The Stephen King Ultimate Companion book: The most interesting things we learned

What was the original title of Salem's Lot? Which of his books does King think should be half the length? How did an accepting an award almost kill the famous author? Read on to find out!

The spookiest thing about the just-published Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences is how many fascinating tidbits of information about Stephen King writer Bev Vincent fits into the book, while still leaving space aplenty for archival photos and documents from the Carrie writer's personal collections. You'll have to buy the tome to see the images but you can entertain (and terrify!) your friends with these ten fascinating facts we gleaned from reading Vincent's book.

Stephen King got paid a quarter for each of his earliest short stories

King started writing stories at the age of six and was encouraged to pursue this hobby by his Aunt Gert who paid him a quarter for every tale he completed. Among his earliest stories was "Jhonathan and the Witchs" about a cobbler's son who is granted three wishes by a rabbit and uses them to kill a trio of sorceresses.

He got rejected a lot

In the late 1960s, King entered one of his first longform efforts, The Long Walk, in a first-novel competition organized by Random House. The book was rejected without comment. His next novel-length tale, Sword in the Darkness, was turned down by a dozen publishers.

Success came just in time

When King wrote his first published novel, Carrie, in the early 1970s, he was barely able to support his family working as a teacher at Maine's Hampden Academy and ultimately went phone-less to save money. In 1973, he borrowed $75 from his wife Tabitha's grandmother and visited New York to meet with Doubleday editor Bill Thompson in New York. The gamble paid off when, a month later, the publisher paid King a $2500 advance for his tale of a teenager with supernatural gifts. The author celebrated by buying a Ford Pinto to replace the family's 1965 Buick. King's days of worrying about his phone bill would permanently end later in the year when Signet paid Doubleday $400,000 for the book's paperback rights.

CANADA - JULY 23: Stephen King: Horror writer says he couldn't read Clive Barker's stories alone. (Photo by Boris Spremo/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Stephen King. Boris Spremo/Toronto Star/Getty

'Salem's Lot almost had a much "sexier" title

King originally planned on calling his 1975 vampire tale Second Coming. The writer changed the title to 'Salem's Lot after Tabitha told him that people might think it was a sex manual.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive helped him come up with his pseudonym

King has published several books under the name Richard Bachman including 1982's The Running Man and 1984's Thinner. How did the author come up with this pseudonym? King was pondering the matter while preparing to publish the first Bachman book, 1977's Rage, when he noticed a novel by Richard Stark (a pen name used by crime writer Donald E. Westlake) on his desk and the sound of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" coming from his record player. The author combined the "Richard" from Richard Stark with the "Bachman" from Bachman-Turner Overdrive and arrived at his pseudonym.

A real-life Saint Bernard dog gave him the idea for Cujo.

In the spring of 1977, King took his malfunctioning motorcycle to get fixed at a garage where he was greeted by what he would later claim to be a 200-pound Saint Bernard named Bowser. After the mechanic assured the author that the dog didn't bite, King reached out to pet the hound, only for Bowser to attack him. The mechanic hit the dog with a socket wrench and then announced, "Bowser usually doesn't do this. He must not have liked your face." The incident would prompt King to write the 1981 rabid-Saint Bernard novel Cujo.

Pennywise was inspired by a troll

...although not, to be clear, the kind found on the internet. King was inspired to create the killer clown from It while walking across a wooden bridge in Boulder, CO., where the author was writing his 1978 post-apocalyptic epic The Stand.

"I thought of the story of Billy Goats Gruff, the troll who says, 'Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge?' and the whole story just bounced into my mind on a pogo-stick," King is quoted as saying in the book. "Not the characters, but the split time-frame...all the monsters that were one monster...the troll under the bridge, of course."

He thinks The Tommyknockers should be much shorter

King's hefty 1987 science fiction novel about an unearthed spacecraft was written at the height of the author's addiction to alcohol and cocaine is one of the author's least-loved offerings. The book's critics include the now-sober King himself. "The book is about 700 pages long, and I'm thinking, 'There's probably a good 350-page novel in there," he says in the book.

Stephen King biography
Cover of The Stephen King Ultimate Companion. becker&mayer! books

One of his books was almost called Cancer

King came close to dying when he was hit by a van in 1999 and, during his recovery, wrote a book about four friends dealing with an alien virus which causes people to excrete creatures out of their butts. The author planned on calling the novel Cancer until Tabitha convinced him to change the title. King finally published the book in 2001 as Dreamcatcher. (Alas, the change in title could not prevent Lawrence Kasdan's subsequent 2003 big screen adaptation from being something of a disaster.)

Winning an award almost killed him

In November, 2003, King attended the National Book Awards in Manhattan where he accepted the Medal for Distinguished Contribution. The author had received medical advice not to make the trip to New York because he was suffering from pneumonia as the result of a punctured lung he had suffered in the 1999 car accident. The day after the ceremony the now seriously ill King sought treatment at a hospital where he would stay for the next two months. This second close-to-dying experience inspired King's 2006 book Lysey's Story, about the widow of a famous novelist.

The Stephen King Ultimate Companion is published by becker&mayer! books.

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