UP NEXT IN THE STEPHEN KING PROJECT: DESPERATION

I’m going to read Desperation next in The Stephen King Project.

The image above is the same cover as my copy. It’s my second copy of the novel. It’s the US version. A family friend gave me it because she was clearing out some books. I loved the cover and took it to replace my copy. The UK cover was very plain – just silver writing on a blue background.

I’ll read The Regulators after Desperation becuse it’s a mirror novel.

INTERESTING FACTS:

> King publshed a mirror novel at the same time called The Regulators under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. The Regulators takes the same characters and events and sets them in an urban environment

> Desperation was adapted as a TV movie in 2006 starring Rom Perlman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King%27s_Desperation_(film)

> King was inspired by a cross-country drive in 1991 where he visited a desert town called Ruth in Nevada. The eeriness of the novel made him wonder if everyone was dead. He asked himself who’d killed them and decided it was the sheriff. A further trip led him to discover a local story about Chinese labourers who’d been left to die in a collapsed mine

> Desperation is linked to the Dark Tower novels. The term can-toi is used in both novels. In the Dark Tower series this term is used for the sinister Low Men In Yellow Coats. In the story The Little Sisters of Eluria, Roland hears the vampire nurses speak in the same language used by Tak’s hosts in Desperation

> The character Cynthia Smith in Desperation is a key sub character in King’s novel Rose Madder

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