Original 1986 hardcover jacket for Stephen King's It (Viking Books at Penguin Random House)I was 16 years old when the death rattle sounded in my parent’s marriage. That summer I read Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew. King’s name dominated the jacket, hanging like a specter over the title, which was printed in blood red letters. “To this day I don’t know what exactly it was about those opening lines, but something about them made me want to become a writer. And somehow my mom, who I always suspected of being able to read minds, looked at me and said, “You’re going to be a famous writer one day.”I closed the book.

Source: Huffington Post September 10, 2017 21:45 UTC