They re pretty firm on a 50-50 split between the author and the publisher. It seemed to me that I could do better by going directly to the paperback house. Robin Cook does this, and I believe Helen Van Slyke did it in her last years. Mr. King says he has no idea where his obsession with the occult comes from. I ve had this interest ever since I was a kid.
People somehow acquire different interests that sink into their characters like lodestones.
His next book, Danse Macabre, will be a nonfiction treatment of the subject, examining how the genre has been treated by films, television, radio and comic books. Everest House will publish it next fall. I m not a fast writer, but I stick to it. I write 1,500 words a day, and the stuff just piles up. It s a constant secretion.