A lost story?

[mae]

Browsing Google News Archive for old news stories about Stephen King (I was actually looking for contemporary reviews of his early books, but found only paid links, bah!), I found this one, which is a little intriguing:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zHURAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_eEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3873,1512712&hl=en

It's sort of an interview published on April 5, 1979. King mentions the following around the midpoint of the piece:


For example, I'm working on a story now about a guy who goes to his small town's restaurant every afternoon for coffee. One day he goes in and a different waitress takes his order. When he asks about the other waitress, the new one denies there ever was such a person. That's a frightening situation. How does a person cope with it?

This doesn't ring a bell with me; it doesn't sound like a King story I know. Any ideas?

At the end he mentions that he's "also working on a book that has a psychic feel to it, bad psychic manifestations, really dangerous," which sounds sort of like Firestarter, maybe, given the timeframe.

[Ari_Racing]

It sounds more or less like "The Reploids" (even when it's not the same situation, of course).

[lophophoras]

That is a neat old article.

Thanks for sharing.

[jhanic]

I agree on the Reploids. Different situation, but basically the same story of an "alternate universe". Shades of the Twilight Zone!

John

[Merlin1958]

I agree on the Reploids. Different situation, but basically the same story of an "alternate universe". Shades of the Twilight Zone!

John

or mayhap "Lost"? Hmmmmmmmmmm

[DanishCollector]

There must be many unfinished, unknown pieces by King we don't know of. One I waited for but never came, was a story King was working on about a planet where the inhabitants turned cannibals whenever it rained. He mentioned it in the intro to the complete serial novel version of The Green Mile and he further stated that he liked it...but where is it? No one knows. Or what about the one he mentioned in Faithful (the baseball-book with Stewart O'Nan) about a guy who watches a baseball game on TV and notice dead friends and relatives among the audience. "Spectators" was a title King mentioned.

[mae]

Maybe we should compile a list of these "mentions" that never came to fruition? That would be fun. I'm sure there have to be more.

[jhanic]

In Justin Brooks' Primary Bibliography, he lists 19 unfinished or unpublished novels and 24 unfinished or unpublished short stories. Of the novels, one, Blaze, has been published, and one of the short stories, Willa, has been published. That leaves lots of others that exist in various forms, most of which are in the Fogler Library collection at the University of Maine at Orono.

John

[mae]

I meant stories mentioned by King but not actually known to be existing, like the above examples.