Horror Of It All: Stephen King Co-Authoring Book On Red Sox

King Continues Baseball Connection In Writings

Novelists Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan are writing a book on the Red Sox titled “Faithful,” that chronicles “this season’s ups and downs as seen by two passionate Red Sox fans with a talent for horror stories,” according to Bob Minzesheimer of USA TODAY. The book will be published by Scribner in December with an initial run of 500,000 copies. King said that the authors “have a sports-like ‘escalator clause’ in their contract: They’ll get paid more if the Red Sox win the World Series.” Minzesheimer notes baseball “has figured in nearly all of King’s more than 40 novels.” Cemetery Dance columnist Bev Vincent, whose column focuses on King’s work, said, “I’d think you’d be hard pressed to find a [King] book where characters don’t discuss baseball at some point, and usually one of them is a Red Sox fan.” Minzesheimer notes King’s ’99 work, “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,” is about a 9-year-old lost in the Maine woods who “finds comfort in imaginary advice from her hero,” former Red Sox and current Yankees P Tom Gordon. The story has since been turned into a children’s pop-up book that will be published Tuesday (USA TODAY, 10/8).