When I was nine years old, I had the first of what would be many cavities filled. I got to stay home from school that day, and spent most of my time crying in my room because my perfect dental record was now marred (oh, if only I’d known then). I remember my dad coming into my room and giving me a pat on the back. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said to me. “But here’s something to take your mind off of it.”  He handed me a copy of Eyes of the Dragon, what some consider to be Stephen King’s only Young Adult novel. While I was an avid reader at the time, the heaviest book I’d read was Katie John.

I remember looking at the cover with some pretty heavy skepticism. It didn’t seem likely that there would be any Babysitters Club type adventures in this book. It looked scary. Dangerous.

The story was High Fantasy, so it was easy for me to get into, even moreso having young characters like Peter and Thomas who were close to my own age.

And that’s how it started for me. Reading Eyes of the Dragon opened my eyes up not just to horror and fantasy, but to reading in general. It did for me what Harry Potter has done for Millennials. After that I was hooked. I read every book I could get my hands on, including some I really shouldn’t have read until I was older. I remember a day when I was 12 my mother coming up to my room one afternoon. “We haven’t seen you all day,” she said. “Have you been up here reading this whole time?” Reading is what lit my creative fire, and it all started with Stephen King. So today Skinner and Gg joined me to talk about King and his influence on pop culture, from Walking Dead and Lost to Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place. We discuss the best and the worst, the trouble with endings, and a lengthy discussion on The Dark Tower series.