The Constant Reader Podcast - The Canon of Stephen King

Lindsey Anderson Beer's 2023 prequel to the 2019 reboot of Pet Sematary got something of a kicking by most critics on its release. There are the bones of a good film in their somewhere though, and the look and the soundtrack of the film, plus an eclectic cast, make it an interesting curio if nothing else.

We're back (again) after a long hiatus, but what a return. One of the most listened to episodes of this podcast were the two-part epic discussions between me and Andy Stanton a few years ago. We both kicked around the idea of a rematch, and what other book could we cover but the 1990 edition of Stephen King's The Stand? Whilst other podcasts displayed depressingly lateral thinking of covering the book during the COVID 19 outbreak, Andy and i took the high ground.

As you will hear, Andy has lived with The Stand in his head and his heart for most of his life, and he brings his blend of wit, insight and passion to this talk.

Unsurprisingly, it was too much to fit in one episode, so this is just the first part of our conversation, stay tuned for part two in a few months' time.

We unearth a real curio in the King canon today, as the teleplay for Sorry, Right Number gets a good grilling. Originally filmed as part of the Tales From The Darkside television series, the teleplay was then reproduced in the 1993 short story collection, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. My guest and I discuss how much of this is autobiography, how much a cry for help, and how much just an effective, gut-punch of a tale.

I am joined on the other end of the line by Adam Z Robinson, a multi-talented actor, writer and theatre manager whose work focuses on the supernatural, human relationships and what makes us truly afraid.

It should be unsurprising that Stephen King, as the world's most popular writer, should have such a pervasive presence online. More than any other author, the number of his fan-sites is in the thousands.

However, only one fan-site has achieved the kind of dominance that Lilja's Library has. Indeed, it is a resource in producing this podcast every month. I sat down to talk to the man known as Lilja (because i can't pronounce Hans-Åke) about his life, his website, the past present and future of all things Stephen King and plenty more besides.

I had the pleasure of being a guest on Kim C's podcast, The Year of Underrated Stephen King, a few months ago. It was such a fun, lively conversation, and Kim C was such a knowledgeable, charming host that I took the liberty of inviting her to come on the Constant Reader Podcast to discuss the monolithic 11.22.63. It was a pleasure to dive back into this book, which is a real outlier for King - part sci-fi, part romance, part historical novel, with a big heart. I liked this book even more on a re-read, and the longueurs that occur in the middle of the book (including THAT Derry revisit) made a lot more sense.

I am joined by Ally Wilkes on an expedition very few Stephen King fans will forget - into the heart of darkness and autocannibalism in Survivor Type. This grisly morsel was the grossout highlight of King's collection Skeleton Crew. It was recently turned into an animated episode of Shudder's Creepshow to pretty good effect. Once read, this one isn't easily forgotten, certainly not by Ally Wilkes, the writer of one of my favourite books of last year, All the White Spaces.

Ally and I talk eating long pig, arctic expeditions and the ineffable lure of the unknown spaces for a writer. I am really looking forward to her next book, the similarly chilly sounding Where the Dead Wait, and thoroughly recommend you pick up All the White Spaces in preparation....

This month we take a look at the torments of the writing process through the lens of Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of 1987 King novel Misery. Like last month's Shawshank Redemption it was a favourite of critics and audiences alike, mainly due to the bravura performances of James Caan and Kathy Bates. Joining me to talk about it is screenwriter and film buff Justin Stanley, who has written about the tempestuous process of writing in the 2017 film Black Butterfly, starring Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. 

Apologies for the hiatus, now back at full strength and we have a full slate of episodes for 2023 lined up, including some TBC guests making their own Stephen King adaptations, as well as some of the geniuses behind some big-name books and TV shows, plus fellow podcasters from within the Stephen King podcasting community.

Isaac Thorne is a man with a serious imagination. Hell Spring, his most recent novel contains (amongst much else) a killer Marilyn Monroe, cataclysmic floods, self-mutilation, time travel and monstrous phalluses. Who better to investigate one of King's more off-kilter, leftfield novels, the fantasy epic The Eyes of the Dragon? We discuss this charming anomaly's place in the King canon, which features some of his most complex, interesting and well drawn characters, as well as the dangers of writing genre fiction and not having it seem overplayed.

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Still having a few issues with Zencastr, so this is another Skype special. Audio quality doesn't dictate guest quality, however, and talking to Sean Hogan was a blast. We discuss King's old-school ghost story, Bag of Bones, and how the gothic and the modern turn into an underrated King tour-de-force. I was a huge fan of Sean's book England's Screaming, which we discuss at length, and we get some tasty indicators of where the sequel, Twilight's Last Screaming is going.

Back after a brief sabbatical, we pick up our deep-diving trawl through Stephen King's oeuvre with one of my new favourite writers, Matt Wesolowski. Here's some blurb: -

"Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-based anthologies, such as Midnight Movie Creature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was an Amazon bestseller in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, and film rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio. A prequel, Hydra, was published in 2018 and became an international bestseller. Changeling, the third book in the series, was published in 2019 and was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. His fourth book, Beast, won the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Independent Voice Book of the Year award in 2020. Matt lives in Newcastle with his partner and young son, and is currently working on the sixth book in the Six Stories series. Chat to him on Twitter @ConcreteKraken."

What it doesn't mention is the Matt is also a huge Stephen King fan, with a special place in his heart for the Peter Straub/Stephen King novel Black House. We take a trip to French Landing and discuss serial murder, sequels, hipster bikers, the Scott King novels and whether he will ever get a Stephen King tattoo before he runs out of space on his body. 

Much gratitude to Julia Marchese of the Horror Movie Survival Guide and the director and guiding light behind the forthcoming 'Dollar Baby' adaptation of Stephen King's shot story I Know What You Need. Together Julia and I battled technical difficulties (after my interview with Stewart O Nan I think I might be jinxed, or at least have gremlins in the recoding equipment) and we eventually got around to talking about King's cult novella of death, sex and sports, The Long Walk. Julia explained how a book written in the 1960s still reads fresh, and we both marvel at how just darn good that King fellow could write, even as a teenager.

Find more about Julia here: -

Stewart O'Nan's new book, Ocean State, has recently been released in the United States to wide acclaim. However, today we are going to look at one of his earlier books - 2001's The Speed Queen. In a change from our usual format, this isn't a book or an adaptation of a Stephen King text, but instead a novel that uses Stephen King as a character. King is the (unnamed but highly guessable) recipient of the last testament of Marjorie Standiford, mother, daughter, drug addict, sex addict, speed freak and apparent killer. On death row, who else but Stephen King would listen to her side of the love triangle that put her on a collision course with capital punishment?

The return of author, columnist, minister and podcaster Peter Laws to the podcast, taking a dive into the George Romero/Stephen King collaboration Creepshow (1982). We take part each episode of this mixed bag of gory tales, touching upon George Romero's career, soundtrack obsessives, the beast within and the cockroaches in the wall.

Buyer beware in Castle Rock, as Leland Gaunt only wants a little of your money, and all of your soul. Stephen King's 1994 novel Needful Things gets a dismantling with returning guest Dan Jones. One of our mutual favourites, and one of the stories that signposted the interesting development King's work would take in the 1990s, as he starts to leave Maine behind (in explosive fashion) and branches out to weirder climes....

Apologies for the wait on this one, thanks for your patience. We will be returning to our celebration of Epix TV's Chapelwaite soon, but for now I was luck enough to sit down with Alex Grass, author of Dreck, about addiction, the writing life, and Stephen King's novel Doctor Sleep. 

We begin a month long appreciation of the newest Stephen King adaptation, EPIX TV's Chapelwaite. Based on the short story Jerusalem's Lot from the Night Shift anthology, Chapelwaite stars Adrien Brody, Emily Hampshire and genre favorite Julian Richings. Mixing in elements of the short story with mythology established in the novel Salem's Lot, this is a gothic treat for all fans of haunted houses, period drama and well made television.

I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with series co-creator Peter Filardi about the show, how it came to be, and what might be the future for Chapelwaite.

A book as big as 'It' can't be covered in just one episode, and the response we had to the last episode, and my guest Andy Stanton, was so positive that we have decided to make the return trip to Derry. One correspondent asked why we hadn't covered Pennywise much, or Bill Denborough, which sounded like a valid critique. So, Andy kindly agreed to come back and discuss Maine's scariest clown and Stuttering Bill, as well as a bunch of other loose ends.

Hi, welcome back to the Constant Reader Podcast, with me your host, Richard Sheppard. 

Very excited to talk to author, producer, editor and all round good-egg Richard Chizmar for this episode. We got to ask him not only about working with Stephen King on Gwendy's Button Box, but also his own formidable body of work, which includes the sequel Gwendy's Magic Feather and the forthcoming Chasing the Boogeyman. We also talk about the next part of Gwendy's story, what it's like when Stephen King asks you to collaborate, Cemetery Dance magazine, writing a 'political' novel and working during a pandemic.

Today's guest, Helena Bacon, is an academic, a teacher and a writer. We discuss Stephen King's 2014 novel Revival, one of (in my opinion) King's most beautifully written stories, with one of the nastiest endings. How does it relate to Arthur Machen, HP Lovecraft and the Old Gods of weird fiction? Find out in this conversation.....

Mike Muncer is a guest we have wanted to get on the podcast for a while. His podcast, the long-running The Evolution of Horror, was a major inspiration on The Constant Reader Podcast, and it remains a constant source of erudition and joy to a lot of horror fans. We chose to talk about David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the Dead Zone, dovetailing in with The Evolition of Horror's recent season on Cronenberg's home turf - horrors of the mind and body. 

A deep dive into John Carpenter's 1983 adaptation of Stephen King's Christine, with the wonderful Lee Gambin.

A departure for us this month, as we take a look at a thoroughly modern King novel, 2016's The Outsider. Also, our guest, Adam De Collibus is a newcomer to Stephen King. What did he make of his first foray into the world of the master? And is The Outsider the best or worst place to start?? We talk it all through, and discuss Adam's fascinating novel Caravan, available to purchase at the links below.

Very excited to speak to Peter Laws this month, covering the 1983 novella Cycle of the Werewolf and the 1985 adaptation Silver Bullet. As a Baptist minister, part-time werewolf hunter and full-time horror genre fan, Peter is ideally placed to discuss this genuine oddity in the King canon. We cover Bernie Wrightson's beautiful illustrations, the difficulty of writing a novella in the form of an almanac and the unique interpretation of the werewolf legend by Stephen King. We then move on to Dan Attias's Silver Bullet, and Peter explains why this film holds such a dear place in his heart.

Peter Laws is a writer, podcaster, minister, musician and columnist for the Fortean Times. He writes the Matt Hunter series of horror-thrillers and the very engaging non-fiction overview of the appeal of the horror genre, The Frighteners. Links to his work here: -

Host Richard Sheppard and guest Dan Jones look under the hood of Stephen King's 1983 novel, Christine. On the surface a rip-roaring, high-octane story about a killer Plymouth Fury, yet underneath the flashy paint job is a meditation on first love, high school politics, busted family dynamics and friendship.

Very happy to have the legendary Tom Holland on the podcast, speaking to us from the United States. We discuss his new book The Notch (links below, buy it, it's a corker), the controversial ending of Thinner,  and his life in the film industry including how his first job was to write a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Plus, Tom gives us some great anecdotes about meeting and working with Stephen King himself.

Thanks to Jack Ulrich for setting up this interview.

We take our first steps down the long and winding road that leads us to Stephen King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower. Joining Dark Tower-sceptic Richard Sheppard is our special guest, archivist and guide Ben Craske. We talk Roland, Walter O'Dim, gunslinging in the USA and barely talk about the film adaptation at all. Promise.

We continue our look at all things Pet Sematary with an interview with author, academic and festival organiser  Dr Linda Sheppard. Wooden acting, cheesy visual FX and blundered writing aside, there's a lot to enjoy about these two films, as we find out. We look at how the shift from Gage to Ellie in the 2019 version puts a very different spin on the tale, as well as the benefits of shooting on location rather than sets.

Edward Parnell is the author of The Listeners (2014 Rethink New Novels Prize Winner) and 2019's Ghostland (‘a wonderfully evocative book, creating a sense of place and invoking the power of literature and nature.’ The Guardian). He joins host Richard Sheppard in the studio to discuss the haunted world of Louis Creed, a young doctor who has bought a new house in the country, complete with cursed Micmac burial ground and stalking Wendigos. 

Pet Sematary remains one of Stephen King's most personal and terrifying novel, as well as a raw depiction of grief and the vulnerability of the family unit. We cover these themes, King's Gothic sensibilities, the difficulties about breaking taboos and Edward Parnell's own work, as well as the classic ghost stories that shaped the genre.

The Constant  Viewer podcast turns its eyes on Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of The Shining. This is one of the icons of the horror cinema, and to do it justice we got in film reviewer and genre expert Vincent M. Gaine to wield the scalpel as we dissect this masterpiece. We also take time to check Dr Sleep's temperature, and look how Mike Flanagan's 2019 adaptation of The Shining's sequel continues the story of the Torrance family.

This episode was hosted by Richard Sheppard, with research and support from Dr Linda Sheppard, and technical and sound production by Stephen L. Parkes. Please like, subscribe, rate, review and recommend this podcast, and feel free to get in contact with us at theconstantreaderpodcast@gmail.com

This month we are joined by academic, writer, actor and broadcaster Richard J Hand. Richard is the lead writer on The Poe Radio Theatre out of Baltimore, episodes of which can be found on NPR or through apple podcasts. Today he joins to to discuss The Shining, King's third novel which the set the bar for haunted house stories in the twentieth century. We discuss Jack Torrance, wasp nests, Gothic roots and plenty more besides. 

This episode was hosted by Richard Sheppard, with research and support from Dr Linda Sheppard, and technical and sound production by Stephen L. Parkes. Please like, subscribe, rate, review and recommend this podcast, and feel free to get in contact with us at theconstantreaderpodcast@gmail.com

We kick off the Constant Reader Podcast with an in-depth look at Stephen King's bloodstained debut, 1974's Carrie. We look at the Gothic roots of a very modern tale, the sexual politics and the political paranoia of the time that turned Carrie into a worldwide hit and sent Stephen King on a career trajectory that would see him become the world's best selling writer.