Stephen King changes new book’s story based on the Covid-19 pandemic

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

In a recent NPR interview, author Stephen King talked about how in his upcoming (as-of-yet untitled) novel, he had to change the setting of his story because of the recent Covid-19 outbreak (which he jokingly states, "I keep having people say, 'Gee, it's like we're living in a Stephen King story,;…And my only response to that is, 'I'm sorry.'"). Which isn't surprising, as he wrote one of the seminal "virus pandemic" stories THE STAND (though, to be fair, that was more focused on the apocalyptic aftermath than the initial day-to-day). 

Either way, here's what he had to say in the interview:

I set [the book I'm working on] in the year 2020 because I thought, "OK, when I publish it, if it's in 2021, it will be like in the past, safely in the past." And then this thing came along, and I immediately looked back through the copy that I'd written and I saw that one of the things that was going on was that two of my characters had gone on a cruise. … And I thought, "Well, no, I don't think anybody's going on cruise ships this year." And so I looked at everything and I immediately set the book in 2019, where people could congregate and be together and the story would work because of that.

Though it's a little disappointing to hear he's not directly addressing our current situation (especially with how well he is at, in his own words "[the] intrusion of the unexpected and the strange" into mundane situations), it's understandable – as someone who makes a living writing – that it's much easier to simply make a single change than to rewrite everything from scratch.

Meanwhile, King currently has a collection of short stories IF IT BLEEDS coming out April 21st (PRE-ORDER HERE), and it seems – due to the change in setting – his newest novel will be receiving at least some delay, though there's been no official release date scheduled as of yet.