⌦ Federal Reserve p̲r̲e̲d̲i̲c̲t̲s̲ 24,290% from here

𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝖶𝗁𝗂𝗍𝖾 𝖧𝗈𝗎𝗌𝖾, 𝖥𝖾𝖽𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗅 𝖱𝖾𝗌𝖾𝗋𝗏𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖳𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗌𝗎𝗋𝗒 𝖣𝖾𝗉𝗍. 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝖽𝗂𝗋𝖾𝖼𝗍𝗅𝗒 𝗂𝗇𝗏𝗈𝗅𝗏𝖾𝖽... 𝖺𝗌 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝖺𝗍 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝟦𝟣 𝖽𝗂𝖿𝖿𝖾𝗋𝖾𝗇𝗍 𝖻𝖺𝗇𝗄𝗌... 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾 𝗈𝖿 𝖠𝗆𝖾𝗋𝗂𝖼𝖺'𝗌 𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝗉𝗈𝗐𝖾𝗋𝖿𝗎𝗅 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗉𝖺𝗇𝗂𝖾𝗌. [Invest Knowledge Media]( The Federal Government just began the nationwide rollout of a strange new technology... The White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Dept. are directly involved... as are at least 41 different banks... and some of America's most powerful companies. According to official figures released by the Fed, use of this technology is set to grow 24,290% in the near future. Which [creates a huge opportunity]( – if you're quick... Because the Fed isn't rolling this technology out alone. It has several key partners... which are all set to ride this wave of mass adoption in the next several years. Move now and you have the chance to capitalize too. [Here are the three things to do as the nationwide rollout gathers pace.]( Best, Eric Wade Editor, Stansberry Innovations Report Joanne Rowling CH OBE FRSL (/ˈroʊlɪŋ/ "rolling";[1] born 31 July 1965), better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote Harry Potter, a seven-volume fantasy series published from 1997 to 2007. The series has sold over 600 million copies, been translated into 84 languages, and spawned a global media franchise including films and video games. The Casual Vacancy (2012) was her first novel for adults. She writes Cormoran Strike, an ongoing crime fiction series, under the alias Robert Galbraith. Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International in 1990 when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, the birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. Six sequels followed, and by 2008, Forbes had named her the world's highest-paid author. Rowling concluded the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). The novels follow a boy called Harry Potter as he attends Hogwarts (a school for wizards), and battles Lord Voldemort. Death and the divide between good and evil are the central themes of the series. Its influences include Bildungsroman (the coming-of-age genre), school stories, fairy tales, and Christian allegory. The series revived fantasy as a genre in the children's market, spawned a host of imitators, and inspired an active fandom. Critical reception has been more mixed. Many reviewers see Rowling's writing as conventional; some regard her portrayal of gender and social division as regressive. There were also religious debates over the Harry Potter series. Rowling has won many accolades for her work. She has received an OBE and made a Companion of Honour for services to literature and philanthropy. Harry Potter brought her wealth and recognition, which she has used to advance philanthropic endeavours and political causes. She co-founded the charity Lumos and established the Volant Charitable Trust, named after her mother. Rowling's charitable giving centres on medical causes and supporting at-risk women and children. In politics, she has donated to Britain's Labour Party and opposed Scottish independence and Brexit. She has publicly expressed her opinions on transgender people and related civil rights since 2017. These have been criticised as transphobic by LGBT rights organisations and some feminists, but have received support from other feminists and individuals. Name Although she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling, before her remarriage her name was Joanne Rowling,[2] or Jo.[3] At birth, she had no middle name.[2] Staff at Bloomsbury Publishing asked that she use two initials rather than her full name, anticipating that young boys – their target audience – would not want to read a book written by a woman.[2] She chose K (for Kathleen) as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother, and because of the ease of pronunciation of two consecutive letters.[4] Following her 2001 remarriage,[5] she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business.[6] Life and career Early life and family A sign reading "Platform 9+3⁄4" with half of a luggage trolley installed beneath, at the interior of King's Cross railway station. Rowling's parents met on a train from King's Cross station; her portal to the magical world is "Platform 9+3⁄4" at King's Cross.[7] Joanne Rowling was born on 31 July 1965 at Cottage Hospital in Yate, Gloucestershire,[8][b] to a middle-class family.[10] Her parents Anne (née Volant) and Peter ("Pete") James Rowling had met the previous year on a train, sharing a trip from King's Cross station, London, to their naval postings at Arbroath, Scotland. Anne was with the Wrens and Pete was with the Royal Navy.[14] Pete was the son of a machine-tool setter who later opened a grocery shop.[15] They left the navy life and sought a country home to raise the baby they were expecting,[15] and married on 14 March 1965[10] when both were 19.[16] The Rowlings settled in Yate,[17] where Pete started work as an assembly-line production worker at the Bristol Siddeley factory.[15] The company became part of Rolls-Royce,[18] and he worked his way into management as a chartered engineer.[19] Anne later worked as a science technician.[20] Neither Anne nor Pete attended university.[21] Joanne is two years older than her sister, Dianne.[10] When Joanne was four, the family moved to Winterbourne, Gloucestershire.[16][22] She began at St Michael's Church of England Primary School in Winterbourne when she was five.[10][c] The Rowlings lived near a family called Potter – a name Joanne always liked.[25][d] Anne loved to read and their homes were filled with books.[26] Pete read The Wind in the Willows to his daughters,[27] while Anne introduced them to the animals in Richard Scarry's books.[28] Joanne's first attempt at writing, a story called "Rabbit" composed when she was six, was inspired by Scarry's creatures.[28] When Rowling was about nine, the family purchased the historic Church Cottage in Tutshill.[29][e] In 1974, Rowling began attending the nearby Church of England School.[33] Biographer Sean Smith describes her teacher as a "battleaxe"[34] who "struck fear into the hearts of the children";[35] she seated Rowling in "dunces' row" after she performed poorly on an arithmetic test.[36][f] In 1975, Rowling joined a Brownies pack. Its special events and parties, and the pack groups (Fairies, Pixies, Sprites, Elves, Gnomes and Imps) provided a magical world away from her stern teacher.[39] When she was eleven[40] or twelve, she wrote a short story, "The Seven Cursed Diamonds".[41] She later described herself during this period as "the epitome of a bookish child – short and squat, thick National Health glasses, living in a world of complete daydreams".[42] Secondary school and university Church Cottage, Rowling's childhood home Rowling's secondary school was Wyedean School and College, a state school she began attending at the age of eleven[43] and where she was bullied.[44][45] Rowling was inspired by her favourite teacher, Lucy Shepherd, who taught the importance of structure and precision in writing.[46][47] Smith writes that Rowling "craved to play heavy electric guitar",[48] and describes her as "intelligent yet shy".[49] Her teacher Dale Neuschwander was impressed by her imagination.[50] When she was a young teenager, Rowling's great-aunt gave her Hons and Rebels, the autobiography of the civil rights activist Jessica Mitford.[51] Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and she read all her books.[52] Anne had a strong influence on her daughter.[10] Early in Rowling's life, the support of her mother and sister instilled confidence and enthusiasm for storytelling.[53] Anne was a creative and accomplished cook,[54][g] who helped lead her daughters' Brownie activities,[57] and took a job in the chemistry department at Wyedean while her daughters were there.[20] The three walked to and from school, sharing stories about their day, more like sisters than mother and daughters.[48][58] John Nettleship, the head of science at Wyedean, described Anne as "absolutely brilliant, a sparkling character ... very imaginative".[11] Anne Rowling was diagnosed with a "virulent strain" of multiple sclerosis when she was 34[59] or 35 and Jo was 15,[60] and had to give up her job.[61] Rowling's home life was complicated by her mother's illness[62] and a strained relationship with her father.[63] Rowling later said "home was a difficult place to be",[64] and that her teenage years were unhappy.[31] In 2020, she wrote that her father would have preferred a son and described herself as having severe obsessive–compulsive disorder in her teens.[65] She began to smoke, took an interest in alternative rock,[59] and adopted Siouxsie Sioux's back-combed hair and black eyeliner.[11] Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth, owned a turquoise Ford Anglia that provided an escape from her difficult home life and the means for Harris and Rowling to broaden their activities.[66][h] Living in a small town with pressures at home, Rowling became more interested in her school work.[59] Steve Eddy, her first secondary school English teacher, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English".[31] Rowling took A-levels in English, French and German, achieving two As and a B and was named head girl at Wyedean.[69] She applied to Oxford University in 1982 but was rejected.[10] Biographers attribute her rejection to privilege, as she had attended a state school rather than a private one.[70][71] Rowling always wanted to be a writer,[72] but chose to study French and the classics at the University of Exeter for practical reasons, influenced by her parents who thought job prospects would be better with evidence of bilingualism.[73] She later stated that Exeter was not initially what she expected ("to be among lots of similar people – thinking radical thoughts") but that she enjoyed herself after she met more people like her.[52] She was an average student at Exeter, described by biographers as prioritising her social life over her studies, and lacking ambition and enthusiasm.[74][75] Rowling recalls doing little work at university, preferring to read Dickens and Tolkien.[31] She earned a BA in French from Exeter,[76] graduating in 1987 after a year of study in Paris.[77] Inspiration and mother's death After university, Rowling moved to a flat in Clapham Junction with friends,[78] and took a course to become a bilingual secretary.[10] While she was working temp jobs in London, Amnesty International hired her to document human rights issues in French-speaking Africa.[79] She began writing adult novels while working as a temp, although they were never published.[11][80] In 1990, she planned to move with her boyfriend to Manchester,[16] and frequently took long train trips to visit.[40] In mid-1990, she was on a train delayed by four hours from Manchester to London,[81] when the characters Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger came plainly into her mind.[82] Having no pen or paper allowed her to fully explore the characters and their story in her imagination before she reached her flat and began to write.[81] Rowling moved to Manchester around November 1990.[52] She described her time in Manchester, where she worked for the Chamber of Commerce[40] and at Manchester University in temp jobs,[83] as a "year of misery".[84] Her mother died of multiple sclerosis on 30 December 1990.[85] At the time, she was writing Harry Potter and had never told her mother about it.[86] Her mother's death heavily affected Rowling's writing.[87] She later said that her literary creation of the Mirror of Erised is about her mother's death,[88] and noted an "evident parallelism" between Harry confronting his own mortality and her life.[89] The pain of the loss of her mother was compounded when some personal effects her mother had left her were stolen.[52] With the end of the relationship with her boyfriend, and "being made redundant from an office job in Manchester", Rowling described herself as being in a state of "fight or flight".[31] An advertisement in The Guardian led her to move to Porto, Portugal, in November 1991 to teach night classes in English as a foreign language,[90] writing during the day.[31] Marriage, divorce, and single parenthood A panned out image of city buildings. Rowling moved to Porto, Portugal, to teach English. Five months after arriving in Porto, Rowling met the Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar and found that they shared an interest in Jane Austen.[91] By mid-1992, they were planning a trip to London to introduce Arantes to Rowling's family, when she had a miscarriage.[92] The relationship was troubled, but they married on 16 October 1992.[93][i] Their daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford[j]) was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal.[11][40] By this time, Rowling had finished the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone – almost as they were eventually published – and had drafted the rest of the novel.[95] Rowling experienced domestic abuse during her marriage.[65][96] Arantes said in June 2020 that he had slapped her and did not regret it.[97] Rowling described the marriage as "short and catastrophic".[40] She says she was not allowed to have a house key and that her husband used the growing manuscript of her first book as a hostage.[98] Rowling and Arantes separated on 17 November 1993 after Arantes threw her out of the house; she returned with the police to retrieve Jessica and went into hiding for two weeks before she left Portugal.[11][99] In late 1993, with a draft of Harry Potter in her suitcase,[31] Rowling moved with her daughter to Edinburgh, Scotland,[8] planning to stay with her sister until Christmas.[52] Her biographer Sean Smith raises the question of why Rowling chose to stay with her sister rather than her father.[100] Rowling has spoken of an estrangement from her father, stating in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that "It wasn't a good relationship from my point of view for a very long time but I had a need to please and I kept that going for a long time and then there ... just came a point at which I had to pull up and say I can't do this anymore."[63] Pete had married his secretary within two years of Anne's death,[101] and The Scotsman reported in 2003 that "[t]he speed of his decision to move in with his secretary ... distressed both sisters and a fault-line now separated them and their father."[11] Rowling said in 2012 that they had not spoken in the last nine years.[31] Rowling sought government assistance and got £69 (US$103) per week from Social Security; not wanting to burden her recently married sister, she moved to a flat that she described as mouse-ridden.[102] She later described her economic status as being as "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless".[31] Seven years after graduating from university, she saw herself as a failure.[103] Tison Pugh writes that the "grinding effects of poverty, coupled with her concern for providing for her daughter as a single parent, caused great hardship".[40] Her marriage had failed, and she was jobless with a dependent child, but she later described this as "liberating" her to focus on writing.[103] She has said that "Jessica kept me going".[101] Her old school friend, Sean Harris, lent her £600 ($900), which allowed her to move to a flat in Leith,[104] where she finished Philosopher's Stone.[104] Arantes arrived in Scotland in March 1994 seeking both Rowling and Jessica.[11][105] On 15 March 1994, Rowling sought an action of interdict (order of restraint); the interdict was granted and Arantes returned to Portugal.[11][106] Early in the year, Rowling began to experience a deep depression[107] and sought medical help when she contemplated suicide.[40][k] With nine months of therapy, her mental health gradually improved.[107] She filed for divorce on 10 August 1994;[109] the divorce was finalised on 26 June 1995.[110] Rowling wanted to finish the book before enrolling in a teacher training course, fearing she might not be able to finish once she started the course.[52] She often wrote in cafés,[111] including Nicolson's, part-owned by her brother-in-law.[112] Secretarial work brought in £15 ($22.50) per week, but she would lose government benefits if she earned more.[113] In mid-1995, a friend gave her money that allowed her to come off benefits and enrol full-time in college.[114] Still needing money and expecting to make a living by teaching,[115] Rowling began a teacher training course in August 1995 at Moray House School of Education[116][a] after completing her first novel.[117] She earned her teaching certificate in July 1996[2] and began teaching at Leith Academy.[118] Rowling later said that writing the first Harry Potter book had saved her life and that her concerns about "love, loss, separation, death ... are reflected in the first book".[89] This ad is sent on behalf of Stansberry Research, 1125 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201. If you would like to optout from receiving offers from Stansberry Research please [click here](. [Invest Knowledge Media]( InvestKnowledgeMedia.com brought to you by Inception Media, LLC. This editorial email with educational news was sent to {EMAIL}. [Unsubscribe]( to stop receiving marketing communication from us. Please add our email address to your contact book (or mark as important) to guarantee that our emails continue to reach your inbox. Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in pop culture,[2] his books have sold more than 350 million copies,[3] and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 64 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books.[4] He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.[5][6] King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.[7] He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.[8] In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.[9] Early life King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, a travelling vacuum salesman after returning from World War II,[10] was born in Indiana with the surname Pollock, changing it to King as an adult.[11][12][13] King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury).[13] His parents were married in Scarborough, Maine on July 23, 1939.[14] Shortly afterwards, they lived with Donald's family in Chicago before moving to Croton-on-Hudson, New York.[15] King's parents returned to Maine towards the end of World War II, living in a modest house in Scarborough. When King was two, his father left the family. His mother raised him and his older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. They moved from Scarborough and depended on relatives in Chicago; Croton-on-Hudson; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and Stratford, Connecticut.[16][17] When King was 11, his family moved to Durham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged.[1] King was raised Methodist,[18][19] but lost his belief in organized religion while in high school. While no longer religious, he says he chooses to believe in the existence of God.[20] As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works,[21] but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing (2000). He related in detail his primary inspiration for writing horror fiction in his non-fiction Danse Macabre (1981), in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". He compared his uncle's dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. That inspiration occurred while browsing through an attic with his elder brother, when King uncovered a paperback version of an H. P. Lovecraft collection of short stories he remembers as The Lurker in the Shadows, that had belonged to his father. King told Barnes & Noble Studios in a 2009 interview, "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."[22] King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School in Lisbon Falls, Maine, in 1966.[23] He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt, and he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow. He began writing for fun while in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends based on movies he had seen. (He was forced to return the profits when it was discovered by his teachers.) The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which was serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965. It was republished the following year in revised form, as "In a Half-World of Terror", in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.[24] As a teen, King also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.[25] King entered the University of Maine in 1966, and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.[26] That year, his daughter Naomi Rachel was born. He wrote a column, Steve King's Garbage Truck, for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus, and participated in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen.[27] King held a variety of jobs to pay for his studies, including as a janitor, a gas-station attendant, and an industrial laundry worker. He met his wife, fellow student Tabitha Spruce, at the university's Raymond H. Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops; they wed in 1971.[27] Career Beginnings In 1971, King worked as a teacher at Hampden Academy King sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967.[1] After graduating from the University of Maine, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, unable to find a teaching post immediately, he supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories were republished in the collection Night Shift. The short story "The Raft" was published in Adam, a men's magazine. After being arrested for stealing traffic cones (he was annoyed after one of the cones knocked his muffler loose), he was fined $250 for petty larceny but had no money to pay. However, a check then arrived for "The Raft" (then titled "The Float"), and King cashed it to pay the fine.[28] In 1971, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels.[1] During 1966–1970, he wrote a draft about his dystopian novel called The Long Walk[29] and the anti-war novel Sword in the Darkness,[30][31] but neither of the works was published at the time; only The Long Walk was later released in 1979. Carrie and aftermath In 1973, King's novel, Carrie, was accepted by publishing house, Doubleday. It was King's fourth novel,[32] but the first to be published. He wrote it on his wife Tabitha's portable typewriter. It began as a short story intended for Cavalier magazine, but King tossed the first three pages in the garbage can.[33] Tabitha recovered the pages and encouraged him to finish the story, saying she would help him with the female perspective; he followed her advice and expanded it into a novel.[34] He said: "I persisted because I was dry and had no better ideas… My considered opinion was that I had written the world's all-time loser."[35] According to The Guardian, Carrie "is the story of Carrie White, a high-school student with latent—and then, as the novel progresses, developing—telekinetic powers. It's brutal in places, affecting in others (Carrie's relationship with her almost hysterically religious mother being a particularly damaged one), and gory in even more."[36] When Carrie was chosen for publication, King's phone was out of service. Doubleday editor William Thompson—who became King's close friend—sent a telegram to King's house in late March or early April 1973[37] which read: "Carrie Officially A Doubleday Book. $2,500 Advance Against Royalties. Congrats, Kid – The Future Lies Ahead, Bill."[38] King said he bought a new Ford Pinto with the advance.[37] On May 13, 1973, New American Library bought the paperback rights for $400,000, which—in accordance with King's contract with Doubleday—was split between them.[39][40] Carrie set King's career in motion and became a significant novel in the horror genre. In 1976, it was made into a successful horror film.[41] King's 'Salem's Lot was published in 1975. In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he said, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"[42] After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he wrote The Shining (published 1977). The family returned to Auburn, Maine in 1975, where he completed The Stand (published 1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Philip, his third and youngest child, traveled briefly to England. They returned to Maine that fall, where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine.[43] In 1982, King published Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas with a more serious dramatic bent than the horror fiction for which he is famous.[44] It is notable for having three of its four novellas turned into Hollywood films: Stand by Me (1986) was adapted from The Body;[45] The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was adapted from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption;[46] and Apt Pupil (1998) was adapted from the novella of the same name.[47][48] In 1985, King wrote his first work for the comic book medium,[49] writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to famine relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, and Alan Moore, as well as authors not primarily associated with comics, such as Harlan Ellison.[50] The following year, King published It (1986), which was the best-selling hardcover novel in the United States that year,[51] and wrote the introduction to Batman No. 400, an anniversary issue where he expressed his preference for the character over Superman.[52][53] The Dark Tower books Main article: The Dark Tower (series) In the late 1970s, King began what became a series of interconnected stories about a lone gunslinger, Roland, who pursues the "Man in Black" in an alternate-reality universe that is a cross between J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and the American Wild West as depicted by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone in their spaghetti Westerns. The first of these stories, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was initially published in five installments by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman, from 1977 to 1981. The Gunslinger was continued as an eight-book epic series called The Dark Tower, whose books King wrote and published infrequently over four decades (1978-2012).[54] Pseudonyms In the late 1970s and early 1980s, King published a handful of short novels—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The idea behind this was to test whether he could replicate his success again and to allay his fears that his popularity was an accident. An alternate explanation was that publishing standards at the time allowed only a single book a year.[55] He picked up the name from the Canadian hard rock band Bachman–Turner Overdrive, of which he is a fan.[56] Richard Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym by a persistent Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed similarities between the works and later located publisher's records at the Library of Congress that named King as the author of one of Bachman's novels.[57] This led to a press release heralding Bachman's "death"—supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym".[58] King dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half, about a pseudonym turning on a writer, to "the deceased Richard Bachman", and in 1996, when the Stephen King novel Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators carried the "Bachman" byline. In 2006, during a press conference in London, King declared that he had discovered another Bachman novel, titled Blaze. It was published on June 12, 2007. In fact, the original manuscript had been held at King's Alma mater, the University of Maine in Orono, for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.[59] King has used other pseudonyms. The short story "The Fifth Quarter" was published under the pseudonym John Swithen (the name of a character in the novel Carrie), by Cavalier in April 1972.[60] The story was reprinted in King's collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993 under his own name. In the introduction to the Bachman novel Blaze, King claims, with tongue-in-cheek, that "Bachman" was the person using the Swithen pseudonym. The "children's book" Charlie the Choo-Choo: From the World of The Dark Tower was published in 2016 under the pseudonym Beryl Evans, who was portrayed by actress Allison Davies during a book signing at San Diego Comic-Con,[61] and illustrated by Ned Dameron. It is adapted from a fictional book central to the plot of King's previous novel The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands.[62] Digital era Stephen King at the Harvard Book Store, June 6, 2005 In 2000, King published online a serialized horror novel, The Plant.[63] At first the public assumed that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but King later stated that he had simply run out of stories.[64] The unfinished epistolary novel is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet, and saying he foresaw e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012". However, he also stated: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."[65] King wrote the first draft of the 2001 novel Dreamcatcher with a notebook and a Waterman fountain pen, which he called "the world's finest word processor".[66] In August 2003, King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column was called The Pop of King (a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly attributed to Michael Jackson).[67] In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel, Cell. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones.[68][69] In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key, and a collection, Just After Sunset. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a previously unpublished novella, N. Starting July 28, 2008, N. was released as a serialized animated series to lead up to the release of Just After Sunset.[70] In 2009, King published Ur, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle and available only on Amazon.com, and Throttle, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill and released later as an audiobook titled Road Rage, which included Richard Matheson's short story "Duel". King's novel Under the Dome was published on November 10 of that year; it is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since It (1986). Under the Dome debuted at No. 1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.[71] On February 16, 2010, King announced on his Web site that his next book would be a collection of four previously unpublished novellas called Full Dark, No Stars. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications and later released in mass-market paperback by Simon & Schuster. The following month, DC Comics premiered American Vampire, a monthly comic book series written by King with short-story writer Scott Snyder, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque, which represents King's first original comics work.[72][73][74] King wrote the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five-issues story arc. Scott Snyder wrote the story of Pearl.[75] King's next novel, 11/22/63, was published November 8, 2011,[76][77] and was nominated for the 2012 World Fantasy Award Best Novel.[78] The eighth Dark Tower volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole, was published in 2012.[79] King's next book was Joyland, a novel about "an amusement-park serial killer", according to an article in The Sunday Times, published on April 8, 2012.[80] During his Chancellor's Speaker Series talk at University of Massachusetts Lowell on December 7, 2012, King indicated that he was writing a crime novel about a retired policeman being taunted by a murderer. With a working title Mr. Mercedes and inspired by a true event about a woman driving her car into a McDonald's restaurant, it was originally meant to be a short story just a few pages long.[81] In an interview with Parade, published on May 26, 2013, King confirmed that the novel was "more or less" completed[82] he published it in June 2014. Later, on June 20, 2013, while doing a video chat with fans as part of promoting the upcoming Under the Dome TV series, King mentioned he was halfway through writing his next novel, Revival,[83] which was released November 11, 2014.[84] King announced in June 2014 that Mr. Mercedes is part of a trilogy; the second book, Finders Keepers, was released on June 2, 2015. On April 22, 2015, it was revealed that King was working on the third book of the trilogy, End of Watch, which was ultimately released on June 7, 2016.[85][86] During a tour to promote End of Watch, King revealed that he had collaborated on a novel, set in a women's prison in West Virginia, with his son, Owen King, titled Sleeping Beauties.[87] In 2018, he released the novel The Outsider, which featured the character of Holly Gibney, and the novella Elevation. In 2019, he released the novel The Institute. In 2020, King released If It Bleeds, a collection of four previously unpublished novellas. In 2022, King released his latest novel, Fairy Tale. Collaborations Writings King has written two novels with horror novelist Peter Straub: The Talisman (1984) and a sequel, Black House (2001). King has indicated that he and Straub would likely write the third and concluding book in this series, the tale of Jack Sawyer,[citation needed] but after Straub passed away in 2022 the future of the series is in doubt. King produced an artist's book with designer Barbara Kruger, My Pretty Pony (1989), published in a limited edition of 250 by the Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Alfred A. Knopf released it in a general trade edition.[88] The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2001) was a paperback tie-in for the King-penned miniseries Rose Red (2002). Published under anonymous authorship, the book was written by Ridley Pearson. The novel is written in the form of a diary by Ellen Rimbauer, and annotated by the fictional professor of paranormal activity, Joyce Reardon. The novel also presents a fictional afterword by Ellen Rimbauer's grandson, Steven. Intended to be a promotional item rather than a stand-alone work, its popularity spawned a 2003 prequel television miniseries to Rose Red, titled The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer. This spin-off is a rare occasion of another author being granted permission to write commercial work using characters and story elements invented by King. The novel tie-in idea was repeated on Stephen King's next project, the miniseries Kingdom Hospital. Richard Dooling, King's collaborator on Kingdom Hospital and writer of several episodes in the miniseries, published a fictional diary, The Journals of Eleanor Druse, in 2004. Eleanor Druse is a key character in Kingdom Hospital, much as Dr. Joyce Readon and Ellen Rimbauer are key characters in Rose Red.[citation needed] Throttle (2009), a novella written in collaboration with his son Joe Hill, appears in the anthology He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson.[89] Their second novella collaboration, In the Tall Grass (2012), was published in two parts in Esquire.[90][91] It was later released in e-book and audiobook formats, the latter read by Stephen Lang.[92] King and his son Owen King wrote the novel Sleeping Beauties, released in 2017, that is set in a women's prison.[93] King and Richard Chizmar collaborated to write Gwendy's Button Box (2017), a horror novella taking place in King's fictional town of Castle Rock.[94] A sequel titled Gwendy's Magic Feather (2019) was written solely by Chizmar.[95] In November 2020, Chizmar announced that he and King were writing a third installment in the series titled Gwendy's Final Task, this time as a full-length novel, to be released in February 2022.[96][97][98] Music In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult recorded an updated version of its 1974 song "Astronomy". The single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King.[99][100] The Blue Öyster Cult song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was also used in the King TV series The Stand.[101] King collaborated with Michael Jackson to create Ghosts (1996), a 40-minute musical video.[102] King states he was motivated to collaborate as he is "always interested in trying something new, and for (him), writing a minimusical would be new".[103] In 2005, King featured with a small spoken word part during the cover version of Everlong (by Foo Fighters) in Bronson Arroyo's album Covering the Bases, at the time, Arroyo was a pitcher for Major League Baseball team Boston Red Sox of whom King is a longtime fan.[104] In 2012, King collaborated with musician Shooter Jennings and his band Hierophant, providing the narration for their album, Black Ribbons.[105] King played guitar for the rock band Rock Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members include Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry, and Greg Iles. King and the other band members collaborated to release an e-book called Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (June 2013).[106][107] King wrote a musical entitled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County (2012) with musician John Mellencamp.[citation needed] Analysis Writing style and approach Stephen King in 2011 King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met. He also has a simple definition for talent in writing: "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."[108] When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do."[109] He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question: "Why do you assume I have a choice?"[110] King usually begins the story creation process by imagining a "what if" scenario, such as what would happen if a writer is kidnapped by a sadistic nurse in Colorado.[111] King often uses authors as characters, or includes mention of fictional books in his stories, novellas and novels, such as Paul Sheldon, who is the main character in Misery, adult Bill Denbrough in It, Ben Mears in 'Salem's Lot, and Jack Torrance in The Shining. He has extended this to breaking the fourth wall by including himself as a character in The Dark Tower series from The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla onwards. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria.[112] Influences King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most as a writer".[113] In a current edition of Matheson's The Shrinking Man, King is quoted as saying, "A horror story if there ever was one...a great adventure story—it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."[citation needed] Other acknowledged influences include H. P. Lovecraft,[114][115] Arthur Machen,[116] Ray Bradbury,[117] Joseph Payne Brennan,[118] Elmore Leonard,[119] John D. MacDonald, and Don Robertson.[120] King's The Shining is immersed in gothic influences, including "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe (which was directly influenced by the first gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto).[121] The Overlook Hotel acts as a replacement for the traditional gothic castle, and Jack Torrance is a tragic villain seeking redemption.[121] King's favorite books are (in order): The Golden Argosy; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Satanic Verses; McTeague; Lord of the Flies; Bleak House; Nineteen Eighty-Four; The Raj Quartet; Light in August; and Blood Meridian.[122] Critical response Science fiction editors John Clute and Peter Nicholls[123] offer a largely favorable appraisal of King, noting his "pungent prose, sharp ear for dialogue, disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to children) [all of which rank] him among the more distinguished 'popular' writers." In his book The Philosophy of Horror (1990), Noël Carroll discusses King's work as an exemplar of modern horror fiction. Analyzing both the narrative structure of King's fiction and King's non-fiction ruminations on the art and craft of writing, Carroll writes that for King, "the horror story is always a contest between the normal and the abnormal such that the normal is reinstated and, therefore, affirmed."[124] In his analysis of post–World War II horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game (1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written.[125] In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award for his short story "The Man in the Black Suit".[126] In his short story collection A Century of Great Suspense Stories, editor Jeffery Deaver noted that King "singlehandedly made popular fiction grow up. While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels. He has often remarked that 'Salem's Lot was "Peyton Place meets Dracula. And so it was. The rich characterization, the careful and caring social eye, the interplay of story line and character development announced that writers could take worn themes such as vampirism and make them fresh again. Before King, many popular writers found their efforts to make their books serious blue-penciled by their editors. 'Stuff like that gets in the way of the story,' they were told. Well, it's stuff like that that has made King so popular, and helped free the popular name from the shackles of simple genre writing. He is a master of masters."[127] In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard E. Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature" and critic Harold Bloom denounced the choice: The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.[128] Orson Scott Card responded: Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite.[129] In 2008, King's book On Writing was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly's list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".[130] Inception Media, LLC appreciates your comments and inquiries. Please keep in mind, that Inception Media, LLC are not permitted to provide individualized financial advise. This email is not financial advice and any investment decision you make is solely your responsibility. 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