Neil Gaiman talks to Stephen King about that Shining sequel & Joyland

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Chances are if you’re here on the pages of AITH then you’re a fan of Stephen King. Hell chances are you’re a fan of Stephen King, period. The man has done so much and put out so many different kinds of novels that there’s bound to be at least one you dig. But I’m not here to talk about King’s past work. No, no. Instead we’re here to talk about the future!

The UK Sunday Times Magazine recently put together a piece where Neil Gaiman got the chance to interview the one and only Stephen King (above). Now the interview touched on several different topics, including that SHINING sequel DR. SLEEP and King’s latest novel: JOYLAND. What is JOYLAND? Why it’s a book about a serial killer unleashed in an amusement park of course!

“Somebody told me that every year Danielle Steel wrote three books and published two, and I knew Agatha Christie had squirrelled a couple away, to put a final bow on her career. As of right now, if I died and everybody kept it a secret, it would go on until 2013. There’s a new Dark Tower novel, The Wind in the Keyhole.That comes out soon, and Dr Sleep is done. So if I got hit by a taxi cab, like Margaret Mitchell… Joyland wouldn’t be done but Joe could finish it, in a breeze. His style is almost indistinguishable from mine. His ideas are better than mine. Being around Joe is like being next to a Catherine Wheel throwing off sparks, all these ideas. I do want to slow down. My agent is dickering with the publishers about Dr Sleep, that’s the sequel to The Shining, but I held off showing them the manuscript because I wanted time to breathe.”

And in regards to DR. SLEEP: “I did it because it was such a cheesed-off thing to do. To say you were going back to the book that was really popular and write the sequel. People read it as kids; then as adults they might read the sequel and think, this isn’t as good. The challenge is, maybe it can be as good – or different. It gives you something to push up against. [And] I wanted to see what would happen to Danny Torrence when he grew up. I knew that he would be a drunk because his father was a drunk. I thought, okay, I’ll start with Danny Torrence at age forty. He is going to be one of those people who says ‘I am never going to be like my father. Then you wake up at 37 or 38 and you’re a drunk. Then I thought, what kind of a life does that person like that have? He’ll do a bunch of low-bottom jobs, he’ll get canned, and now, I really want him to be in a hospice worker because he has the shining and he can help people get across as they die. They call him Dr Sleep, and they know to call for him when the cat goes into their room and sits on their bed. This was writing about the guy who rides the bus, and he’s eating in a McDonalds, or on a special night out maybe Red Lobster. We are not talking about a guy who goes to [the upmarket restaurant] Sardi’s.”

To check out the rest of what the iconic author had to say in the interview, including details about the latest DARK TOWER installment, head right over HERE.