Stephen King talks to arts editor Will Gompertz
Stephen King has admitted he is
nervous about the reaction to his forthcoming sequel to his novel The Shining.
The US author told the BBC he expects 95% of the reviews for Doctor Sleep to
be a comparison between the two books."You are faced with that comparison and that has got to make you nervous", he said, "because there is a lot of water under the bridge. I'm a different man".
He admitted visiting literary websites to see what fans were saying about the book ahead of its publication.
Now aged 65, the veteran author said he thinks the quality of his writing has improved since he wrote The Shining at the age of 28.
"What a lot of people are saying is, 'Well okay, I will probably read this book but it cannot be as good as The Shining'. But I am obviously an optimist and I want them to say when they get done with it, that it was as good.
"But what I really want them to say is that it is better than The Shining".
'Love creates horror'
Speaking to the BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz, King voiced his concerns that people who read the original story of the Torrance family's terrifying experiences at the Overlook Hotel when they were younger will have the same expectations of Doctor Sleep.
"The fear is that people will come back expecting that kind of scare as grown-ups and that just never happens. I wanted to try and write a more adult book."
King added that people are more difficult to scare today as they "have gotten a lot more savvy about the tricks that novel writers and film-makers use to scare them with".
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