What I Learned from Stephen King Archives

What I Learned from Stephen King: IT & Other Childhood Demons

Cemetery Dance OnlineFebruary 8, 2019February 8, 2019What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, It, Jason Sechrest, What I Learned from Stephen King1 Comment

Tim Curry as Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

No book has had a more profound impact on me than Stephen King’s It.

For one thing, It is the book that introduced me to Stephen King. In 1990, I was 10 years old, and like many kids my age, I was entranced by the clown in the storm drain I’d seen on prime time television. You can bet your fur that every kid at school was talking about Stephen King’s It the night after it aired, but like most things that captured our imagination as children, it faded from the periphery of playground conversation within a day or so, only to be replaced by more common maintains like debating who should be the villain in the next Batman movie, or when we would get another Gremlins or Ghostbusters. Continue Reading

Firestarter and Standing Up to “The Man”

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 24, 2018August 22, 2018What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Firestarter, Jason Sechrest, What I Learned from Stephen KingLeave a comment

It’s easy to see why Stephen King’s Firestarter was nearly the novel we never read.

Abandoning his manuscript on several occasions, King felt the book was too much like Carrie and feared he would be copying himself. While Carrie White had telekinesis (the ability to move objects with her mind), Charlie McGee’s gift (or curse) in Firestarter is pyrokinesis — the ability to start fires with her mind. Both Carrie and Charlie are adolescents. Both have unnaturally co-dependent relationships with a parental figure. And, both are going through a painful process of learning how to control their extraordinary powers.Continue Reading

Everyone Has An Annie Wilkes

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 20, 2018July 15, 2018What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Jason Sechrest, Misery, Stephen King, What I Learned from Stephen King3 Comments

In 1987, the gods of creativity were looking favorably upon Stephen King, who blessed Constant Readers with three books in a ten-month period — a new record for the already highly prolific author. Among the three novels published that year was Misery, an instant bestseller that would become hailed as one of King’s classics. At the time of its release, however, it might not have seemed very King-like at all. Continue Reading

Who is the True Villain in Carrie?

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 25, 2018May 29, 2018What I Learned from Stephen KingCarrie, Columns, Jason Sechrest, What I Learned from Stephen King8 Comments

Stephen King’s first novel Carrie debuted on April 5th, 1974 with little to no fanfare. One might say that, like the novel’s title character, Carrie was always destined to be a late bloomer. Shy to the spotlight, you might find Carrie hanging out at your local library or bookstore, sitting there all but invisible upon the shelf. All the while, of course, Carrie held a great secret. A special power. Quiet and patient, Carrie was waiting to make her mark on the world, to have her revenge on those who had underestimated her, and to make Stephen King a household name. Continue Reading

The Letter I Wrote to Stephen King, and the Response that Changed My Life

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 8, 2017September 8, 2017What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, It, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, What I Learned from Stephen King17 Comments

When I was 10 years old, I sent Stephen King the first thing I had ever written.

It was a short story called “Murder on Washington St.”

The reply I received changed the course of my life forever. Continue Reading

The Flexible Bullet of Madness

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 25, 2017August 19, 2017What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, What I Learned from Stephen KingLeave a comment

“This is a story about the genesis of insanity.” – Stephen King, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet

PROLOGUE: LOADING THE GUN

If I try really hard, I can remember it all.

If I close my eyes and really concentrate, it’s almost like I’m right there. I can nearly smell the smells, and hear the sounds of what it was like. The soft elevator music that played in the lobby, and those halls that reeked of aged bodies. I can see myself as a 12 year old boy, visiting my great-grandmother in the old folk’s home. I can recall how she thought my mother was her daughter, or that it was December in the heat of June. Continue Reading

‘Thinner’ and the Blame Game

Cemetery Dance OnlineApril 21, 2017April 12, 2017What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, Thinner, What I Learned from Stephen KingLeave a comment

What I Learned from Stephen King by Jason Sechrest

“There are no curses, only mirrors you hold up to the souls of men and women.” – Stephen King, Thinner

A disclaimer before we begin: As is the case with most of these doo-dads, there are spoilers ahead for those who have not read Thinner. More spoilers than usual in fact, as I found it necessary to employ the book’s end in my final analysis. If you, Constant Reader, should wish to check out now, we will hold no grudge, nor lay the blame. For if there is anything to be learned from Thinner (and I believe there is, or I would not have written said doo-dad), it is that blame is like a spinning wheel. Round and round and round she goes… Continue Reading

‘Pet Sematary’ and Why Sometimes Dead is Better

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 26, 2016October 25, 2016What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Jason Sechrest, Pet Sematary, What I Learned from Stephen King9 Comments

What I Learned From Stephen King

book There is a bit of lore that exists around the origins of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. It was a novel he never intended to publish, the one he felt was “too dark” to unleash upon us Constant Readers. That is somewhat difficult to believe, considering it was only two years before Pet Sematary’s publication in 1983 that King picked up his typewriter and hit us over the head with Cujo, wherein five-year-old Tad Trenton dies by the novel’s final pages. King has said on numerous occasions that he received a lot of flack for that one, to be sure. One of the most popular questions he would get asked at the time is: Why, Steve, why? Why did you have to go and kill the kid?Continue Reading

'Night Shift' and the Nature of Fear

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 29, 2016What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Featured, Jason Sechrest, Night Shift, Stephen King, What I Learned from Stephen King8 Comments

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Night Shift and the Nature of Fear

Let’s talk about fear. We won’t raise our voices and we won’t scream; we’ll talk rationally, you and I. We’ll talk about the way the good fabric of things sometimes has a way of unraveling with shocking suddenness. – Stephen King, Introduction to Night Shift

I finished reading Stephen King’s first collection of short stories, 1978’s Night Shift, a few months back, but have avoided writing down any thoughts on it.

No one wants to expound on a subject of which they feel they have little to contribute, and for me everything that needs to be said about Night Shift was said perfectly by Stephen King in his introduction to the book. In fact, it may be one of the most perfect pieces King has written, if not certainly the most perfect he had written in 1978.

King’s opening act serves as an essay on the nature of fear: why he writes horror, and why people read it. I found myself not only more mesmerized, but more haunted by this than any of the tales in King’s gruesome set list. Continue Reading

What I Learned from Stephen King: 'Christine' & The Roads Traveled

Cemetery Dance OnlineApril 1, 2016What I Learned from Stephen KingChristine, Columns, Featured, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, What I Learned from Stephen KingLeave a comment

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Christine & The Roads Traveled

On the evening of February 10th, 2016, John got into his black Cherokee Jeep and went to console an old friend. It seemed like the right decision at the time. He had received Sally’s email just after sundown, informing him of the news that her brother, Peter, had died of an overdose. Sally and Peter had been John’s friends in a time and place that seemed as far away as the memories of his early childhood, and yet it had only been four years ago. These had been his “party” friends. Four years had passed since John made the decision to get sober, and, as such decisions will do, it had created distance between himself and his old friends. He hadn’t told them he couldn’t hang out with them anymore. He wasn’t that kind of guy. He hadn’t even made any concerted effort to stay away from them, really. They just drifted, as friends sometimes do when the road of life they had once tread together diverged in separate directions. Continue Reading

What I Learned From Stephen King: What Makes a Great Teacher

Cemetery Dance OnlineFebruary 15, 2016What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Featured, Jason Sechrest, What I Learned from Stephen King3 Comments

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What Makes a Great Teacher

kingteach1 With a title like What I Learned From Stephen King, I suppose at some point you and I are going to need to sit down and discuss the subject of teachers. I also suppose now would be as good a time as any.

Stephen King once said, “Good teachers can be trained, if they really want to learn. Great teachers, like Socrates, are born.” He should know. He taught writing to high school students at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine, plus spent a year teaching as a writer-in-residence at his alma mater, the University of Maine, in the late 1970s while still establishing himself as a writer. Continue Reading

What I Learned from Stephen King: 'Cujo' and Other Grown-Up Monsters

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 7, 2015What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Cujo, Featured, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, What I Learned from Stephen King7 Comments

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Cujo and Other Grown-Up Monsters

cujocover Considered to be one of his darkest works, Stephen King’s Cujo is not for the cowardly. It is relentless in its forward motion, coming at you “like a brick heaved through a window,” as King himself once described.

It’s frightening. It’s gruesome. It’s savage. It’s violent.

It’s also incredibly depressing. Continue Reading

What I Learned from Stephen King: 'The Long Walk' of Life

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 9, 2015What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Featured, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, The Long Walk, What I Learned from Stephen King12 Comments

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The Long Walk of Life

BEFORE THE WALK

I was having brunch with a friend of mine on a recent Sunday, a horror film actress in fact, who asked: Do you really think there’s anything spiritual about Stephen King’s books?

The question was served cold with a heaping side of skepticism, and it took me slightly off guard. It’s not the first time I have been asked the question since starting this column three short months ago, and I’m always somewhat alarmed by it.

When asked, the first thing that springs to my mind is self-doubt: What if I’m wrong? What if there really is nothing spiritual about Stephen King’s stories and I’m just grasping at straws here? What if I’ve doomed myself to write a monthly column about… nothing? The writer’s worst nightmare. Continue Reading

What I Learned from Stephen King: The Hero in 'The Dead Zone'

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 28, 2015What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Featured, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, The Dead Zone, What I Learned from Stephen King3 Comments

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The Hero in The Dead Zone

deadzonepic When we think of the great many characters conjured by the imagination of Stephen King, we most likely think of Carrie White, Annie Wilkes, Jack Torrance or Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Few authors in history have known how to construct such a vast array of multidimensional villains and villainesses. As a result, what gets lost in King’s sea of personalities are his heroes — the most interesting of whom is arguably one Johnny Smith, the main man of The Dead Zone who awakens from a four-and-a-half year coma with a startling new mental capacity to see both people’s past and their future. It’s a power he doesn’t know quite how to control, and one that isn’t without its flaws. Continue Reading

What I Learned from Stephen King: An Introduction

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 21, 2015What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Featured, Jason Sechrest, What I Learned from Stephen King22 Comments

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“If the horror story is our rehearsal for death, then its strict moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination – just one more pipeline to the infinite.” – Stephen King, Danse Macabre

skpic2 Wisdom can be found in the most unlikely of places, and it is often within the greatest darkness that we find the greatest light.

Alright, alright. I’ll admit they’re clichés – but like most clichés, they also happen to be true. Anyone with a modicum of introspection and a rear view mirror will tell you that it’s the tough times in life we seem to learn and grow from the most. It is the darkness that makes us reach for the light and propels us to examine the human spirit and reevaluate our place and priorities in the world.

If there is anything I learned from Stephen King’s first foray into non-fiction, Danse Macabre, it is that those of us who love a good fright flick or scary read are attracted to the darkness for a wide variety of reasons – many of which leave us with a greater awareness of our inner fears, a questioning of our own mortality, and an increased appreciation that all of our limbs are still intact – or at the very least that our ankles aren’t being hobbled today. Continue Reading

Night Shift and the Nature of Fear

Christine & The Roads Traveled

What Makes a Great Teacher

Cujo and Other Grown-Up Monsters

The Long Walk of Life

The Hero in The Dead Zone

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