The Constant Reader Podcast - The Canon of Stephen King

Hello and welcome back to the Constant Reader Podcast, with me Richard Sheppard. Thanks for your kind words about my last interview with James Michels, author of the Melody of Shattered Gold, which is now available on amazon. It’s well worth picking up, the ending is a real gut punch, and the journey is a wild ride.  Speaking of wild rides, today we are going to be looking at the third volume in K...

Welcome back to the Constant reader Podcast, and thanks for bearing with us during our long hiatus. We have gathered up quite a few of our favorite repeat guests for 2025 though, so i am sure you will forgive us. We have lined up Kim C from the year of underrated Stephen King podcast with another step towards the Dark Tower. The gentlemen from King Con will be giving a report on how their conventi...

As the Dollar Baby experiment comes to its close, i would like to shine a spotlight on some of the more successful films made from the treasure trove of Stephen King's short stories. 'That Feeling' by Paul Inman expertly captures the dark, guilt-ridden themes of the 1998 short story 'That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French'. It's being shown at October's Kin...

This Autumn why not head to the Linq Hotel between the 24th-27th of October for the first-of-its-kind Stephen King Convention (AKA KingCON2024)? There is a great lineup of guests, including Mick Garris, Robert Kurtzman and two of my recent favorite authors, Jonathan Janz and Ronald Malfi. There are also a host of illustrators, artists, writers, collectors, vendors and (more importantly) many like-...

Back once again with undisputed Queen of Stephen King podcasting, Kim C. In this episode, Kim C. plays Sherpa Tenzing to my increasingly word-baggery Edmund Hilary as we scale the second Dark Tower novel, The Drawing of the Three. As you will hear, this installment of the DT series left us bewitched, bothered, bemused and with breathe completely taken. How autobiographical is it? Which is scarier,...

Our fever for The Stand has gone full blown this month, as we finish our epic conversation with Andy Stanton. We discuss the mutations of The Stand, from the graphic novels to the miniseries and touching on the forthcoming The End of the World as We Know It, a collection of short stories set in the world of Captain Trips with contributions from past guests including Paul Tremblay and Richard Chizm...

Lindsey Anderson Beer's 2023 prequel to the 2019 reboot of Pet Sematary got something of a kicking by most critics on its release. There are the bones of a good film in their somewhere though, and the look and the soundtrack of the film, plus an eclectic cast, make it an interesting curio if nothing else. Joining me to discuss it is N.P. Cunniffe, the author of the new folk horror/Gothic novel...

We're back (again) after a long hiatus, but what a return. One of the most listened to episodes of this podcast were the two-part epic discussions between me and Andy Stanton a few years ago. We both kicked around the idea of a rematch, and what other book could we cover but the 1990 edition of Stephen King's The Stand? Whilst other podcasts displayed depressingly lateral thinking of cover...

We unearth a real curio in the King canon today, as the teleplay for Sorry, Right Number gets a good grilling. Originally filmed as part of the Tales From The Darkside television series, the teleplay was then reproduced in the 1993 short story collection, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. My guest and I discuss how much of this is autobiography, how much a cry for help, and how much just an effective, g...

It should be unsurprising that Stephen King, as the world's most popular writer, should have such a pervasive presence online. More than any other author, the number of his fan-sites is in the thousands. However, only one fan-site has achieved the kind of dominance that Lilja's Library has. Indeed, it is a resource in producing this podcast every month. I sat down to talk to the man known...

Daphné Baiwir is the writer and director of a new documentary, Stephen King on Screen. When I read the description of the documentary, I knew I had to talk to her. She has assembled not only a list of filmmakers and fans (including previous guest Tom Holland) that promise real insight, but it opens with an easter-egg filled introduction that will have King fans freezeframing for years to come. Ste...

I had the pleasure of being a guest on Kim C's podcast, The Year of Underrated Stephen King, a few months ago. It was such a fun, lively conversation, and Kim C was such a knowledgeable, charming host that I took the liberty of inviting her to come on the Constant Reader Podcast to discuss the monolithic 11.22.63. It was a pleasure to dive back into this book, which is a real outlier for King...

I am joined by Ally Wilkes on an expedition very few Stephen King fans will forget - into the heart of darkness and autocannibalism in Survivor Type. This grisly morsel was the grossout highlight of King's collection Skeleton Crew. It was recently turned into an animated episode of Shudder's Creepshow to pretty good effect. Once read, this one isn't easily forgotten, certainly not by A...

This month we take a look at the torments of the writing process through the lens of Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of 1987 King novel Misery. Like last month's Shawshank Redemption it was a favourite of critics and audiences alike, mainly due to the bravura performances of James Caan and Kathy Bates. Joining me to talk about it is screenwriter and film buff Justin Stanley, who has written about the...

Apologies for the hiatus, now back at full strength and we have a full slate of episodes for 2023 lined up, including some TBC guests making their own Stephen King adaptations, as well as some of the geniuses behind some big-name books and TV shows, plus fellow podcasters from within the Stephen King podcasting community. James Michels is a great guest to kick off the year. His experiences working...

Isaac Thorne is a man with a serious imagination. Hell Spring, his most recent novel contains (amongst much else) a killer Marilyn Monroe, cataclysmic floods, self-mutilation, time travel and monstrous phalluses. Who better to investigate one of King's more off-kilter, leftfield novels, the fantasy epic The Eyes of the Dragon? We discuss this charming anomaly's place in the King canon, which featu...

                     PLEASE LIKE, RATE, REVIEW AND SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST ON WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS FROM Please note that we discuss the publication of Lauren's new book Death Lines at length, as well as its original publication date. That date has now been pushed back, but I urge yo...

Still having a few issues with Zencastr, so this is another Skype special. Audio quality doesn't dictate guest quality, however, and talking to Sean Hogan was a blast. We discuss King's old-school ghost story, Bag of Bones, and how the gothic and the modern turn into an underrated King tour-de-force. I was a huge fan of Sean's book England's Screaming, which we discuss at length, and we get some t...

Back after a brief sabbatical, we pick up our deep-diving trawl through Stephen King's oeuvre with one of my new favourite writers, Matt Wesolowski. Here's some blurb: - "Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-b...

Much gratitude to Julia Marchese of the Horror Movie Survival Guide and the director and guiding light behind the forthcoming 'Dollar Baby' adaptation of Stephen King's shot story I Know What You Need. Together Julia and I battled technical difficulties (after my interview with Stewart O Nan I think I might be jinxed, or at least have gremlins in the recoding equipment) and we eventually got aroun...

Duma Key, an epic of recovery, talent, murderous secrets and the Florida Keys gets a deep dive today. I was recently a guest on the SFF Chrons podcast hosted by fan of the show Dan Jones and co-hosted by today's guest, Christopher Bean. Duma Key hits hard for Christopher, in ways that we discuss in depth on this episode. Thanks to Christopher for coming on and talking about this slice of what he h...

Stewart O'Nan's new book, Ocean State, has recently been released in the United States to wide acclaim. However, today we are going to look at one of his earlier books - 2001's The Speed Queen. In a change from our usual format, this isn't a book or an adaptation of a Stephen King text, but instead a novel that uses Stephen King as a character. King is the (unnamed but highly guessable) recipient...

The return of author, columnist, minister and podcaster Peter Laws to the podcast, taking a dive into the George Romero/Stephen King collaboration Creepshow (1982). We take part each episode of this mixed bag of gory tales, touching upon George Romero's career, soundtrack obsessives, the beast within and the cockroaches in the wall. Peter can be found at https://www.peterlaws.co.uk/ , and his new...

Buyer beware in Castle Rock, as Leland Gaunt only wants a little of your money, and all of your soul. Stephen King's 1994 novel Needful Things gets a dismantling with returning guest Dan Jones. One of our mutual favourites, and one of the stories that signposted the interesting development King's work would take in the 1990s, as he starts to leave Maine behind (in explosive fashion) and branches o...

Apologies for the wait on this one, thanks for your patience. We will be returning to our celebration of Epix TV's Chapelwaite soon, but for now I was luck enough to sit down with Alex Grass, author of Dreck, about addiction, the writing life, and Stephen King's novel Doctor Sleep.  Alex is a fascinating chap, and a fine writer, and I urge you to seek out his work here . Thanks to Goran Grmus...