Lilja's Library (3 page)

Some of the milestones of the site are:

• 2002
  , when I registered the domain.
  
• 2004
  , when I got a link to Lilja’s Library on Stephen King’s official site.
  
• 2006
  , when I got to meet Stephen King in person in London, which was made possible because I made some contacts while running the site.
  
• 2007
  , when I got to do a phone interview with Stephen King for Lilja’s Library.
  
• 2008
  , when I got to do a second phone interview with Stephen King for Lilja’s Library.
  
• 2010
  , when this book was released.
  

I hope to add more to the list as time goes by. I have some ideas but we’ll see what happens.

Bev Vincent:
What sort of response have you had to the website over the years? Any interesting people pop up in your guestbook?

Lilja:
The response has been varied, and there have been greater amounts as the years pass and more people find the site. Most people really like what I do on the site and some even think I am Stephen King, which is quite funny.

The site has also gotten a response from the media. The BBC contacted me and I ended up doing an interview for BBC radio. The site has also been mentioned in different articles over the years, as well as in books and in promotional situations. About ninety-nine percent of the response has been positive. The one percent is made up of people who take out their anger on me because they didn’t get tickets to a reading, didn’t get a special book they wanted in time or things like that. But that isn’t a big problem.

I actually got a really cool entry in the guestbook once. One day when I checked it there was a message from George A. Romero, in which he said he liked the site. Needless to say that made my day.

Bev Vincent:
What do you do when you aren’t working on Lilja’s Library?

Lilja:
Well, I’m involved in running two other sites. One is the Scandinavian King Fan Club,
Följeslagarna
(
www.Foljeslagarna.com
), and the other is a DVD review site called
DVDKritik
(
www.DVDKritik.se
). Those take up some of my time but also let me indulge myself in my other big interest—movies. I see a lot of movies in my spare time, so it’s only natural for me to review them.

In real life I work as a software programmer, which means I spend a great deal of my day in front of a computer screen. We’ll see in about thirty or forty years if that is a good decision on my part…I also have a family that includes two children and no pets.

Bev Vincent:
So, tell us the truth—there’s a lot of really good information hidden away on a secret Swedish-only part of your site, isn’t there?

Lilja:
Ha ha, I wish. But no, there isn’t. Every piece of info I get that I’m allowed to share goes up on the site. There is information I get that I’m asked not to put on the site for one reason or another, but that information only exists in my head, not on a secret site for select members.

Part 3—Interviews 

Section 1—The King  

Stephen King, Part 1 

Posted: January 16, 2007  

Welcome to the first part of a three-part interview I did over the phone with Stephen King. At a time when he is turning down interview requests, Stephen King made an exception for Lilja’s Library to accommodate a previous commitment and did the interview you’re about to read. 

We talked for about forty-five minutes and managed to cover topics including his upcoming books:
Duma Key
,
Blaze
and a second sequel to
The Talisman
.  

We also talked about what he thinks of all the fansites dedicated to him on the Internet, his collaboration with John Mellencamp, The Haven Foundation, limited editions of his books and a new novella called “The Gingerbread Girl,” which he is currently working on. 

I hope you will enjoy reading the interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. Stephen King’s kindness and down-to-earth manner made it extremely enjoyable, even though I was very nervous when I picked up the phone and heard “Hello Hans? Steve King…” 

Enjoy! / Lilja 

PART 1—Fansites,
Blaze
and The Haven Foundation
 

“I would rather that they think of me as Santa Claus. That I’m paying attention to their little lists but I can’t respond to everything in person.”  

“Will it satisfy the fans? And between you and me and between everybody who reads your website, I have my doubts.”  

Lilja:
So, how are you feeling? Have you recovered from your accident?  

Stephen King:
Well, I think that if it had happened to me when I was forty instead of fifty I might be all better, but I get sore and I have a fair amount of pain in the hip and the leg. But it doesn’t keep me down much. I walk about three and a half miles a day and they told me, “Use it or you’re gonna lose it,” but mostly I feel just terrific. I’m great.  

Lilja:
I’m glad to hear it. Having a website, I wonder, how do you feel about all the websites about you that are out there on the Internet?  

Stephen King:
Well, I don’t go much. I go to yours because it’s always interesting. There is always a lot to look at.  

Lilja:
Thank you!  

Stephen King:
And sometimes I peek at
The Dark Tower
sites to see what’s going on there, and every now and then I’ll be like a ghost and sniff around my own website. You know, I tell you what, it’s a fun thing to do to go to those places because, as Amy Tan says, when you go and you check on what people are saying about you it’s like being at a party and overhearing people say things, and the things they say are fairly nice.  

Lilja:
Do you ever feel like contacting the people who have the sites and correcting them if something is wrong or unfair?  

Stephen King:
No, I mean every now and then it’s like…I was looking at the thread on
Lisey’s Story
on the Stephen King website and there were several people that said, “Well jeez, if Scott was so sick why didn’t he go to that pool and get better?” and I got in touch with Marsha and said, “Will you tell these people that he couldn’t do that because the long boy was lying across the path?” You see stuff like that and you say, “Jeez, do these people really read or not?” Anyway, she put it on there but you could spend your life going to websites and looking at what people are saying about you and it would kind of slow me down and it would make me very self-conscious, so a lot of times I don’t do it.  

Lilja:
I did a Google search on your name and I got about 40 million hits…  

Stephen King:
Wow!  

Lilja:
So, there are a lot of sites out there.  

Stephen King:
See, it is scary to think of that. What can they all have to say?  

Lilja:
Well, you have done a lot.  

Stephen King:
I have. I have done a lot and I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s the way I am.  

Lilja:
It’s definitely a good thing!  

Stephen King:
Well, good. Thank you.  

Lilja:
Do you feel the pressure? I read somewhere that people expected you to respond to questions on your official site. Do you feel a pressure to interact with the fans?  

Stephen King:
I don’t particularly. I would rather that they think of me as Santa Claus. That I’m paying attention to their little lists but I can’t respond to everything in person. I’d like to think that they know that I know what’s going on and to some extent I do, but as I say, if I paid attention to everything I wouldn’t have time to write books and that’s what most people want.  

Lilja:
Yes, I think everyone wants that if they have to choose. I understand that
Blaze
will be out soon.  

Stephen King:
Yeah. I hope so. I mean, that was a funny thing because I have been thinking about that book off and on for a while and every time I would think about it…you know I did the early books as Richard Bachman books and this is going to be a Bachman because it came from the same time. It was written right before
Carrie
and finally I thought to myself…the reason I’ve never done it was because, in my memory at least, it was a tearjerker of a book, you know? It was kind of sentimental and just kind of…every now and then I think of what Oscar Wilde said about
The Little Match Girl
. He said that it’s impossible to read about the little match girl without weeping tears of laughter and…you know, something that is so sad it’s actually funny. 

And I felt that way a little bit about this Philip Roth book,
Every Man
. You know, I’m thinking, “That’s ridiculous, this is so sad it’s really quite funny,” but I’ve got a kind of a black sense of humor too.  

Lilja:
Why did you decide to release it as a Bachman book?  

Stephen King:
I read it again. And I thought…well, the first thing that I thought was I’ve got to look at this if I can still find it, if anybody can find it, because I’ve got this thing now, this Haven Foundation which is supposed to help freelance artists. You know about the Frank Muller situation?  

Lilja:
Yeah…  

Stephen King:
He had this horrible motorcycle accident and it turned out he had no money. He had no insurance. He had no backing. He owed the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. He owed them money for back taxes. He was just a mess and he had this one kid and another kid on the way that he just found out about like three or four days before this accident. And he was never gonna be…I mean, he’s totally fucked up. Pardon my French, but he’s totally screwed up. He’s never gonna work again and there was no money. So, we set up the Wavedancer Foundation for him and we could never really get any traction because the amount of money was so high and I just kept thinking, it drove me crazy, I’m thinking if this has happened to Frank, think of all the other freelancers who are out there who probably don’t have much, they are almost living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. So we started this thing, The Haven Foundation, at the time of the reading I did with Jo Rowling and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall.  

And the idea was to help writers and artists who were down on their luck and we gotta have some money to start with, we gotta have start-up money so, I’m thinking to myself. I need a book, I need to publish a book and copyright it to The Haven Foundation and all the money can go to this thing because I don’t need any more money, you know? I guess everybody could use it but right now I don’t exactly need it anymore.  

So,
Blaze
was what occurred to me and I thought, “Well, it’s probably not good enough; why not look at it again and see?” So, I did and I was wrong about it, it’s really a good book. So, I rewrote it and I did it kind of…it was very funny to get the manuscript because it was done on my wife’s old typewriter. Tabby claims that I married her for a typewriter. She had a nice little Olivetti portable typewriter, very sturdy, and I wrote
Carrie
on it,
Blaze
and a bunch of other stuff as well. I guess I wrote
Shawshank
on that typewriter too, on a kitchen table in Boulder…I went ahead and I rewrote it and sent it in. And they like it at Scribner so we’re going to do it.  

Lilja:
And you’re going to sell it through The Haven Foundation?  

Stephen King:
Yeah, the money will go to Haven. And that way we’ll have a certain amount in that fund to start with and we’ll do some fundraisers. I did a political thing with John Grisham for a senatorial candidate in September because anybody who is against George Bush’s Iraq policy is my friend.  

Lilja:
Yeah, I heard you talk about that…you got your wish.  

Stephen King:
Yeah, he got elected. He is a good guy. Bush met him and said, “How is your boy?” because Jim Webb’s boy is fighting in Iraq, and Webb said, “That’s between my boy and me.” Kind of spanked his nose. Not his business.  

Lilja:
You also wrote a story called “The Fifth Quarter” under the name John Swithen.  

Stephen King:
I did.  

Lilja:
Have you used other names?  

Stephen King:
No.  

Lilja:
Would you tell me if you had?  

Stephen King:
Actually at this point I would, but I never have. The Swithen thing…at that time I was publishing stories all the time in Cavalier and this story wasn’t like the horror stories. It’s this hardboiled crime thing and I had a story in the previous issue, and it was really like the pulp writers who used to use all different names in the 50s cause they poured that stuff out and that was my time to just pour stuff out, so I used the John Swithen name, but I never used it again. I didn’t really like it. Have you seen the thing that they did of “The Fifth Quarter” for
Nightmares & Dreamscapes
?  

Lilja:
Yes, I have seen it.  

Stephen King:
Not bad.  

Lilja:
The series was very good. I’m sad to hear that there probably won’t be a second season.  

Stephen King:
I don’t know, I don’t think so. I don’t really know. I mean it did pretty well for them. They’re going to do
The Talisman
.  

Lilja:
What are your feelings about them turning
The Talisman
into a TV series?  

Stephen King:
I’m glad somebody’s doing it. I mean, it seems to me that that’s the way to do it, as a miniseries, because nobody could ever make it work as a movie, there was too much stuff in there and you know Spielberg had it for the longest time and those were the only tough movie negotiations that I ever had. Because Spielberg at that time had a boss named Sid Sheinberg at Universal Pictures and Sid Sheinberg kind of inserted himself into things, and he was very rude and very, very hard-nosed because I don’t think he really wanted Spielberg to do that. At that time Spielberg was still young, he was really enthusiastic about all these things and he would buy a lot of things and let them sit. And Sheinberg was afraid that was what would happen to
The Talisman
and of course it was because it has been there for like twenty years.  

Lilja:
Yeah, I read that they even bought it before the book was released.  

Stephen King:
Yeah, I think they did…I think they did.  

Lilja:
I understand that a lot of fans are worried that it won’t be possible to translate it into a successful movie because it has such a rich story.  

Stephen King:
I don’t think it’ll be the same. I have seen some of the scripts and the scripts concentrate pretty much on Jack Sawyer’s relationship with Wolf and there’s a lot more to the book than that, but I think that they’re kind of concentrating on that relationship. I think it will probably look nice and that it will have a story to it. Will it satisfy the fans? And between you and me and between everybody who reads your website, I have my doubts. We’ll see.