by Jay Wilburn

The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.

You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.

I did read The Regulators before, but just barely. That is the partner book to Desperation in the same way that Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne were connected.

The Regulators is spotty in my memory. I checked it out from the library and didn’t finish it the first time through. I had to check it out more than once to finish it and in the end, I was racing through it faster than my comfortable reading pace at the time just to finish.

I had a lot going on that allowed life to get in the way of a smooth reading of the book. If I had bought the book instead of checking it out more than once, then it probably would have been a different experience.

I remember the guns and the violence of the story. I still had Stephen King in a sort of box in my head at that point. I was reading him for ghosts and monsters and such. Even though I had seen the wide variety his work took, it hadn’t registered to me that he didn’t fit in the box I had made for him and this story broke my expectations going in, too.

Now that I think about it, many of the King books I did not finish or did not attempt before now fell into that category of breaking away from my expectations.

After all that, I never got around to picking up Desperation, which I just finished before revisited this book. You should definitely read Desperation first and The Regulators second to maximize your experience.

After finally reading Desperation, I’m excited to finally revisit The Regulators.

My next post in this series will be After The Regulators which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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