Stephen King is the master of horror. His specialty is the unexplained parts of life, and he develops his stories with a ruthless sense of psychological justice.

   In On Writing Stephen King presents a portrait of his early life. He is a storyteller, and one of his most interesting stories is how he threw away the manuscript of his first bestseller--Carrie--and how his wife rescued it from the trash.

   King fans love this book because it reveals how the author's life comes through in his stories. Aspiring writers like the second part of the book which deals with his craft. Even people who consider themselves superior to popular writing find this an engaging work.

   Wayne & Tamara are often asked about the range of allusion they use in their column. Those allusions range from Virgil and Shakespeare to Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

   As they have said, "We write about relationships because we see the world as nothing but relationships. When we look at a letter, our experience and these allusions just pop out."

From On Writing:

--(Stephen King, as a high school student, interviewed for a sports reporting job with his local newspaper.) "I told Mr. Gould that I didn't know much about sports. Gould said, 'These are games people understand when they're watching them drunk in bars. You'll learn if you try.'"

--(About his marriage to Tabitha) "Our marriage has outlasted all of the world's leaders except Castro… We were sexually compatible and monogamous by nature. Yet what ties us most strongly are the words, the language, and the work of our lives."

--"If she (Tabitha) had suggested that the time I spent writing stories on the front porch of our rented house on Pond Street or in the laundry room of our rented trailer on Klatt Road in Hermon was a wasted time, I think a lot of the heart would have gone out of me… Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough."