Stephen King by Stephen King

I’ve been bad about returning calls these last few weeks because my grandmother had the bad form to pass away (something I always advise against, by the way), and because I’m stupid enough to publish books, and our most recent title is in Phase One Freakout. I don’t have a publicist, so I’m spending, you know, every waking moment stuffing envelopes, writing pitch letters, organizing a tour, and sweet-talking everyone to review the book.

Last night, I woke up at 3am reciting the template pitch letter to phantoms from my sub-conscious, and it took a few minutes for me to figure out that I was all alone.

Finally, my friend’s remarkably attractive girlfriend sent me a text saying that she had left him for me, so I called her immediately. Then she handed me off to the friend for a proper scolding…and a brilliant book idea.

Selling books in America is, of course, a stupid thing to do. Unless you put a naked lady on the cover, say she was brutally raped by a Senator (and liked it), and then use a fourth grade reading level throughout. And end with a religious note. So:

Naked Lady Bang Sex With Senator Oomph Oomph Taken by Rapture XXX Teen Sex by Sexy Diva, Former Capitol Hill Tell All Blogger Hip Cool.

This groundbreaking TELL-ALL ADVENTURE told by the NATION’S LEADING BLOGGER about her BRUTAL SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS WITH A SENATOR which caused her to be ADDICTED TO SEX and eventually led to the DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST’S PEPPERONI ROLL, if you know what we mean, and we think you do, is a memorable, passionate, and powerful literary event! Join us tonight for a reading and STRIP SHOW! Minimum purchase: five copies.

I was bitching about this to my friend for about 45 minutes, all while sitting naked in bed with pictures of Sasha Alexander on my laptop, and he hit on a less sex-themed idea: Woo Stephen King to write for me.

The sex thing is a better idea, by the way, but whatever.

The pitch is this: Stephen King writes the first book in years where the title is larger than his name. It’s hip, it’s edgy, it’s crazy, man! Small press goes wild! Makes King’s name small!

But that just won’t do. So, I suggested, how about the title of the book be Stephen King? Then things really started to gel. King does his usual thing, so wonderfully parodied by Ellis in Lunar Park, where he’s a writer haunted by his own creations. It’s the public persona of Stephen King versus the real Stephen King. The public persona plays up all the nonsense Garth Marenghi style, while the real King constantly tries to preserve his identity and do battle with his other self.

The plot revolves around one big problem – Whether or not Tabitha King’s shit should be published. The public Stephen King has decided that all of Tabitha’s stuff should be out there, but the real Stephen King knows better.

I’m thinking we work something in where the driver of the van that hit Stephen King is actually the opposing Stephen King. I don’t know which is which, but it’s pivotal to the story that one of the Kings be laid out for awhile. I don’t know why it’s pivotal… Call it a gut feeling.

I’m a big fan of sci-fi, so I would push for some sort of Lost in Space style alien mirror that would fracture and produce dozens of Stephen Kings, all representing the different eras of his career. Let loose on the world, they would take over New England and each start to reenact favorite scenes from the books representing their eras.

Remember that Lost in Space episode? Where the young Angela Cartwright, playing Penny, was sucked into the mirror along with that ridiculous monkey? I don’t remember what happened, but it all ended okay.

Well, nothing really ended okay in Lost in Space, because they’d always do the old school serialization cliffhanger finale. So they’d solve the problem, then we’d jump to the epilogue where a comet crashes and kills them. Then, the following week, we’d see it from a different angle and everyone was okay. And the comet would turn out to be a spaceship with a vaguely sinister alien in it who would befriend an unwitting Robinson family member and/or win Dr. Smith’s allegiance with tawdry jewelry.

You’d think that any villain laying eyes on Dr. Smith would know right away that there was no point trying to get him to do things. He’d turn coat and side with a tree if it was producing fruit.

Anyway, it’s clear what the next book has to be: Sex shit or Stephen King by Stephen King. Or both. Or, perhaps, I could just write a depressive manifesto titled: You Won’t Read This Anyway Because Barnes and Noble Returned It Before It Was Even Shelved.