Tampa Book Buzz

an evening with stephen king

The movers came again last weekend, so in the midst of packing, cleaning and moving, The Husband and I weren’t able to make it to An Evening With Stephen King at Eckerd College last Saturday night (sniff, sniff). Local author Wendy Boucher had a great time and was kind enough to share her experience with TBB:

Saturday night I attended the reading/lecture by Stephen King. He lives part of the year in Florida and he came out of hiding at the request of Dennis Lehane (author of Mystic River and Shutter Island, among others), who is part of the Writers in Paradise writers’ conference happening at Eckerd College this week. So really it was a two-fer. Lehane spoke first and introduced King, who then read to us a short story called Willa that hadn’t been read or heard by anybody else before Saturday night. I felt like he was giving us a present. After that, he spoke a little and answered some prescreened questions put to him by Lehane. The first question was one he gets asked a lot: “Were you a weird little boy?”There wasn’t anything too surprising for those of us who have followed his career. We all know he loves rock and roll. Most people probably knew that he likes to read poetry before he goes to bed each night. What sometimes surprises those who aren’t King fans is that he has written a very good book about writing and the writing profession (my personal favorite) called On Writing. Lehane mentioned his reputation for being among the most generous when it comes to giving back to the writing community. Lehane also said what I’ve always thought was true, very few authors have created such an amazing array of well-developed characters as King. Lehane mentioned Dickens as another of the few. Apparently public appearances by Mr. King are very rare. I read in the paper about people who had flown from other states just to see him. I brought my limited edition The Gunslinger book just in case he changed his mind and offered a book signing, but no such luck. He doesn’t seem to like that much attention and I thought he seemed just a little uncomfortable at times on stage with thousands of people looking at him. He delighted the crowd when he said he’s got a book set in Florida in mind. He was great and my only regret is that at the last minute, Lisa of Tampa Book Buzz was unable to attend herself.

–Wendy Boucher is a travel writer, a hepcat blogger and author of Parvenue Throws A Party. She’s busy working on her next book, traveling around the world and being the envy of those of us stuck at home.