He couldn’t stop those books to tackle these ideas, so he got into the habit of telling the stories to himself while he was going to sleep at night instead of counting sheep. The ideas came to him while he writing other novels. He calls the stories in this collection his bedtime stories.

Even “The Mist,” a later novella, was published as a standalone book from one of the big houses as a movie tie-in. This is a territory King called “an anarchy-ridden literary banana republic.” Nowadays, there are more opportunities to publish novellas, especially in the small press. In his lengthy afterword to Different Seasons, King bemoans the sad state of the novella, that peculiar form of fiction that falls between longer short stories and shorter novels, tales in the 25-30,000 word range. The publishing landscape was different in 1982. That may not seem unusual now, but at the time it was something of a departure for King. None of the stories had been previously published. It was haunted, all right-and so was I by the time I finished reading “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” » Read moreĭifferent Seasons is a collection that contains only four tales and, with the exception of “The Breathing Method,” there is nothing remotely supernatural in them. Well, maybe the prison will be haunted, I thought. I remember opening Different Seasons and scanning the promo copy for “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” on the inside dust jacket flap- the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo-and feeling just a bit underwhelmed. Of course, I was thrilled and grateful and dove right in. I can’t remember what Santa left under the tree for me that Christmas, but I do remember what my sister Mary surprised me with: an inscribed (by her not King) hardcover copy of Different Seasons. But, first, I had two weeks off and couldn’t wait to do absolutely nothing. I had just turned seventeen four days earlier and was looking forward to my final semester of high school…and then college.

Stephen king's four seasons