Director and screenwriter Josh Boone has been extremely busy in the Stephen King Universe, with both a ten-hour limited series of The Stand at CBS All Access and a feature film adaptation of Revival in the works.
I was thrilled he was willing to write an introduction for our special edition, and I was especially moved when I discovered how honest and frank his introduction ended up being. I cannot wait to share the whole thing with you, but until then here is…
An excerpt from Josh Boone’s brand new introduction to Revival: The Deluxe Special Edition by Stephen King:
“All the little ants are marching…”
by Josh Boone
I was raised by Bible-thumping Baptists. King was a big no no. Hardcovers were hidden under my bed on top of the wooden slats that supported my box springs, and paperbacks were stripped of their covers and glued inside the stripped covers of Christian books — like Frank E. Peretti’s This Present Darkness, a near match in size with the Plume softcovers of The Dark Tower books — so I could get away with reading them. My life bore some disturbing similarities to Fahrenheit 451, and there was indeed a bonfire in our fireplace when my copy of The Stand was discovered.
When I was twelve, I mailed Stephen King a box of his own books and a letter professing my love for his work and my desire to be a writer too. I didn’t know King’s address, only that he lived in Bangor, Maine. Naturally, I stole my Dad’s Fed-Ex account number he used for work and sent the package out into the universe hoping it would reach him.
Several weeks later, I came home from private Christian school to find a box had arrived in the mail from Maine. Inside were my books — the first three Dark Tower books to be exact, all that had been published at the time — each inscribed with a lengthy note from the only god I truly worshipped at the time, who encouraged me in my writing and thanked me for being a fan. He also threw in a limited edition of one of his stories as a gift, My Pretty Pony. My parents, genuinely moved by King’s kindness and generosity, lifted the ban on his books that very day.
And that, folks, is my origin story, as Stan Lee would have called it, an origin story I’ve told in numerous interviews and scores of meetings for years. I can tell it on auto-pilot with complete conviction and without missing a beat. It’s become part of my act. Every word true, but a highly-condensed sales pitch of my life nonetheless.
The actual truth is a bit more complicated……
Read Josh Boone’s complete introduction about how Stephen King changed his life in the LetterPress Publications special edition of Revival by Stephen King, available for just a few more days through one of these fine booksellers:
Bad Moon Books • Betts Bookstore • Camelot Books • Cemetery Dance Publications • Dark Regions • Gerald Winters and Son • The Overlook Connection Bookstore • PS Publishing (UK & Europe) • Stephen King Catalog • Subterranean Press
Best,
Brian