admits that he was a fool not to try to find her after he’d established himself professionally in the navy and was able to marry. While he did eventually find his way back to her, he could have saved them both a lot of heartache if he’d held fast to his conviction that they belonged together. Life (or, OK, Austen’s pen) gave Anne and Wentworth a second chance at love, but they very well could have done this for themselves.

13. Sometimes the right person has been in front of you all along

Sometimes you fall in love with your best friend. Emma is a wonderful, powerfully-written character study, among other things. Despite thinking herself above love and marriage, Emma Woodhouse eventually comes to understand that there is and always has been only one man for her. As she tries her hand at matchmaking, convinced that she knows what’s best for everyone, Emma realises that she’s a little more vulnerable and a little more (dare I say it) flawed than she’s ever allowed herself to believe. Her good friend Mr. Knightley, however, has always seen her for who she is — and loves her all the more for it.

14. Often the best kind of love isn’t flashy but steady, loyal, and uncompromising

Mr. Knightley does not subscribe to Frank Churchill’s pomp and circumstance, but he is an intelligent, fair-minded man who is capable of loving passionately — even if his always-calm demeanor suggests otherwise. “If I loved you less, I could talk about it more,” is one of my absolute favourite Austen lines. Austen really gets at just how deeply Mr. Knightley feels for Emma — and how, though he may not be one for big romantic gestures, he truly understands and respects her (sounds boring, I know, but it’s rarer than you might think.) In fact, because of this, Mr. Knightley may just be the all-time best Austen hero.

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Via: https://www.bustle.com/articles/62958-14-love-lessons-from-jane-austen-who-kind-of-knew-what-she-was-talking-about-amirite

Print sales might be rallying, but don’t get complacent | Bookseller

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A very interesting article by Sam Missingham on the future of publishing:

First off, I feel the need to emphatically state that nobody wants a strong, vibrant book business more than me. I am a self-declared cheerleader for this industry. But it seems the right time to put my pom poms aside for a while to make a more cautionary point.

In many ways, the worst thing to happen to book publishing has been the persistent strength of print books and the drop in sales of ebooks. Namely, the stalling of the digital transformation of the industry.

Yeah, I did say that. Let me explain.

Some might say that book publishing has weathered the transformation very well and is in a strong position. The numbers would tend to agree with that. Print sales up a notch, new bookshops opening, children’s book sales going from strength to strength. Time to put the kettle on then, sit back and put our feet up, yes?

Well, I tend to agree with Andrew Keen, the Internet critic and author who spoke at FutureBook in December. To paraphrase, he said publishing had come through the digital transformation mostly unscathed. However, he went on to say that this was down to good luck and not by any strategic play.

Let’s call a spade a spade. Five years ago publishers had no idea that ebooks would stall or that bookshops would bounce back. Let’s not forget the many predictions that print was dead – not to mention bookshops – and that we were heading for digital obliteration. I had many a conversation with industry folk who said they thought Waterstones would last only a couple more years.

During the early stages of the transformation, publishers threw money at a variety of digital initiatives: apps, ecommerce platforms, their own community websites… even buying the odd start-up. But big publishers spent big and lost big. I could easily list 10 initiatives that were launched with much fanfare, to be left unloved for 18 months and closed with a whimper. The intent may have been there, but the commitment certainly wasn’t. And further, their structures, people and processes did not allow for successful innovation at any scale.

But what does this matter if print sales are up and ebook sales are down? We’re fine, right?

Well yes, if we anticipate no further transformation happening. Or put another way, if we hope nobody else enters the industry looking to disrupt it; if no companies come along with new business models for books; if readers do not change how or what they buy; if no new technology emerges to offer readers a different experience, and if – a big if – Amazon, Google et al don’t come up with yet more game-changing ideas. That’s a future dependent on a lot of unlikely ifs.

Instead, I would argue that this is exactly the time we should be building our own future, aggressively. Creating platforms that give us more ownership of the publishing & bookselling ecosystems. Building businesses which create new revenue streams.

The good news is that there are plenty of innovative models to draw inspiration from if we’re commited to forging ahead.

Wattpad – an online community for writers to post chapters of books, fan fic, poetry and reach engaged readers for feedback – launched in 2006 and now has 45 million users and 300 million stories uploaded.

Lost My Name – the platform for personalised picture books for kids – launched in 2012, has sold more than 2.6 million picture books, and has just signed a deal with Roald Dahl estate.

Scribd.com – a book subscroption service – says it has over 500,000 subscribers paying $8.99/month for ebooks, audiobooks, and now news.

BookBub – a simple daily email selling cheap ebooks – launched in 2012, has 5 million+ registered readers in US and 2 million in the UK, and recently launched in India. And

NetGalley – a blogger and influencer network offering publishers a seamless book review process pre-publication – has grown since 2012 to reach 360,000 members worldwide.

What were you doing when Wattpad launched 11 years ago?

There are many other companies I could have chosen, but these five all offer value and service at different stages of the publishing ecosystem. And all of the founders came from outside of the industry.

There’s plenty to learn, too, from companies that have diversified away from their core businesses to build new revenue streams. Conde Nast, the magazine publisher behind Vogue, now runs its own fashion & design collegeoffering degrees and courses, and has also recently launched a fashion ecommerce site. Sawday’s has transitioned from a travel guide publisher to a luxury travel company (that sells books). Marie Claire, the magazine published by Time Inc, now has its own cosmetics ecommerce platform and a physical shop in London. And Johnson’s Baby products launched a website called BabyCenter in the US nearly 20 years ago offering advice through pregnancy. This has grown to become a comprehensive resource for parents and now has 45 million global monthly unique visitors and generates huge amounts of advertising revenue. Of course, the site also provides Johnson’s with real-time audience behaviour data and a huge email database to sell to as well.

It’s interesting to note that all of the consumer-facing businesses above launched with new names and did not rely on their existing brands – we don’t have Johnson’s For Babies or the Marie Claire beauty shop. They displayed the confidence to build new brands even when they already have exceptional traction and recognition with the old ones – a bold step that was central to their success.

So, are book publishers in a position to diversify in such a way? I simply refuse to believe that they can’t do so, while also maintaining their core proposition: to publish sensational books and nurture authors’ careers. And I genuinely believe we must, if we want to survive long-term. We need to get ahead of the next phase of disruption by disrupting ourselves and innovating with vision and commitment. This is not the time to sit back and hope the status quo will last. We might not weather the next wave with such good fortune.

Via: http://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/beware-complacency-book-industry-558476

9 Things All Historical Fiction Fans Know To Be True

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Historical Fiction

 

Historical fiction novels range from love stories to family sagas to coming of age novels. They include Sir Walter Scott’s Warerly, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. They have drama, mystery, intrigue, love, horror, violence, romance — essentially, they have it all. A great historical fiction book will transport you back to another time and place where you are surrounded by the customs and traditions of a world long gone. And the best part about historical fiction novels is the mix of the true and authentic with the fabricated and the fictional.

If you’re a fan of historical fiction, I don’t need to be telling you any of this. You’ve shared your morning coffee alongside the Boleyn sisters, and your evenings on the battlefields of Normandy. You know how the class system worked in 17th century Britain, and you have lost so many of your favourite characters to war, you’re in a constant state of mourning. But if you’re a historical fiction fan, you must also know:

1. It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination

The beautiful thing about a lot of historical fiction is that you go into it already knowing something about the ending, whether it’s the outcome of the onset war, or the fate of a particular historical figure. Although it might seem like a reason not to like this particular genre, historical fiction readers know this is actually one of the greatest things about it. Because you know the ending, you can focus on the story itself, its characters, the relationships in the book, the dialogue, and the beauty of the writing without being preoccupied with the outcome. That makes the ride so good. And, despite what you may think….

2. Suspense and Mystery Still Exist, Even If You Know How the Story Ends

Historical fiction-haters will try and tell you it’s boring to know how a story ends, but we fanatics know that couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because a novel is about a period you think you know, or people you have studied in the past, doesn’t mean there is no room for mystery and intrigue in its telling. Everyone knows about the death and destruction that came as a result of Sherman’s March to the Sea, but E. L. Doctorow’s The March leads readers down a mysterious path of “who lives and who dies?” scenarios by giving us fictional characters in a historical setting. There is plenty of mystery, even in what is already known.

3. Love Is Timeless

Some people are turned off from historical fiction because the setting is something very unlike the setting in which we currently live, but the truth is there are some basic human conflicts that ring true no matter what time or place they are set in. Searching for true love, fighting an oppressor, exacting revenge, protecting your family — no matter who you are or what time period you’re from, these are all conflicts you can empathise with. Historical fiction-lovers understand that things like love transcend time and place.

4. Life Was So Much More Dramatic Before Mobile Phones

Celebrity Twitter feuds aside, life was a lot more dramatic before a simple phone call could resolve an issue. When you can’t text your fiancé to find out if it was indeed him kissing the handmaid in the stable, but instead you have to wait until the next grand ball to confront him over a formal dance, drama is sure to ensue. Besides, confrontation is so much juicier when it’s done in person.

5. Women Have Always, and Will Always, Kick Ass (No Matter What History Books Leave Out)

The problem with so many of the history books that you grew up learning from is that they are filled with all of the same characters: white, privileged men fighting for their own best interests. Yes, you learned about women’s suffrage and the Daughters of the Revolution, but why is it that women have been written out of many history books? Historical fiction gives a voice to the women of the past, and provides a space to tell the stories that the history books have been missing. Any historical fiction-reader will tell you that girls have always run the world. Boom.

6. There’s Nothing Like a Lengthy Letter and a Long Walk to Clear Your Head

Forget going to piloxing to relieve your stress — the characters in historical fiction have it right. Whether you are about to be sent off to war or your one true love has been promised to another, a long stroll through the countryside or a handwritten letter to your childhood friend is enough to find peace in clarity — at least it would be if you were in a historical fiction novel. Chances are, if you’re a fan of historical fiction, you’d choose to stretch your legs in the park over pounding the punching bag at the gym any day.

7. The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Sure, the idea of aliens taking over the planet is pretty strange, but so is beheading two of your wives so you can marry someone else… and that actually happened. Although historical fiction does contain elements of fiction, often the kernels of truth are what’s most bizarre, and those kinds of strange but true facts stick with you. Avid readers of the genre know this better than anyone else. That’s why we’re so good at Jeopardy.

8. It’s Fun to Time Travel

Halloween only comes once a year, and unless you are in college, your costume party days are limited… and so are your days of pretending to be someone and somewhere else. But historical fiction fans know that if you want to put on a mask and go to a ball, you can always pick up a book. They know if you want to fight alongside the allies in WWII, you can pick up a book. They know if you want to sling guns with the cowboys in the wild west… well, you get the picture.

9. Everyone Has a Secret

It doesn’t matter if you are one of the founding fathers or a farm hand, a French monarch or a lady of the court — chances are, you have a secret. From the Dark Ages to the Civil War, people have been lying about who they are, hiding their pasts, and keeping the truth from one another forever. Though honesty is supposed to be the best policy, it doesn’t make for the best story, so note to authors: keep the secrets coming.

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Via: https://www.bustle.com/articles/79523-9-things-all-historical-fiction-fans-know-to-be-true

World Record For Fan With Biggest Harry Potter Collection

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Harry Potter Fan

If you thought you were the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan, prepare to be disappointed. A lawyer in Mexico City has apparently shattered the Guinness World Record for largest collection of Harry Potter memorabilia. So far, he has 3,092 items in his collection, which far surpasses the previous record of only 807. Now that is one dedicated fan!

Menahem Asher Silva Vargas first started collecting Harry Potter products in 2001. In a video interview with The Telegraph, he explained that he didn’t originally think of himself as a collector; he’d just see a Harry Potter item that he liked and buy it. But as the Potter fan base in Mexico expanded (and as Potter-mania took over the world) there were more and more Potter-themed products available, and his collection just kept growing. Once it started taking up more than one room, he says, he decided to get organised and start keeping an inventory.

Now, on the one hand I know that buying things is not really a good way to measure how much of a fan someone is — after all, if Bill Gates really wanted this particular world record I’m sure he could buy up 4,000 pieces of Harry Potter memorabilia without batting an eyelash or ever reading the books — but it’s also clear that Silva Vargas really genuinely loves Harry Potter. And as a bit of a Harry Potter nerd myself, I raise a butter beer toast in salute.

In total, Silva Vargas’s collection takes up two rooms and includes everything from board games to Harry Potter attire to replica wands. But his favourite item in the huge collection is a circular wall ornament with a photo of Harry in the Chamber of Secrets that was a gift from his mother. Aww.

He says that he hopes to create some sort of interactive site to allow Potter fans from all over the world to virtually explore his massive treasure trove of Harry Potter merchandise some day.

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Via: https://www.bustle.com/articles/42990-world-record-for-largest-harry-potter-collection-broken-by-lawyer-in-mexico-city

What Your Favourite Book Genre Says About Your Personality

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genre favourite

Take a look at your bookshelf, and you’ll probably have no problem determining your favourite genre. The rows of multiple Harry Potter books (all different editions, of course) and the collection of A Song Of Ice and Fire probably means you’re a big fan of fantasy. Or, when you visit your local bookstore, do you find yourself roaming toward the sci-fi section? Perhaps you drift toward the middle where the literary classics are. Wherever you find yourself, take pride: Your favourite genre is awesome, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The book genre you love most definitely says a lot about who you are as a person. Books can shape you, so it’s only natural that you learned from the characters within, whether they were fairies, aliens, or your average human. So, grab your most treasured books, figure out your favourite genre of novels, and get ready to find out what it means for you. Better than your zodiac sign, your most loved book genre will reveal your truest self:

Classics

You have and will reread just about every classic there is. Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck — this is the crew that will always be your favourite writers. You were the kid in high school who actually read all of the mandatory books and enjoyed them. You prefer getting to know one person deeply, rather than knowing a couple people on the surface. You tend to cherish the simplicities in everyday life more than anything else.

Fantasy

You prefer to read about huge and complex worlds where your imagination can roam as it pleases. Ever since you were a child, you’ve been more interested in mythology than anything else. You’re a daydreamer, and often zone out while at school or work thinking of the next great adventure you’ll go on. When it comes to your friends, you’ve got some of the best, and you’ll never treat them wrong because you know how valuable true friendship is after reading The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Historical Fiction

You love fiction — but you also love facts. You like knowing what’s going to happen, and aren’t a big fan of surprises. You have a very detailed planner on you at all times, but every so often aren’t afraid to indulge in a few spontaneous activities, as long as they are on the pre-approved list. You have a sharp eye for detail and are sometimes (more like always) called a perfectionist in your work. You’re a people-watcher, and enjoy listening to your friends and family tell you stories of their past.

Horror

Like Stephen King, you believe everyone should read more horror books. You aren’t scared easily, and the feeling of adrenaline rising in you is almost addicting. You’re the risk-taker in your friend group, and when you go to an amusement park, you’re the first one in line for the wildest rides. You’re one heck of a storyteller, and your friends know that when you pull out the flashlight at a bonfire, they’re in for a story that’ll haunt them for the rest of the week.

Literary Fiction

You prefer reading about common life problems and troubles that are relatable to just about everyone. You love to learn about people, and the ones you don’t know you make up life stories for as you pass by them on the streets or on your morning commute. You’re a deep thinker, and when it comes to problem solving, you’re probably a pro. You like to look at your life as if it were a movie and are always wondering when the next complicated situation will unfold.

Mystery/Thrillers

After reading Gone Girl, you couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. You’re exceptionally talented at picking up on foreshadowing and clues, so your friends tend to stay away from you when Game of Thrones is on to avoid spoilers. You look at life as a mystery itself, and are always searching for the bigger meaning in things. You’re a little quieter than the rest, but that’s only because you genuinely enjoy being a mystery yourself.

Nonfiction

You always have the newest memoir or autobiography in-hand before anyone else does. You’re a great listener and enjoy getting to know someone by their odd quirks and anecdotes. You are often looking for new ways to improve yourself and the lives around you. You love making big gestures because you desire to live a great life worth telling to lots of people someday.

Romance

For you, no book is a great book without a powerful love story included. Your tastes range from Gone with the Wind to Fifty Shades of Gray, and everything in between. You’re a passionate person at heart, and always go the extra mile to satisfy someone you love. You always manage to keep a positive outlook on life, even if you’ve hit rock bottom. You have high expectations when you go on dates, but you’re also pretty talented at wooing just about anyone that glances in your direction, because you never know who might turn out to be the one that sweeps you off your feet.

Science Fiction

You love reading about intergalactic adventures and futuristic events that could one day happen. When you were a kid, you didn’t always fit in because you were thinking about new worlds and characters bigger than the boring middle school you were stuck in. You often have really great ideas but are sometimes afraid to speak up. With your smart wits, you and everyone around you knows you’d be the one to live through any apocalyptic event. You’re a little bit geeky and you don’t care who knows it.

Young Adult

You’re often found in the YA section of Barnes & Noble, scanning for new releases and recommendations. You’re young at heart, and that only makes you more curious and willing to learn new things in life. You’re in tune with your emotions, and are almost always the one your friends go to when they need solid advice. More than anything, you’re independent and take pride in both your successes and failures. You know it’s all part of the process.

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Via: https://www.bustle.com/articles/109117-what-your-favourite-book-genre-says-about-your-personality

Stephen King: The Writers Voice 

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Across a long and prolific career, Stephen King’s works can be shown to evolve alongside the author. This special feature discusses how a writer’s voice in their work is tied to the writer’s personal experience and explores the risk of literary influence by examining specific entries in King’s canon… 

stephen-king_author

Stephen King’s personal experience and views on writing have defined his works of fiction. His works, and his writing practices and methods, are reactionary to both the changing landscape of the literary field around the length of his career and also a tumultuous personal life, saddled with substance addiction and, later in life, a near fatal accident. As a burgeoning writer, King’s early works can be examined as works of creative expression, Carrie and Salem’s Lot are unrestrained and evidence of a writer merely wanting to tell a good story. As his fame rose, subsequent novels such as The Shining, Misery, and The Tommyknockers were written under the influence of alcohol and cocaine addiction – to the point where their content reflects and begins to speak out against King’s personal demons. After he became sober, King’s newest novels such as Doctor Sleep and the forthcoming Revival, reflect on addiction from the perspective of a recovering alcoholic, while other works, such as Duma Key, run parallel with his recovery from a near fatal car accident.

King takes large writing risks, with works written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and his genre-less collection Different Seasons, showing a writer trying to play with his own public perception by attempting to create works that operate outside of the literary influence attached to his brand. Through these pseudonym authored books, the importance of voice is amplified, and we can also examine the reader’s connection with his works – that a reader can feel they are reading a Stephen King book, despite it not being “written” by Stephen King. As society evolves, King’s works also exist in the contemporary moment, to the point where he renounces particular works as dangerous in light of a rise in school shootings in the early 2000’s. Finally, King’s cultural influence and work as a writer can be seen as he rose in fame and has morphed from a genre pulp fiction writer to be, sometimes grudgingly, accepted by the literary elite. The esteem also affects how his works are both written and received by the public.

Stephen-King

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland Maine.[1] His father left the family in 1949, leaving King to be raised in borderline poverty by his mother. He wrote short stories and a satirical newspaper while attending high school, and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1970 from University of Maine. In 1971 he began teaching high school English while he attempted to carve out a career as a writer. His first fiction sale came in 1967, and was a story called The Glass Floor which he sold to Startling Mystery Stories.[2] While he worked on his novels and taught classes, he sold pulp stories to Men’s magazines such as Hustler and Playboy. In 1973 his first novel, Carrie was sold to Doubleday for publication in 1974 with a pittance of an advance. In 1974, Signet bought the paperback rights to Carrie for $400,000 and King’s writing career was born.[3] Now, Stephen King is simultaneously one of America’s most popular and acclaimed writers. He has published 55 novels since 1973 – including novels written under a synonym, non-fiction, and short story collections – and sold over 350 million books.[4]

With such a long career and a consistent output of new novels, King’s writing process is important to define and understand how and why he works. King advocates a dedicated and structured writing process, whether or not he is stung by creativity or not, he forces himself to write every single day.

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to about 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three month span, a good length for a book. … On some days those 10 pages come easily; I’m up and out and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning … Sometimes, when the word’s come hard, I’m still fiddling around at tea-time.”[5]

This kind of strict regime goes some way to explaining his massive output over the years. He expects that a first draft of a novel should take him no more than 3 months or the characters and the situation begin to go stale. King is a writer of routine; every day he wakes up, goes for a three and a half mile walk to clear his head, rereads the last page he worked on to enter back into the world he’s writing in, and then reaches his 2,000 word target for the day. The afternoons he reserves for editing, instead of writing fresh copy.[6]While he admits to writing slower in his old age, lamenting that he used to write more and faster, it is the routine he clings to that is as close as he gets to acknowledging the secret to his success.

By putting himself in same writing mindset every day, King believes he opens himself up to creativity, “Don’t wait for the muse,” King says in his memoir, “Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going be every day from nine ‘til noon. … If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up.”[7] Writing to King is a craft over an art[8], and while he does advocate some degree of natural talent to be a great writer, his overwhelming attitude is that creativity and writing talent is a muscle to be honed and refined by learning and discipline. How King writes will be further examined in the context of both a drug addiction and his slow recovery from a near fatal road accident in 1999, as his methods were forced to change. In the midst of his large body of work, it is evident that society and circumstance has shaped his work.

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King’s first novels, Carrie – about a young girl with murderous telekinetic powers, and Salem’s Lot – which focuses on a vampire coven preying on a small town, are spawned from his love of old pulp novels, including H.P. Lovecraft, that he found in his father’s things. As well as 40 cent paperbacks and horror films that he would see at the cinema with his brothers.[9] King admits that as a child, he just liked to be scared, citing these influences as heavily shaping the early works in his oeuvre.[10] This contemporary moment of his childhood still pervades his work, with hard crime novels, The Colorado Kid (2005) and Joyland (2013), intentional throwbacks to the pulp pot-boiler detective mysteries of his childhood, published by an independent paperback press (outside of his regular publishers, Bantam Books or Hodder and Stoughton) with 1950’s cover art to match.[11] He has absorbed and is re-expressing his childhood culture through both of these novels.

But King’s environment and personal place really began to bleed into his work when he struggled with substance addiction in the late 70’s and 1980’s. At first it was a struggle with alcohol. Once his success had started to flow, alcohol was an indulgence that he discovered himself reaching to every night. He defines the moment he thought he was an alcoholic, realising after he’d finished it that his third novel, The Shining – about an alcoholic writer who loses his mind and attempts to murder his family – was actually about himself[12]. It’s not uncommon or particularly hidden that King inserts himself into his novels – the protagonists in The Shining, It, Misery, Bag Of Bones, Secret Window, 1408, Lisey’s Story, Salem’s Lot, and The Dark Half, are all novelists – but The Shining is more direct than that, it’s an effort by King to serve as an exorcism through print of his own demons with alcohol.

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But King further degenerated into addiction, by the mid 80’s he had added cocaine to his long list of addictions. He managed to finally kick the drugs after an intervention in the late 1980’s, but again the seeds of his addiction while he was both high and drunk found their way into his writing. In many cases, King acknowledges that he is unaware how serious his problem was, and that it began to manifest itself into his books,

Yet the part of me that writes the stories, the deep part that knew I was an alcoholic as early as 1975 … began to scream for help in the only way it knew how, through my fiction and through my monsters.”[13]

To further his point, The Tommyknockers concerns aliens who grant people superb clarity and energy at the cost of their soul, much like the drug cocaine. Cujo is the story of a big black dog torturing a mother and child trapped in a car, a surrogate for King’s own addiction and its growing impact on his family. Misery is about a nurse (Annie Wilkes) who kidnaps a writer and forces him to write for her. King acknowledges that novel as the turning point in both his writing and addiction, acknowledging that his own writing was a slave to a similar master.

Misery is a book about cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine. She was my number one fan.”[14]

King has been sober from drugs and alcohol since Misery was published in 1987, his characters started to take on a more reflective quality. King’s more recent fiction deals with the long road to recovery he endured, the primary characters in two of his latest novels – Doctor Sleep, and Revival – are recovering addicts. In Doctor Sleep the protagonist is a recovering alcoholic, while Revival chronicles a chronic heroin user. It is clear that King’s writing is influenced by the context and experience of his life, either recalling the passion and literature of his voice, struggling in the throes of addiction, or looking back on his road to recovery. King’s fiction deals with devils and demons, both in the supernatural horrors that stalk his books, and the demons that pervade his own life.

The societal influence and impact of King’s work is not a one way street. While King expresses his own experiences and demons within his work, his work is also worked and shaped by the culture in which it is read. As society evolves, King’s works also exist in the contemporary moment. They are well known for being laden with pop culture references. With regards to his international readership, King “is synonymous… with what they know of America and the extent to which they can identify with it.”[15] That is, when reading King’s work the reader gets a cross-section of “King’s America”. He is credited with understanding and expressing the people that populate contemporary America, Walter Mosely praising him when awarding the National Book Award in 2003 as having an “almost instinctual understanding of the fears that form the psyche of America’s working class.”[16] Magistrale writes:

Supernatural vampires and monsters may be the great popular attractions long associated with King’s art, but at the heart of his best work is a deep-seated awareness of the very real anxieties about how Americans live and where we are going.”[17]

It’s incredible that a writer who specialises in filling his pages with monsters, magic, and aliens, is so frequently praised for his realism, and it demonstrates that “King’s America” is so rich that many of these mythical creatures bring out and demonstrate a cultural relevance for a reader. This is because King’s supernatural world exists within a painstakingly crafted portrait of suburban America over the past 50 years. But King also branches away from himself, pushing the boundaries of his own genre by writing under pseudonyms, to escape the preconceptions a book with Stephen King on its cover brings with it.

King’s volume of work is so large that his works interact with each other in many ways. The Dark Tower fantasy series dips in and out of much of his genre oeuvre, featuring characters and events from other novels – and even features third person appearances by the author himself, and much of King’s genre fiction is set in the fictional area around Derry, Maine. This ties all of King’s work together along a familiar seam, bringing his novels together as a life’s work, despite significant differences between the novels.

The most interesting are the books that King deliberately chooses to isolate from his canon, by writing them as Richard Bachman. Richard Bachman was the pseudonym King used to write five novels – Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982) and, Thinner (1984) – with King finally announcing that Bachman had died of “cancer of the pseudonym” in 1985.[18] While the jaded and prevailing reason touted by critics for Bachman’s existence is that King was over publishing the market with his own name, King himself gives several reasons for writing under a pseudonym in the introduction to The Bachman Books. He suggests that the fame of his early novels was impeding his creativity and voice, and that “I feel like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. I knew enough to get the brooms started, but once they start to march, things are never the same.”[19]

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He reflects upon his own publishing success as a great amount of luck or an accident, so he began to doubt his own writing in the books he was publishing as Stephen King. He stated: “maybe you try to find out if you could do it again. Or in my case, if Bachman could do it again.”[20] King was countering his own doubts in his oeuvre by using Bachman to validate himself. Further to validating himself, King used Bachman to step outside of his genre and find a new voice. Only Thinner is a serious horror novel in the brand of King – it is no coincidence that it is the novel that exposed the ruse – while the rest are attempts to prove that King could write serious fiction novels. In this way he rebels against his own catalogue of writing.

I think I did it to turn down the heat a little bit; to do something as someone other than Stephen King.”[21]

After Bachman was exposed was not the last time King consciously reacted to his status as a commercial horror writer – his 1982 collection Different Seasons was a collection of novellas which had a high focus on dramatic plots instead of King’s standard monsters and mayhem formula. In the introduction, King discusses talking to his publisher about wanting to do a serious collection and his publisher attempting to talk him out of it. A deal was struck that he could put together the book if he included one story with horror elements. Again, King rebels against his own writing, over time continually pushing himself to redefine his writing as having a value outside of the commercial horror novels he was known for.[22]

King also brings a high level of self awareness to his work, able to look back on works in his own oeuvre with a critical eye and, often, lament. This also demonstrates the life experience that King was pouring into his books, with his view on his work often complementing his state of mind at the time. He says of the books he wrote while he was high that he doesn’t remember writing Cujo[23], and that his least favourite book is The Tommyknockers which he acknowledges as “an awful book… there’s a really good book in there, underneath all the cocaine.”[24]

After he was involved in a serious car accident he was doped up on Oxycontin to deal with the pain. This impacted his writing of Dreamcatcher, and he rebukes that as “another book that shows the drugs at work.”[25] In an open source interview he laments the books he wrote before he quit drugs and alcohol, “As far as dope and booze goes, I’d like to have some of those early books back.”[26] But he also acknowledges the contemporary place that his literature has in both his own canon and the world around.

One of his Bachman novels, Rage, centres on a teenage boy taking a school classroom hostage with a semi-automatic pistol. He shoots two teachers dead throughout the course of the novel, and threatens to kill many of his classmates for various reasons – a major theme is the girls who refuse to date him. Rage was linked to 4 real life school shooting incidents between 1988 and 1997, where the shooter either admitted to being inspired by Rage, or a copy of the novel was found in their possessions.[27] King decided to remove the book from print and from bookstores entirely – including subsequent editions of omnibus collections. “I pulled it because in my judgement it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do,”[28] says King. Rage reflects the contemporary moment of modern America and King, over time, became uncomfortable with his work’s cultural impact and so removed it from the shelves. In this way, King is able to look back upon and redefine his own oeuvre over time.

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King’s work not only interacts with his own oeuvre, but also with other works of contemporary fiction in the literary sphere. King’s place in literary culture and history is an interesting one, seeing him morph from a pulp writer into a respected elite literary figure. Partly this is due to the fact that those that grew up reading him “under the covers with a flashlight at summer camp,”[29] are now editors, writers, and judges on awards panels. King has slowly been turning around his presence as a genre writer in the eyes of his peers, getting sick of being asked at dinner parties by the literati, “so when are you going to write something serious?”[30] This is in part due to his attempts at serious fiction collections – such as the previously discussed Richard Bachman novels, or Different Seasons, but also more recent efforts that have tended towards literary – such as Lisey’s Story or Hearts in Atlantis.

The New Yorker, writing in 2014, states, “here’s an interesting fact about King: he’s not really, or exclusively, a horror writer.”[31] And King was rewarded the respect of his peers and the industry in 2003 when he received a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Letters from the National Book Association. There was much dissent over the giving of the award to King, and King himself has often and audibly rebelled against his most outspoken critics – in one novel, It, the main character is chastised for writing a horror story, when he storms out his class saying “Why does a story have to be socio-anything… Can’t you guys just let a story be a story?”[32]. Kings mocks such literary criticism in his memoir,

Even if a writer rises in the estimation of an influential critic or two, he/she always carries his/her early reputation along, like a respectable married woman who was a wild child as a teenager… A good deal of literary criticism serves only to reinforce a caste system which is as old as the intellectual snobbery that nurtured it.”[33]

Receiving an award from the National Book Association was a major moment in King’s career, especially among his peers and being placed among other works deemed “important” in the literary sphere. King himself saw it as an extremely positive omen, allowing him to rebel against the caste system that he believes literary criticism enforces.

Giving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that in the future things don’t have to be the way they’ve always been. Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction,”[34] said King in his acceptance speech.

Here he identifies what makes his place among his peers so valuable, that he bridges the gap between the high literary elite and the popular authors, and, slowly, through a lifetime’s work, he is deconstructing that barrier. Meanwhile, respected critics like Harold Bloom were extremely outspoken at King’s award, calling King “an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis,”[35] of which King says:

Bloom pissed me off because there are critics out there, and he’s one of them, who take their ignorance of popular as a badge of intellectual prowess… It was the assumption that if fiction was selling a lot of copies, it was bad. … That’s elitist. I don’t buy it.”

The argument rages on even now on either side of the literary sphere, but it’s undeniable that the role his novels play in gaining respect for other contemporary writers who may be dismissed as “rich hacks”[36] such as Michael Crichton, John Grisham, or Tom Clancy is an important one. King’s placement in the literary sphere as a bridge between popular and literary works, and the acknowledgement of his contribution to American literature is “a step in the right direction,”[37] and a major driving force behind much of his later works.

King’s influence as a brand, instead of just a writer, is a strong one. Many of his critics use this to influence their judgement of him as still being a pulp novelist, pointing out the many unsuccessful adaptations of his work as an example, or criticising that his writing pace – one or two books a year – must be evidence of lacking quality. While it’s true that schlocky or inadequate films or television series of King’s work serve to expose flaws in his storytelling and dilute the brand of his name, King sees it differently, preferring to sell the rights and allow the filmmakers to have their own interpretation of the story. He distances himself from both the successful and the unsuccessful adaptations:

The movies have never been a big deal to me,” says King, “The movies are the movies. They just make them. If they’re good, they’re terrific. If they’re not, they’re not.”[38]

Stephen King’s work as a writer exerts a major cultural influence over the last forty years of literature. He demonstrates strong discipline and application to the way he approaches his writing, sticking to a schedule and forcing himself to write every day, thereby maintaining a prolific publication rate. His novels reflect parts of who he is, and through different eras represent him as a new writer dedicating tributes to the novels of his youth, to a cocaine and alcohol addict, to a recovering alcoholic and injured writer. His works also examine contemporary American society, absorbing and revealing a true realism underneath the supernatural forces in his works.

His work as a writer with respect to his own oeuvre is a dedicated one – he has sought to push himself out of the boundaries of a genre writer by operating under a pseudonym and publishing bold creative choices, while he also acknowledges the outside social influence of his novels and their interaction with culture, to the point of renouncing novels that he sees as dangerous. He also publicly decries the books he wrote while under the severe influence of drugs. King’s work interacts with the literary sphere as a bridge between elitist literary circles and popular genre fiction. It’s a battle he has not won, but he exerts a significant literary influence that is beginning to develop a grudging respect on both sides.

A lot of readers say they read to escape themselves, while this may be true for King’s avid fans, it is just as true of the author. King writes to set himself free. For King, the work writing of novels is not the challenging part of his job, “Not writing is the real work.”[39]

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For all references follow this link: https://writersedit.com/4750/authors/stephen-king-writers-voice/