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Before Needful Things #StephenKingRevisited

by Jay Wilburn

The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.

You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.

I feel like I’ve been here before …

My dad bought Needful Things for himself. I read it after he was finished with it. That is the copy I still have on my shelf as I prepare to reread this one.

After my father died, we cleaned out his stuff from the house where my mother and brother still lived. When they moved from the house where I grew up, there was a deeper purge of everything that was there.

My mother kept a number of memento items, but she was throwing out and yard selling a lot of stuff. I took the books off of his shelves that I wanted at her insistence. I got his copy of Watership Down. I took the Lord of the Rings books which this past year I read from alongside my oldest son with his school. I took all the King books he had, too. At that point, I was married, had my own home, and life was stable because it was under my control, so everything I got, I was able to keep at that point in my life. Other books I had prior to this tended to get lost during periods of time that I was out of my parents’ house or homeless.

I remember that even though the book was on the longer side, the straightforward plot drove me forward through the madness overtaking the town. I’m curious with having read many more King novels if this story will seem similar to others of his novels.

I’m looking forward to revisiting this one.

My next post will be After Needful Things which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.

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Jay Wilburn
Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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