Well, here we go...

Thank you for coming to check out my blog. I still don't quite know what I plan to accomplish here, or if I plan to accomplish anything at all. Either way, I plan to take the ultimate journey through the intricate world of Stephen King, book by book, story by story, and I hope you will join me as I go. Before I begin, I just wanted to say a little bit about myself, and my connection to the works of Stephen King (from here on referred to as "SK"). I think it will be important, since most of what I plan to write in here is about how each of SK's works impacts me personally.

SK has always had a hold on me in one way or another, as early as 8 or 9 years old. I grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut. My parents divorced when I was very young. I had two siblings at the time, Maggie and John. The custody arrangement was that we stayed with my father every other weekend, and had dinner with him on Wednesday nights. At that time, I did not have the best relationship with my father (our relationship has improved significantly since then).Most weekends that I would have to stay with him, he would let me go to the library all day long, and just read and wander. Being so young, the library was a big, mysterious, and wonderful place. I would get lost just wandering through the aisles, looking for anything of interest. The children's section never really appealed to me. It was too safe, too boring. It reminded me of my school library. I spent most of my time wandering through the adult sections. My favorites were always the sections about movies, and the horror novels.

That, of course, is where I discovered SK.

I was a very advanced reader for my age, but still not quite advanced enough to be able to tackle a SK novel. But I was mesmerized by the cover art of his hardcover novels. I would pull them all off of the shelves, and sit on the carpeted floor of the library with all of them in front of me. Most vividly, I remember the cover of It, with the picture of the paper boat headed towards the sewer drain, with the monster's hand coming out of it. I remember the cover of Carrie, with her face peeking around the corner so you could only see half of it. The list goes on. I would read the cover jacket flap, and get so intrigued into what kind of stories were housed in these books. But I never could have borrowed these books without my parents throwing a fit. After all, I was only like 9 years old at the time, and they were still watching what I was reading. So I just visited the books at the library on weekends.

It wasn't until I was in the sixth grade (around 11 or 12 years old) when my parents didn't really care what I was reading anymore. I had purchased of a copy of The Bachman Books from the bookstore, and was determined to read the whole thing for a book report for school. Well my teacher shot that idea right down, when I told her what I planned on reading. She said that it was far above my head, and she would not allow it. Damn, I was pissed off. In hindsight, she may have been right, but the way she went about shooting me down got me so steamed, and it just made me even more determined to prove her wrong. I didn't really get a chance though, because we moved out of town, and I started a new middle school that year. And in that new school library, I was delighted to find that they had paperback copies of a number of SK books. So, I ended up shelving The Bachman Books for the moment, and picked up Pet Sematary, and it became the first complete SK book that I had ever read. Needless to say, it was amazing. In quick succession after that, I read It and The Shining.

I was recently reading The Tommyknockers (one of my favorites) and one thing that I couldn't help thinking was that SK has this crazy power of being able to completely hypnotize his readers, much like the ship does to the people of Haven in the book. As I made my way through the book, I also was thinking about how he has created a whole alternate universe that weaves and links into itself repeatedly. I have read most of his books and stories, but not all of them, and definitely not in order. So that is when I came up with the idea for "The Ultimate Stephen King Experience". I will start at the beginning, and read every one of his books and stories in chronological order to get the full scope of the SK universe. Then I plan on keeping an online blog into my progress, and I plan to not only blog about things in the actual writing that interest me, but also how it effects me personally, and what impact it seems to have on my life. Not the most original thing in the world, I'm sure. And I'm positive that plenty of people have done it before...but oh well. This is not meant for me to be the most original or most clever blogger in the world. It's just for me to hopefully discover a piece of myself, through the eyes of my favorite author.

Well, that's quite enough of an introduction for this thing to get rolling. If you have your own desire for an Ultimate SK Experience, please feel free to read and blog with me. I would love to see other's insight into the SK Universe.

Without further ado....Carrie is calling.