Wherever he goes, Stephen King said, people come up to him and say: "You scare the hell out of me."
And they follow it with: "Can I have a hug?"
"At some point of my career," the author told a capacity crowd Thursday night at the Manatee Performing Arts Center, "I became America's best-loved bogey man."
King doesn't do too many charity events, but when representatives of the Library Foundation, which supports the Manatee County Public Library System, wrote last spring asking him to speak at an annual author event, he agreed. Individual tickets went for $200, and Stone Hall sold out within three weeks.
The foundation met its goal of raising $100,000, just through ticket sales, and thousands more from raffled collectibles.
The crowd consisted mostly of Bradenton-area residents, but others came from as far away as California, Canada and even Argentina for the event.
Ariel Bosi and his friend, Federico Axat, came from Buenos Aires just to hear King speak. They spent six days here, and took time to see places King, a seasonal Bradenton-area resident, mentions in his writing.
"He's the greatest collector (of King items) in Argentina," Axat said of his friend.
They're members of a website for King fans called
thedarktower.org. The met in Bradenton with about 20 website members, including Rick Smith of California, Kris and Chantal Webster of Nova Scotia and several other people from the east coast of Florida.
"Groups of us get tickets," Smith said. "We get tickets for one another. We're fans. King's a great writer and a great speaker."
King mingled with guests at a private reception before his presentation, then went to collect his thoughts for a half-hour or so before he came on stage.
"We're not at home watching television," he told the crowd. "We're not at the movies. We're not playing video games. We're here because we love to read."
He spoke of his childhood, growing up without much money in the Maine countryside, in an area with no library.
"I had a hunger for books," he said. He lived for the days when the bookmobile would come to his neighborhood and he could replenish his supply of novels.
One of the questions he said he's asked most often: "Where do you get your ideas?"
He said the answer isn't as intriguing as people hope.
"The fact is that the ideas come from everywhere," he said. "But I like to tell people that there's this little ideas shop in Utica where you can get second-hand ideas."
The actual process of developing ideas is still a bit mystical, he said.
"There's a moments when there are two ideas in your head, and there's a moment when those two ideas come together," he said. "And that is why still I do this job."
King talked for about 45 minutes, ambling around the stage with a hand-held microphone and occasionally stretching out. His tone was amiable, though his speech was peppered with R-rated language.
Although he seemed to be enjoying himself onstage, he said he was uncomfortable with his public persona and felt like an impostor.
"I don't have the greatest self-image," he said. "The man who wrote those books is not here because he doesn't do public. He sends me instead. There is someone inside who does this job and he doesn't come out in public."
King didn't take a fee and donated collectible autographed books to be raffled and auctioned, which raised thousands for the Library Foundation.
The money raised from the King event, together with $150,000 in matching funds from the county, will pay for a new computer system for the library.