Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King

So often we find ourselves wanting to pick the brain of our favorite author. Wishing we could be a fly on the wall in their creative process wondering how they bring the stories and characters to life. In Monsters in the Archives, Caroline Bicks succeeds at just that in spending a year in the personal archives of Stephen King’s early and most iconic works, pulling back the curtain on the king of horror’s brain. The author takes us through an exploration of King’s early and most iconic novels, Carrie, Salems Lot, The Shining, Night Shift, and Pet Sematary. Bick’s passion and enthusiasm for uncovering these stories were evident through the pages. The recounting of her own experiences with these stories made me realize even more why I love this genre so much. A good horror story holds onto you for life and does not let go, though the impact can mean something different at new stages of life. Seeing photocopies of King’s original manuscripts complete with notes from him and the editors in the margins was incredibly fascinating. Even the smallest changes in verbiage or the removal of a single word in a scene had the power to completely transform the tone and impact of the story. Every readers experience with this book will be different. If you’re already a fan of these stories it will be like revisiting where or who you were when you read them for the first time. If you’re new to these stories, this can be a guidebook (with spoilers) into the SK universe letting you choose which novel you’d like to dive into first. I highly recommend this book to any horror lover or anyone who has ever had an interest on how an author creates especially at a time when true human creativity and talent is being threatened more than ever. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this book! All opinions are my own.