 There are so many books that I could list here, from James Herbert’s The Fog, Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood or Weaveworld, to Jonathon Carroll’s Outside The Dog Museum, Joe Lansdale’s The Drive In or Stephen Gallagher’s Valley Of Lights to name just a few. However, I wouldn’t have read any of them or in fact be a reader at all, without this one. Stephen King – Christine Well, what a surprise: a horror writer claims that the book that changed him is written by Stephen King! If you can stand cliché for a little while, stick with me and I’ll try and explain why this particular book by King is the one that changed my life. Of course, this being an alarmingly long time ago, so I might be misremembering some of the detail, but, well, let’s not let a little thing like facts get in the way of the story. It’s 1984. I’m a teenager living at home in South Wales at the height of the Miners’ Strike, where Maggie is ripping the heart and soul out of communities built around industry. This isn’t meant to be a political rant, but, Jesus, what a bitch. Anyway, I’m about fourteen (maybe thirteen) - that age of trying to figure out how you fit into life. I’m not popular, but I do have friends. I’m utterly useless at sports but I’m really good at Maths, which goes a long way to explaining the small group of friends. Girls are like some kind of mythical creature that is rarely seen, but never approached. I like roleplaying and computer games, so my social pariah status is pretty secure. As a younger boy, I had read loads: the Hardy Boys, some Biggles, Just William, all the Doctor Who books our library stocked and The Hobbit. At the start of my teenage years I was struggling to maintain the interest – this is 1984, after all, so the current overflowing YA market was non-existent. My twin brother was an avid fantasy fan, especially David Gemmell and, of course, Tolkien. Remembering the joy The Hobbit gave me, I eagerly started The Lord Of The Rings, especially as it had a hearty endorsement from my brother. What a load of shit. Obviously, it’s a classic, but does it have to be such hard work? It was all going swimmingly with the running away from the Black Riders – or is it Nazgûl? – and the introduction of Strider – or is it Aragorn? – and then we hit the Elves and all those bloody songs. I am sad to say that I have never managed to read the entire book, but maybe someday. Tolkien did, however, get the last laugh though: my wife is called Tinuviel and is named after one of the elves in those….bloody…. songs. So, I was struggling to find things to read. My dad read a lot of Robert Ludlum so I tried that but I was too young: I was expecting James Bond but got loads of political intrigue. To this day, I have no idea why I didn’t just read the Bond books. My father came home from work one day with one of those leaflets you used to see loads of. Join our book club. Look, have these books. Only £1 for five. We all got to pick one each: me, my brother, sister, Mum and Dad. It was very exciting, but I couldn’t see anything I liked, until: Christine. King’s name in huge letters, all red. Black the predominant colour and then the car coming out of the garage with the skull and crossbones number plate. Yep, that was the one for me, deciding at an early age that covers are important for books. You might be a fool to judge a book by its cover, but damn, if it makes the reader pick it up then it’s done its job. The book itself arrived several weeks later and I devoured it. I think it took me two or three days to read. I was utterly blown away by it. Truth be told, I don’t remember that much about the actual story but I do remember being surprised that it wasn’t actually about a car at all: it was really about friends growing up and growing apart. Dennis and Arnie have the kind of relationship that only really exists in books and films: they’re so yin and yang that it’s almost comical. Dennis is everything I aspired to be: he was cool, handsome, popular and good at sports. Arnie is what I actually was, but there is a moment of geek heaven when he gets the girl. Okay, so he has to be possessed by the soul of an evil psychopath to do so, but to a fourteen (thirteen?) year old boy, that seemed a pretty reasonable trade off. I debated re-reading the book before writing this, but life is too short to reread books – there are so many undiscovered ones out there. I was also wary of a re-read: it is almost certainly not as good as I remember, and I don’t want to sully the memory. That book turned me into an avid reader. Following Christine, I read everything by King, collected his books and to this day it annoys me that the publishers changed the style of the spine so they don’t look as good on the shelf. I also read loads of other horror authors, some of which are just plain bad and explain why the horror boom of the 80s collapsed to the point that ‘Horror’ seems a dirty word even now. Books serve many purposes: wonder, fear, excitement, empathy, contempt, disgust, elation, joy, education, outright entertainment or beard-stroking pretentiousness. I would be oblivious to this without Christine. Author Bio David Watkins lives in Devon in the UK with his wife, two sons, dog, cat and two turtles. He is unsure of his place in the pecking order: probably somewhere between the cat and the turtles. There are two novels in The Originals' series: The Original's Return concerns an ordinary family man becoming the God of Werewolves and the follow up, The Original's Retribution, covers the immediate aftermath and consequences of Jack's actions in the first book. Both novels are highly rated on Amazon. David's latest novel is The Devil's Inn: a chilling tale set on Dartmoor during a fierce snowstorm. Has the Devil really come to Devon? He is now working on a new stand-alone novel, set in Exeter. He hates referring to himself in the third person, but no-one else is going to write this for him. David can be found on Twitter so please drop by and say hello @joshfishkins, where you'll find him ranting about horror, the British education system and Welsh rugby, but not usually at the same time. CHECK OUT DAVIDS AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE BY CLICKING HERE  
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