Stephen King's Just After Sunset

I admit it, I'm a huge fan of Stephen King's work. His ability to build believable characters, even unearthly ones, amazes me. His books are usually very long, and sometimes the story line doesn't go anywhere, (i.e. From a Buick 8, Hearts in Atlantis). However, every book written by King or his alter ego, Richard Bachman has become a best seller.

I read a lot of books by listening to their audio book versions and King's stories are usually in the 15-25 disk range, which means I need a very long trip, say from Michigan to Florida, to get through one of them. Just After Sunset is nice because it is a collection of short stories and allows King fans and King-fan-want-a-be's to sample Stephen King in small bites.

Some of the stories I had already read, as they were previously available as stand alone products. In each short story, King does his usual great job of building characters and developing a small part of the world where weird things happen, and then bringing us all in to it, making it believable.

Rumor has it that King recently criticized Twilight author Stephanie Meyer's writing skills when comparing her to Harry Potter's JK Rowling:

"The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."

King used to be an English teacher and he has sold a lot of books, however, my own humble opinion is that even if Stephenie Myers uses a lot of those adverbs (which King finds abhorrent), it doesn't matter. The Twilight series has captured America's attention in a way that boggles the mind. If that many people love Meyer's work, how can anyone criticize her writing skill? She writes just well enough to sell millions of books and have movies made from her writing.

Sorry about the tangent. Bottom line on Just After Sunset: Brilliant writing as usual from King. A welcome departure from his usually very long novels allowing the reader to take in some Stephen King in small bites.