So, I was visiting one of the indie author groups that I am a member of on Facebook and someone posted a link to an article from The Huffington Post about self-published authors. The article had a click-baiting title that was an automatic red flag: “Self-Publishing: An Insult to the Written Word.” Right off the bat, I knew this was going to be at least an interesting read. However, when I finished reading the article, I had to wonder if this was really something that was really written three days before 2017 started.

So, I checked out the author of the piece.

Her name is Laurie Gough and she calls herself an “award-winning author of three memoirs” who “is also a journalist and travel writer.” Clicking on her author link, I see this is also the only article she has written for The Huffington Post, or at least the only one they are showing right now.

Let’s get started on what this article said and why I think the author must be trolling the independent writer’s community. I will put her comments in italics and then respond to them in bold text.

I’d rather share a cabin on a Disney cruise with Donald Trump than self-publish.

Oh boy, that came in the second paragraph of this piece for The Huffington Post. The paragraph was the answer to the question of why she wouldn’t want to make more money by self-publishing. I figure right off the bat that she doesn’t care too much about making money.

See, this article was written for The Huffington Post. They don’t pay their writers and just offer them a chance for exposure. On her website, Gough says she teaches writing classes but she seems to have no problem writing for a website that exploits writers for free. To understand how unethical The Huffington Post is, let look at what actor and writer Wil Wheaton gave as a perfect response on his Twitter account.

Regardless, Laurie Gough likes to write for free but hates self-publishing. Let’s see why.

You have to go through the gatekeepers of agents, publishers, editors, national and international reviewers. These gatekeepers are assessing whether or not your work is any good.

So, let’s look at this statement. There are different types of writers – that is for sure. Some writers need to feel valued. They need a pat on the back. They need someone to tell them that their words are good. They need someone to tell them that they are special. They need a traditional book publisher to tell them that they are worthy of the honor of publishing a book.

Other writers like to entertain their readers with good books and stories. The people they care about are their readers, not the suits that only buy books that happen to be hot and selling right now and ignore anything that is risky.

Of course, these “gatekeepers” were once ruled by the Big Six, but they then became the Big Five and is likely to drop again because the gatekeepers can’t compete in the new world of publishing. Bookstores are shutting down and the traditional publishing world means less and less every day. But some writers need the pats on the back that they offer.

This system doesn’t always work out perfectly, but it’s the best system we have.

No, it’s not. The best system we have is for writers to choose whether they want to go to the gatekeepers, self-publish, or become a hybrid author. There is a good reason that writers like Kristine Kathryn Rusch are trying their best to get their books back in their rights. There is a reason that Rusch is now doing better selling her old books on her own than the gatekeepers were doing on her back catalog after they moved on to new books.

The craft of writing is a life’s work. It takes at least a decade to become a decent writer, tens of thousands of hours.

Let’s go back to Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2001, which was about 10 years after she started writing fiction, so the timeframe is there. Guess what? She still wants to self-publish now.  Hugh Howey started writing in 2009 and began his Wool series in 2011. He self-published and is adamant about remaining independent. His book was so good that Simon & Schuster chose to sign a deal with Howey to sell his physical books while letting him keep his eBook rights.

Are these exceptions to the rule that Laurie Gough suggested? No, they are just examples. There are many more. J.A. Konrath is another example of a former traditionally published author who is making much more money since becoming a self-published author. Joanna Penn is making six figures a year self-publishing.

From what I’ve seen of it, self-publishing is an insult to the written word, the craft of writing, and the tradition of literature.

I am sure there are plenty of bad novels out there by self-published authors. I also know there are abysmal books out there that the gatekeepers let through and published. Sure, it is easier to self-publish a bad novel but to call all self-published books an insult is like saying that all traditionally published books are as bad as Snooki: Confessions of a Guidette.

I’m a horrible singer. But I like singing so let’s say I decide to take some singing lessons. A month later I go to my neighbor’s basement because he has recording equipment. I screech into his microphone and he cuts me a CD. I hire a designer to make a stylish CD cover. Voilà. I have a CD and am now just like all the other musicians with CDs.

Paragraphs like this make me wonder if the article was written six years ago and just now made it through the gatekeepers at The Huffington Post.

First of all, no one makes CDs anymore. Second of all, there are more great albums made independently now than ever before because there is almost no reason to even consider going to a major record label. Sure, independent albums won’t get on the radio, but no one listens to the radio anymore. There are a lot of indie bands with no record deals who are real musicians and it is an insult to pretend they are not just because they have no record deal.

Same thing with self-published authors.

And every single self-published book I’ve tried to read has shown me exactly why the person had to resort to self-publishing. These people haven’t taken the decade, or in many cases even six months, to learn the very basics of writing, such as ‘show, don’t tell,’ or how to create a scene, or that clichés not only kill writing but bludgeon it with a sledgehammer. Sometimes they don’t even know grammar.

Wow. This is elitism at its finest.

Self-published fantasy writer Amanda Hocking sold a four-book series for $2 million in 2011. I doubt they would have bought those books if she was as bad as Gough pretends self-published authors are. Would Hugh Howey have gotten the deal with Simon & Schuster if his books were lacking the basics of writing? Or, is this the example of a cliché writing that she mentions in her article that good writers should avoid?

Meredith Wild self-published her Hacker series and ended up getting a $6.25 million advance for her next five books. Maybe Gough never got an offer like this and is bitter at the self-published authors who did. One-third of the bestselling books at Amazon in 2015 were self-published. Maybe jealousy is part of the equation here. Hell, The Huffington Post even posted a story three months ago about a self-published book that made the New York Times Bestseller List.

Writing is an art deserving our esteem. It shouldn’t be something that you can take up as a hobby one afternoon and a month later, key in your credit card number to CreateSpace or Kindle Direct Publishing before sitting back waiting for a stack of books to arrive at your door.

I agree that art is deserving of respect but just because the author wrote those words in this article does not mean that she actually respects anyone who creates art. At the start of this article, I insulted Laurie Gough for writing for free at The Huffington Post. That was not fair because there is a good reason for some writers to write for free. There is also a good reason for some writers to self-publish.

Insulting everyone who makes a choice you would not make is ignorant and self-indulgent.

I studied writing in college. I have a Bachelor’s degree in professional writing with an emphasis on fiction writing. I got that degree in 2001 and have spent the last 15 years freelance writing and working on honing my craft. I am now self-publishing and to assume that this is a “hobby” that I took up one afternoon is ignorance. I self-publish because I want to keep control of my writing and books and don’t believe that traditional publishers offer anything to me right now.

In the future, if someone like Amazon Publishing wants to approach me, I will definitely listen to them. However, when it comes to the gatekeepers, I don’t need a pat on the head to tell me that I am good enough. My readers will tell me that and their opinions are all that matters.

I don’t know what caused this Huffington Post article to be written. I can only assume that there is a bitterness from the author towards self-published authors. Saying that all self-published novels are crap is a complete lie and fabrication. Looking at the fact that there are almost 300 comments on the article in just over a day tells me two things.

• A nerve was struck
• This was a click bait article that succeeded in trolling people enough for them to respond.

I noticed a lot of authors, including some that I know, respond to her in the comments there. I also noticed a lot of readers coming in and backing up their favorite self-published authors in the comments, telling me that the only people who matter – the readers – are there to stand up for authors they love.

Just because self-publishing isn’t good enough for Laurie Gough does not mean that it is not the perfect choice for very good writers – many who are more successful than Gough. Many self-published authors are more talented than traditionally published authors. 

What are your thoughts on self-published authors and their novels? Is damning all self-published authors for the sins of bad ones fair? Do you have favorite self-published authors? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

I promised you that I would keep you updated on the progress of my new fiction novel Fallen Star and then … nothing. Well, as happens much of the time, life got in the way but it looks like clear sailing ahead.

Knock on wood.

Anyway, I am starting on my second draft of Fallen Star and, for those who are not writers, that is harder than it sounds. Basically, the first draft is me just typing away while smiling obliviously and putting all my story down on the paper, sending my characters to hell and back, until I finally say “The End.”

Now, it is time to start to slice and dice and cut up everything I thought was good and turn it into something that really is good. That is nowhere near as fun as writing a book and creating a story but it is the most important step in making sure that you – my readers – love it.

For those who are new, I have broken down the book into one simple logline.

A police detective with a tortured past has to to catch and stop a serial killer who is targeting protestors of superhero rights before the world turns against all heroes.

As always, I look for input and suggestions, so if anyone has any comments about that log line, feel free to chat me up in the comment section below or over on my official Facebook page, which you can Follow here.

I also plan on starting a Facebook group soon because I think I can talk to you guys better there than I can on a Facebook page since they love to bury pages where no one can ever see updates unless I pay Facebook money. I will keep you updated on that as well.

So, onto the actual reason for the title of today’s post.

Of course, as my logline suggests, my novel and the series that it will launch takes place in a world where superhumans actually exist in the real world. My hero is a cop who has no superpowers but was, at one time, a partner to one of the most beloved and honored superheroes in the world.

Because of this, I am dealing with what the real world would be like if there were superhumans out there fighting each other, or in some cases, just living a regular life despite their powers. I am very well-versed in comic book movies and have seen most of them, and those that I have missed, I am catching up on now. I have also read comic books since I was a child in the ’70s.

I have noticed one underlying motif and it is something that really drives me nuts. It is a pet peeve of mine when watching superhero movies and reading comics. It is the fact that the police seem more interested in catching and stopping superheroes than they do in stopping and catching villains.

Let me give you an example.

The movie is The Amazing Spider-Man. This is the reboot directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield. Now, I really like this movie but it has the pet peeve I am talking about. The police have made it almost a priority to stop and bring in Spider-Man because he is a vigilante who is doing their job for them.

There is even a scene where Peter Parker is having dinner with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and her family. Peter gets to talking about Spider-Man and all the good he is doing which sets off Gwen’s dad, George Stacy, who happens to be a cop (Denis Leary).

George just goes off on how they can’t let someone in a mask run around doing what he is doing. He even claims anyone that wears a mask is hiding something. Later in the movie, as a GIANT FREAKING LIZARD is tearing through downtown and people are dying, George tells his men they have to stop and bring down Spider-Man.

What?

Are you kidding me?

In the real world, the cops would love to have someone – anyone – even someone in a mask – to help them stop a giant lizard creature who bullets don’t seem to harm.

This has never made any sense to me at all. In any way. I hate this so much and this will end up being a theme that I touch on in my book series.

It helps that I have chosen a human cop as my main protagonist and hero in the stories in Steve Samson. It also helps that Steve grew close to his former partner while they worked together and really has great respect for superheroes in general. It gives me someone inside the police force who the readers can see through the eyes of.

One underlying theme in my first novel, Fallen Star, is that there are people out there who protest the entire existence of superhumans. They don’t want them around and believe they are a danger to the world. This is something that has been told in comics before but I want to use my book to show this through the eyes of a cop who knows that in a world where superhumans exist – without heroes, there would be chaos.

The animated movies The Dark Knight Returns deals with this as well, but it is in a Gotham City that has just closed their eyes to the evil that rose when Batman disappeared. Honestly, I hated the characters in that movie because they acted stupidly.

The one thing I want to achieve in my novels is to show real people who react in ways you would expect them to. I want to introduce characters that can make normally good people go against their better judgment. I don’t want to insult your intelligence. I want to present my stories in a believable manner.

But, more than anything, I want to entertain you.

Let me know what you love about superhero tales in movies, comics, and TV shows, and some of your pet peeves as well. What drives you nuts that you would love to see excised from this form of entertainment.

As always, leave comments below or just leave me a message on my Facebook page right here.

Until next time, keep reading.

Well, let’s start out by letting me admit to something about my upcoming novel Fallen Star.

After winning NaNoWriMo in 2013 with over 50,000 words written on Dollar Deal, and publishing the 90,000-word novel shortly after, I failed when it comes to completing the 2015 novel Fallen Star after writing over 50,000 words on it to win NaNoWriMo that year.

Life got in the way, and the good news is that I am okay with that.

My goal with NaNoWriMo the next year was to complete the re-writing phase of Fallen Star. I am kind of glad I didn’t finish it because I was full speed ahead and realized that isn’t the way I should be going as I start my fiction writing career. 

Look, it took me years to finish Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, when you consider the interviews, transcriptions, and editing work. I put a ton of work into that book and realize now, looking back on it, that I didn’t put enough work into one specific area that might have made that book a bigger success.

I didn’t work on creating my author platform. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it will it make a sound? If I write a book that I put well over 100 hours into developing and I release it to the world that doesn’t know that I exist, will it be a success?

No.

Look, here is the deal. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings by saying this but it is true. I have learned that an author’s friends and family will not support that author by buying or helping to spread the word about their books. Sure, there might be one or two people close to the author that will help spread the word and a small handful of people who will buy the book but that is it.

The only way an author will become successful is to create what author Jeff Goins calls a “tribe.” Here is what Jeff Goins said about becoming a successful author:

“Instead of going after the big breaks and chasing the gatekeepers, I discovered a small but powerful audience that needed what I had to offer. I found my tribe. And that made all the difference.”

I don’t want to say that if you are my friend or a family member, and you are reading this, that I don’t want you as part of my tribe. I just know, and the experience of publishing Dollar Deal pounded this home to me, that I can’t rely on my circle of friends if I want to be successful. If I want to make a living writing and support my family as a writer, I need to really create my author platform.

It starts now.

Fallen Star

I am about to start working on the re-writing phase of Fallen Star and I want to take you on that journey with me.

A couple of years ago, I listened to a podcast I follow by Joanna Penn. She had an author on there named Gabriela Pereira, a woman who wrote a book and started a community of writers called The DIY MFA.  

The book is about, as the title basically spells out, how to become an author by doing it yourself instead of spending money on an MFA from a university.

Now, I am a college graduate and developed my writing skills at the Gaylord School of Journalism a the University of Oklahoma. Was it worth it for what I learned? Yes, it was. Was it worth it for the amount of money I am still paying out in school loans? No, not really.

So, what did the author of the DIY MFA book talk about in the podcast interview with Joanna Penn? Well, it is basically about teaching yourself what you need to know about writing by using the same techniques they use in college. 

It is funny, though, because a lot of what she talks about I already do but never really thought about it. I guess I learned well from my two main writing professors, J. Madison Davis and Deborah Chester. Basically, write AND read with purpose. 

So, what does this mean here? It means that I am going to be putting a lot of these things into motion and I will bring you all with me and talk about my writing as I do it. You will join me from now until I publish the book.

And it isn’t just about writing the book. As I said, it is also about building my author platform so that this book – Fallen Star – is not released in a forest where no one can hear (or more accurately read) it. You will watch as I build this author platform and hopefully the readers I pick up along the way can be there from the start. 

Shawn S. Lealos: Author

So, what exactly does this entire author platform thing entail?

These are two things that I will be developing over the next month or so and will roll each one out one at a time.

• A Facebook Group – I have a Facebook Writer’s Page but a Group is different. For those who don’t know, a Group is better for talking to each other and people can actually see when there are updates better than Pages that could realistically disappear from people’s feeds over time. The difference is that Groups is not a place for me to just post links. It is a place for me to talk to readers, get feedback, share news I find interesting, and develop a relationship with readers. I will keep my Writer’s Page, but that is where links are posted.
• A Mailing List – Now, don’t be scared with this one. I understand that many authors abuse their mailing lists. I won’t be one of those authors. People who subscribe to my mailing list won’t get spammed with emails every day of the week and the emails won’t be me begging people to buy my books. The good news is that, when it starts, everyone who subscribes to the mailing list will get a digital copy of Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers for free. The emails will come out on average once a week and will update people on what is going on, share any news that I find interesting, and most importantly, offer special freebies for subscribers. I will update people on when books are going on sale, but the main purpose of the list is not to sell, sell, sell. 

That is just the start, but it is the most important when it comes to me getting to know my readers better and offering my readers something that makes following me worth their time.

Editing Fallen Star

So, back to Fallen Star.

There is a major change in how I am writing my books from this point forward. I have become a Scrivener user.

So, what is Scrivener?

Basically, it is the author’s top software program to write their books. Sure, there is always Word or one of the many free word processing apps and those work just fine when it comes to putting words on the page.

However, Scrivener really opens things up for the writer to really take control of their work. I will talk a lot more about Scrivener when I start blogging about the re-write of Fallen Star.

Also, I will go into detail about what my editing and re-writing of the novel involves and what most people mistakenly think editing actually means (it isn’t about fixing grammar and spelling – at least not at this stage).

With that said, I will finish this post and let you know that the real writing is about to start on Fallen Star and I invite all of you along for the ride. Keep watching this blog, follow me on my Facebook page and make sure to join my upcoming Facebook group and email list when I launch them and we will take this journey together.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter.

Also, I love comments. I love them so much that I will throw everyone’s name who leaves a comment on any of my posts into a hat and draw a winner every month for a special prize.

What is this month’s prize? A free autographed copy of Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers trade paperback book.

If you link to my blog, I will add your name a second time. Let me know what you want to see in the blog. Let me know what you want to know about writing, Stephen King, filmmaking, comics, movies, or anything else.

Seriously, ask me anything.

— This article was originally published on April 31, 2016 —

I am not a Tim Tebow fan.

Yeah, there is actually more to the story than this. Basically, Tim Tebow is trying out for Major League Baseball. Like most people, I used this as a chance to make jokes about Tebow and laugh at the entire ludicrous goal of doing the hardest thing there is to do in sports – hit a fastball.

Then, I listened to an interview with Tim Tebow about his Major League Baseball dreams.

Basically, after stammering through an answer to an unheard question (which was probably, do you think you can make a team or something stupid like that), Tebow said these words:

“A lot of people will say, ‘What if you fail? What if you don’t make it?’ Guess what? I don’t have to live with regret. I did everything I could. I pushed it. I would rather be someone that can live with peace and no regret than “what if?” for being scared that I didn’t make it.”

So, the entire idea here should be clear when it comes to what it has to do with Shawn S. Lealos and why it is on my blog.

I am a writer.

That is easy enough to say, but it is also easy to see people who don’t take that very seriously. I am lucky. I have a wife who supports me as a writer and no one else in the world matters. She believes in me and that is good enough for me. Even if she wasn’t completely behind me, I still need to believe in myself. That is what will make me successful.

Learning Life Lessons Thanks to The Boz

The year was 1996 and I was in my first semester at the University of Oklahoma. I chose to sign up to work for the Sooner Yearbook and also took a class that was pretty much a free intern position for the Oklahoma Daily newspaper. With the newspaper, I never felt comfortable, but things clicked with the yearbook, where I became one of their main sports reporters.

One day I was watching an OU football game on television (we split up game day coverage between three of us, and I was off that week). During the game, someone interviewed Brian Bosworth – The Boz. He was in a special section in the south end zone with seats he had purchased and given to kids from a local children’s hospital, inner city kids in need, and kids whose lives were affected by the Murrah Federal Building bombing.

It was a great story.

I went to the Oklahoma Daily newspaper and pitched it. They thought it was a great idea and said they would give the story to one of their “more experienced” reporters. I was deflated but never gave up. I went to the yearbook and pitched it to them. They told me to get on it and it would be one of the year’s feature stories. I called the OU Athletic Office and they gave me Bosworth’s Hollywood agent’s telephone number. I called him and set up an interview. Then, Brian Bosworth called me and I interviewed The Boz.

I was 15 when Brian Bosworth was the best linebacker in the world while playing at OU. He was my freaking hero as a kid and I actually remember keeping a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the guy. Here I was, my first EVER interview, and it was an interview with my childhood idol. And I nailed it. I also interviewed a nurse at the children’s hospital who had a son who played football until he lost his leg. A kid that Bosworth visited, took to a football game, and helped to make him feel like a million bucks.

I wrote the story for the yearbook and it ended up winning a Story of the Year award for the yearbook.

I went back to the Oklahoma Daily newspaper while I was writing the story for the yearbook. I asked how they were doing on the story and they told me that their “more experienced” writer had not figured out a way to contact Brian Bosworth yet and was waiting to maybe catch him at a football game. I told them I had already interviewed him about it and they asked why. I mentioned that I was writing the story for the yearbook. They told me that I could write it for them too if I wanted to.

So, I did.

It ended up as the cover story in a newspaper called The Red Zone, which was given out free to the over 60,000 people (at that time) that attended OU football games. It won me an honorable mention award for Best Periodical Feature Story at the Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists ceremony that year. For a story that The Oklahoma Daily didn’t even want me to write. For my first ever interview – with a childhood idol.

I also wrote a “Where Are They Now” article for the nationally published Inside Sports magazine and got paid for it. My first ever payday for writing. For my first ever interview. That I was told a “more experienced” writer should take on.

Because I never gave up when they told me no.

I wanted to cover the Rolling Stones when they came and played at OU. We were told by the OU ticket office that they would only credential the Oklahoma Daily and that the yearbook was not high enough on their list to give passes to. I called the Rolling Stones publicity office in Chicago and got the yearbook press passes to the concert. Because I wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I ended up winning a ton of awards for my journalism in college, inclouding sweeping the Gold Circle Awards one year for Sport’s Feature Writing, taking first, second, and third place for the nation.

Because I didn’t take no for an answer. Ever.

The Years Roll On and The Story Stays the Same

I am 20 years older now and refusing to listen to people tell me no is harder than it was when I was 26 and roaring to make a difference.

However, I have to keep that attitude.

I have been freelance content writing for the last seven years. Newspapers are a dying breed and there are almost no magazines left for freelance writers to make a living writing for. It is getting harder to write online and three of the biggest cash cows I wrote for have folded in the last few years. I can’t rely on them anymore.

My Stephen King Dollar Babies book didn’t do what I hoped it would and after a year on the market I am only selling a small handful each month. I overestimated how many Stephen King fans wanted a book about King compared to those who just wanted books by King. That is ok. See, one thing I have learned from all the writer’s blogs that I read is that this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. My book will remain for sale and people can discover it later.

However, it is time to really get rolling on my new fiction series. Fallen Star comes out later this year and is the first book in my Steve Samson Chronicles, a contemporary fantasy novel series about a human police detective who lives in a world where superheroes are real and works to help normal people while those with super powers battle in the skies above.

I have faith in my story and I believe it is something worth telling.

There are a lot of doubts in my mind, but those are just nagging voices trying to tell me that people don’t want to hear from me. That is something John Grisham once said – why would anyone care about his stories in bookstores filled with thousands of books. Guess what? People cared what John Grisham had to say. A lot of people cared.

With bookstores dying (there is about to be only one remaining in the Permian Basin area where I live – a Barnes & Noble), that means my book will live among the hundreds of thousands of books on Amazon.com. That is ok. I never took no for an answer when I was writing as a college student and I am not going to take no for an answer from the voices in my head now that I am finally taking on this task of starting a fiction career that I once dreamed of even before I started college at OU.

I Believe I Was Destined to be a Writer

See, I was going to a junior college and studying business back in 1995. I wrote a short story called The Devil’s Playground based on an urban legend from back home in Yukon, Oklahoma. My English teacher said she thought I was a great writer and asked why I was majoring in business. I said people told me to major in business to “get a real job.”

She mentioned that OU had a professional writing program in their journalism college, so I could learn fiction writing while also learning how to make money writing for newspapers, magazines, and more (the Internet then was in its infancy).

So, as you can see, I started at OU with the thoughts of being a fiction novelist. I got distracted by sports journalism, and later by filmmaking, before finally settling into freelance content writing for the Internet and work as a film critic, which I still love doing.

However, everything has revolved back to where it started – my first dream. It is time to be a novelist.

And this year, I will start that process with my first published fiction novel.

And I won’t take no for an answer.

What are the Stephen King Dollar Baby films?

In 2015, I released my book, Dollar Deal: The Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers (BUY IT HERE) and went on to host a pair of Dollar Baby Film Festivals (one in Houston and one in Seattle).

During the two conventions I held screenings at, I realized a lot of people may not know what a Stephen King Dollar Baby film is? As someone who lived in the world of the dollar babies since 1999, this surprised me.

So, what are Stephen King Dollar Baby films and who are the Dollar Baby filmmakers that the program created?

This is the story of The Stephen King Dollar Babies. 

How did Stephen King get his start?

 In 1974, Stephen King published his first novel, Carrie. It wasn’t an instant success, though. The hardback release was decent, but it wasn’t until the paperback sold over one million copies in the first year of its release that King became a bestselling author.

However, it took a lot more than just that one book to make King a successful published author. Carrie was the fourth novel he wrote but the first to see the light of day.

Fortunately, King was already making income on the side before its publication and subsequent success. His first published work came when he was only eighteen. King wrote a serialized piece called I Was a Teenage Grave Robber for a fanzine. His first short story arrived in 1967, when King was only twenty-years-old, for a magazine called Startling Mystery Stories.

In 1968 and 1969, he published the short stories Cain Rose Up, Here There Be Tygers, Strawberry Spring, and Night Surf, all for a magazine called Ubris. Those four stories eventually became Dollar Baby films.

When did Stephen King start allowing Dollar Baby Films?

In 1976, King developed a program where he allowed young filmmakers to make a short film based on one of his short stories as long someone had not already optioned that particular story for a movie or TV show.

It was very generous at the time since King was still a fresh-faced writer himself, with only a handful of novels and stories under his belt.

The only place that prospective filmmakers could find these short stories at the time was in magazines like Ubris, Cavalier, Penthouse, and Cosmopolitan.

The first actual collection of Stephen King’s short stories arrived two years later with Night Shift. That collection contained only four original short stories. All of the rest were reprints from stories King sold to magazines through the years.

One of those short stories ended up setting the Dollar Baby film program on the path to mainstream popularity. That story was The Woman in the Room, the final tale in the collection.

The Woman in the Room told the story of a man who had to decide whether or not to euthanize his terminally ill mother or let her live on in pain. The director of this Dollar Baby was a young filmmaker named Frank Darabont.

Over the years, Darabont went on to become the most famous member of a group that has grown to at least 80 strong over the last four decades.

The downside to being a Dollar Baby filmmaker is that very few Stephen King fans have seen any of the films, and many are unaware they even exist.

What are Stephen King Dollar Baby Films?

The dollar baby films are what the title proclaims. Stephen King offers student filmmakers the chance to make a short film based on one of his short stories. He only charges the aspiring filmmakers one dollar.

Stories already made into feature-length films are not eligible. Children of the Corn is a good example. None of his novels are eligible. 

To create a Dollar Baby film, a filmmaker first needs to receive permission from Stephen King himself.

When I received permission to make my Dollar Baby film over twenty years ago, the only way to request the rights was to send a query letter to his office in Bangor, Maine, and wait for the contracts to arrive in the mail. Now there is an opportunity to seek permission through his website with an actual list of films available.

Once a filmmaker receives the contracts and signs them, the filmmaker mails a check for one dollar to King. At that point, the person can legally make the short film.

When completed, the contract requires the filmmaker sends a copy of the finished movie to King for his viewing pleasure. The only way to screen the film otherwise is at film festivals or on a filmmakers’ professional product reel.

The filmmaker is not allowed to make financial profit from the Dollar Baby film.

Where can Stephen King’s Dollar Baby Films be seen?

While some Stephen King fans might have heard of the Dollar Babies, very few of them have seen a legitimate Dollar Baby film.

Hardcore fans know that Frank Darabont, the director of King’s The Shawshank Redemption, started his career as a Dollar Baby filmmaker, but that might be the extent of their actual knowledge of the phenomenon.

Since its creation, there were only select cases where a large number of fans could legally see these films outside of festivals.

Three of those instances include Darabont’s The Woman in the Room and Jeff Schiro’s The Boogeyman — which received a special VHS release, packaged together — and Jay Holben’s Paranoid, which was allowed online for a short period.

Other than that, unless you caught one at a film festival, or attended one dedicated to Dollar Babies, they remain almost a mythical legend.

This is the tough part, but it is fair when you think about it. For one dollar, filmmakers can make a movie based on a Stephen King story and use it to further their career. They do this by screening it at festivals or adding it to their product reel for future jobs.

However, that is it. You can’t put it on the Internet. If you see one, it breaks the filmmaker’s contract with Stephen King.

Are the Dollar Baby Films any good?

Don’t let the term “student filmmakers” fool you. These are some really good movies out there under the Stephen King dollar babies deal.

Not only am I a Dollar Baby filmmaker, as well as a massive fan of Stephen King and movies, but I have become a fan of the men and women who have made Dollar Babies.

These filmmakers know they may never have a chance to screen their movies for a broad audience, but they made their films because they love King’s works. They wanted to create something of their own based on the worlds that he created before them.

What is even better is that I have met many of these people (both online and in “real life”) and followed their careers since they created their films. Their stories never fail to inspire me.

I decided I wanted to tell their stories.

My book, Dollar Deal: The Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers (BUY IT HERE), is not about Stephen King, although every chapter is full of love and admiration for the King of Horror.

The book is only slightly about the stories adapted by the movies. There are plenty of books about King’s writings, and there is no reason to add another that regurgitates the same information.

My book is about the Stephen King Dollar Baby filmmakers. These filmmakers took a King short story that they loved, put in the painstaking time and hard work to create their unique version, and used the experience to move into impressive careers in the entertainment industry.

Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers moved on into successful careers as a successful film director, a TV showrunner, a published true crime author, a stage show performer, an actor, and much, much more.

While they owe a debt of gratitude to Stephen King, these filmmakers also prove that, if you want to achieve your dream, you can reach it through hard work and perseverance, and never giving up.

In his book, On Writing, King wrote that “the scariest moment is always just before you start.”

Every person who became a Dollar Baby Filmmaker had to get past that fear to make their Dollar Babies, and every one of them overcame those fears to create the careers that they only dreamed of before.

These are the Stephen King Dollar Baby filmmakers

Click here to learn more about each of the individual Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers.

It is kind of strange how you can be just moving through life and then something happens that just completely throws everything out of whack, changes everything in one instant, and makes you reevaluate everything – and I mean everything – in your life. That happened in my life on May 15, 2016.

On May 14, everything was normal. My wife Johanna was at work, selling shoes at CHAMPS. I took our son Ash to a carnival in the parking lot of the mall and made sure to send Johanna lots of cute pictures of Ash as he was riding rides and enjoying all the carnival games.

I had finally started writing for 411mania again and my Alternate Takes columns were starting to take form for the first time since I stopped writing the previous year to get my Stephen King dollar baby book written and published.

I was getting ready to start the second draft of my new fiction novel Fallen Star and hoped to have it done by the summer.

Things were “normal.”

Then…

Johanna had left early Sunday morning for a funeral in Houston. I stayed home with Ash and we went to Best Buy, where I got him a flash drive for his tablet. When we got back home, there was a police car in front of our apartment.

The police officer asked if my name was on a white Cobalt, and when I said it was, she asked if I have a young child. When I pointed out Ash to her, she informed me that Johanna had been in a car accident outside a town called Junction, Texas. She got me on the phone with a state trooper who only told me that she was alive but that was all.

I got no further news.

I called the hospital in Junction and found out that she was there. They said she had a punctured lung but they were able to inflate it. They were sending her to San Antonio to a trauma center because they didn’t have what was necessary to treat her in Junction.

They also said her feet were “really messed up.”

I got Ash in our van and started to drive to San Antonio. I had no idea what was happening. Finally, we stopped at a gas station (which ironically, I learned that Johanna had stopped at before her accident when I looked at our bank statement) and I got hold of the San Antonio hospital.

I spoke to her boss Jim who lived in San Antonio. He beat me to the hospital and was there for us every step of the way.

The nurses wouldn’t tell me anything but then the doctor got on the phone and had to tell me because he needed my permission to operate because Johanna was unconscious. He said that she lacerated both ankles. Chance for infection, which could mean amputation. Lacerated elbow and no blood circulation to her hand.

I told them to do anything they needed to help her.

The injuries were worse than I imagined.

Johanna almost tore her heel off of her right foot. It needed a flap and we found out over two months later that she also severed her Achilles’ tendon. She tore a lot of skin off her left leg and had to have a skin graft taken from her thigh to create the flap to cover it.

The graft seems to have taken well, but she will need plastic surgery in the future if it is to ever look normal again. She broke her tibula and fibula on that leg as well.

She didn’t just lacerate her elbow – she severed the artery in it and dislocated the elbow, causing three breaks. They fixed the artery and got the blood flowing again. Because of the loss of blood, she had nerve damage in that arm and it only healed at a few millimetres a month.

They fixed the break, but the elbow was pretty disfigured and also might need plastic surgery to regain a normal look again in the future.

Johanna also had some discoloration in the lobes heading to her brain. No one knows what that means, but what we do know is there was memory loss. She has no memory of leaving for her trip.

I slept in her hospital room and was there 24 hours a day for almost a full month, outside of leaving each night once for food in the cafeteria. She was unconscious for four days and didn’t respond to anything.

She woke up and was in and out for another week. She was awake normally after that but was weak and tired. I took care of her. I hand fed her. I made sure she had everything she needed while I was there.

When the school year ended, I had to leave to get Ash enrolled in summer camp (which was made free thanks to a grant by the YMCA due to our accident). He had been without me or his mom for a month and that wasn’t good for a six-year-old.

He still hasn’t recovered from that and has an IEP in school just to help him get by.

Johanna and I decided that it was best for me to return home to take care of him while her mom stayed with her in San Antonio. Here is the kicker – Johanna doesn’t remember me being there at all – feeding her, taking care of her, talking to her.

She has no memory of the first month after the accident.

My dad had a brilliant idea of starting a GoFundMe campaign to help us. We received more than I could have hoped from friends and family who reached out. I also received money from people directly to help me eat while I was at the hospital and received money both from Johanna’s work and her old sorority in the form of donations.

A friend of Johanna’s ran an Avon fundraiser for us and the dollar movie theater in Norman donated a percentage of their weekend snack bar sales to us. We received so much help and it is something we will work to pay back all our lives.

Here we are – 15 surgeries, two months in the hospital and another month in a skilled nursing center later. Johanna was not back home yet, but I had been home with Ash since June.

We got her back to Midland and she started at a rehab center because she still couldn’t walk and was only at the start of her rehabilitation stages. We had a long way to go.

By January, Johanna could walk again and was back to work. She refused, and still refuses, to take no for an answer. She is a real superhero.

Johanna’s boss at the time said I should write a book about this entire ordeal. I like the idea, but in a different way. I don’t think I have it in me to write a non-fiction memoir about this entire incident and don’t think anyone would really want to read it anyway.

However, I have been working in my mind on the second book in my now titled Metahuman Chronicles series, of which Fallen Star is the first book in the series, and I think I will implement this incident into the main storyline and that could give me a chance to really purge myself of all the feelings that have built up inside since I almost lost the only woman I love.

But, that means it is time that I reevaluate my writing career. I need to get to the point where I am writing my books. I will have Fallen Star finished and published before the end of this year, and I will have the new book underway by the time that NANOWRIMO kicks up again in November. 

But this means finding more economical uses of my writing time.

When May 14, 2016, ended, I was just coasting along. Writing for 411mania again, getting ready to proof Fallen Star, and just doing what I do every day of the week. By May 16, everything in my life was turned upside down and nothing that was important on Saturday mattered anymore.

It is four years later and it is time that I really started working on what I plan to do for the rest of my life.

It’s time to get to work.

Over the last five decades, there have been dozens of movies based on the work of horror author Stephen King and even more Stephen King TV adaptations.

In 2017 alone, there was a huge success story with the big screen adaptation of It as well as a massive disappointment with the adaptation of his beloved Dark Tower.

However, for every Shawshank Redemption or Green Mile, there is a Maximum Overdrive and Lawnmower Man, movies that embarrass all Stephen King fans.

Not only does King have an extensive library of movie adaptations, but he also is responsible for television adaptations as well, with made-for-TV movies, miniseries and full-blown television series to his name.

Much like the movie adaptations, these efforts vary from very good to terrible. Much like his movie output, the 2017 calendar year was also a big one for King, and just like with his theatrical efforts, there were good and bad.

While Mr. Mercedes was an excellent adaptation of a rare King thriller, The Mist disappointed most fans with its adaptation on Spike TV.

Stephen King hasn’t always been happy with his movies, which is why he remade The Shining on television to try to make it more like his novel. There have also been fantastic movies in theaters, such as Carrie, that received puzzling remakes on TV as well.

There have been 28 television adaptations, and counting, including television shows, network TV efforts, cable television series, and more recently, series made directly for streaming efforts like Hulu and Netflix.

With so many options, here is a look at every Stephen King TV adaptation, ranked from worst to first. This list does not include the sequels not based on his original stories.

STEPHEN KING TV ADAPTATIONS, RANKED

30. Trucks

In 1986, Stephen King directed the only movie of his career. The film was Maximum Overdrive, based on his story Trucks from the Night Shift collection. King has admitted in interviews over the years that he was dealing with substance abuse problems at that time in his life and has few memories of directing the movie.

Maximum Overdrive remains one of the most polarizing King adaptations of all time, with many people calling it one of the worst and just as many loving it for the campiness and “so bad that its good” qualities. It also has a great AC/DC soundtrack. However, in 1997 it received a low budget remake for USA Network called Trucks.

The made-for-TV movie stars Timothy Busfield (The West Wing), Brendan Fletcher (Gracepoint) and Brenda Bakke (American Gothic). Ray and his son Logan arrive at a desert truck stop where some other people happen to show up at the same time. That is when Trucks pretty much follows the lead of Maximum Overdrive when the trucks start to terrorize everyone gathered at the truck stop.

The fun visuals from the fun and trashy Maximum Overdrive are missing here, and the low budget makes everything look second-rate. There is also a massive problem of the director padding the running time with gratuitous shots of people that have nothing to do with the characters at the truck stop dying. This movie remains one of the worst Stephen King TV adaptations ever made.

29. The Langoliers

One of the biggest problems with Stephen King TV adaptations, especially the older ones, is the special effects – most of which ended up looking fake at best. With the adaptation of The Langoliers, originally part of the novella collection Four Past Midnight, the special effects were atrocious, a joke at best. Created as a two-night mini-series and directed by the incredibly talented Tom Holland (Child’s Play), the movie was plagued with both poor effects and subpar acting.

The two-night event starred Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap), David Morse (12 Monkeys) and Bronson Pinchot (True Romance), and it seemed that Pinchot was the only actor who really put his heart into the project. The mini-series was about a group of people on an airplane that flies through a bright light, causing everyone but a small batch of people to disappear. Luckily, one of the remaining survivors was a pilot and he lands the plane in Bangor, Maine.

The group realizes there is no one at the airport they land at, and more distressing, something is coming – the Langoliers, creatures that will eat everything and leave behind an empty void. At the end of the day. The Langoliers is a Twilight Zone episode that runs too long and has some of the most ludicrous monsters ever created for a Stephen King TV adaptation. Add in a boring story and most of the cast calling their roles in and this was a low point in King’s career of adaptations.

28. Children of the Corn (2009)

In 1984, Fritz Kiersch created the Stephen King adaptation Children of the Corn and that film lives on as one of the true King classics in low budget horror films. It was so successful that six sequels were created between 1992 and 2001. The story was based on the 1977 short story included in the book Night Shift. However, despite there being seven movies in the franchise, eight years after the final sequel went straight-to-DVD. SyFy decided to reboot it with a TV movie.

Much like the original movie, the remake involves a husband and wife driving through the Nebraska planes and coming into contact with the Children of the Corn child cult. Unlike the original movie, this one shows that the kids started their cult in 1963, with the movie then moving into present day 1975, showing this has been going on for a long time. The movie also speaks of the Canaanite God that demands that all children be sacrificed in the name of him at the age of 19.

To give this movie credit, it tries to move the story a little away from the original movie while making it a little more loyal to the original short story, allowing this version to try to stand on its own. However, one of the biggest problems is that the boy that plays Isaac in this remake is nowhere near the level of John Franklin from the original 1984 movie. It also doesn’t help that the two adults are so unlikeable that we want them dead. Add in terrible acting by the kids and this is a movie that is best avoided.

27. Rose Red

There have been a few Stephen King television projects that were not based on his novels or short stories and Rose Red is one of those. This was a screenplay written by King, originally pitched to Steven Spielberg as a movie idea in the ‘90s, and then finally made for television in 2002. The idea was a haunted house story, similar to the classic horror movie The Haunting, a dream project for King.

When Steven Spielberg and long-time King filmmaker Mick Garris passed on the movie, Craig R. Baxley (Stone Cold) signed on as the director and the film finally came to life. The story involved a university professor who brings a group of psychics to a mansion in Seattle believed haunted while trying to find proof of the paranormal. The movie then split between the past and present and ended up with deadly secrets awakening an evil spirit.

Airing as a mini-series on ABC, Rose Red was a huge ratings’ success, but the critical response was lacking. Like many Stephen King TV adaptations, this one also seemed bloated to fill the time and caused it to drag along with a generic haunted house storyline and cheap scares thrown in to dumb it down. If there is one thing to praise, it is the special effects, which were decent for such a low budget, but that was another problem. The Haunting left a lot to the imagination, knowing that is scarier than anything a movie could show.

26. Desperation

Back in 1996, Stephen King undertook an experiment of sorts. He released two interconnected books – one under his own name called Desperation and the second under his retired pseudonym Richard Bachman called The Regulators. The two books had the same characters but in completely different worlds – parallel universes. While The Regulators was a sci-fi styled story in a suburban neighborhood, Desperation was a horror story about people traveling along a desolated highway in Nevada.

In Desperation, a police deputy named Entragian is abducting people along the highway and it turns out that he is possessed by an evil being that lives by possessing people and transferring to others before they die. This Stephen King TV adaptation is directed by Mick Garris, a filmmaker who has created more King adaptations than anyone and stars the always entertaining Ron Perlman (Sons of Anarchy) as Entragian, with a supporting cast that includes Steven Webber (Wings) and Tom Skerritt (Alien).

Desperation was supposed to be a miniseries but instead aired on ABC as a three-hour movie and was trounced in the ratings due to going head-to-head with the reality series American Idol but the quality was not good enough to succeed on its own anyway. While Perlman is always an entertaining and fun actor, he is stuck here in an overlong story that contains too much filler to really deliver the tension and fears that the original story suggested.

25. Under the Dome

Under the Dome was a big chance for network TV to take a Stephen King novel and create something special. While this CBS drama series lasted three seasons, it lost King fans along the way in droves by delving way too far from the source material and taking away a lot of what made the original novel so compelling. As a Stephen King TV series adaptation, it was clearly bloated and really boring for much of the two seasons.

The novel, published in 2009, focuses on a small Maine town that suddenly finds itself trapped when a giant dome surrounds it, not letting anyone in or out. With the town cut off from the rest of the world, they start to fall apart when the police chief dies and a local selectman decides to make a power play to take over the town. The mystery is what caused the dome and whether they can escape it, but the real story is a typical Stephen King tale of how people react to extreme situations.

The TV show decided to really delve into the way people reacted but Under the Dome did it in a boring manner, with too many people acting irrationally and the series just drifting along when it should have been trucking it. The changes to major characters from the book didn’t win over King fans and the plodding and frustrating storylines lost everyone else.

24. Big Driver

Big Driver is one of the more recent films on this list. Based on the 2010 short story that appeared in Full Dark, No Stars, the movie itself came out in 2014 as a Lifetime movie. If that seems strange – a Stephen King TV adaptation for Lifetime Network – you will know what might be coming with this movie. The script was written by Richard Christian Matheson, the son of the legendary Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) and the film was directed by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Mikael Salomon (The Abyss).

Sadly, the final result didn’t match up to the names behind the movie. Maria Bello (A History of Violence) stars as Tess, a successful mystery writer driving through a rural route when she ends up with flat tires and stranded at an abandoned gas station. She is then beaten and raped and thrown into a culvert, where three other female bodies lay. She then chooses not to report the crime to save her own image but then chooses to seek vengeance on the rapist and other people involved.

The movie has interesting ideas, including Tess getting advice from one of her fictional characters (portrayed by Olympia Dukakis). However, that also hurts the movie because it is an exploitation movie at heart but the humorous tone it takes at times make it a hard movie to really take seriously and the Lifetime Network makes it a little less Stephen King and a little more sensationalized rape-revenge fantasy.

23. The Mist

Released in 2017 on Spike TV, The Mist tried to bring one of Stephen King’s most beloved short stories to life as an actual television series. However, by the end of the first season, the series alienated most of the fans of King’s story and couldn’t bring in enough mainstream viewers to save it. Spike TV, despite not a huge cable network, canceled The Mist after just one season.

This isn’t the first time someone has adapted The Mist, as Frank Darabont (The Walking Dead) made it into a movie starring Thomas Jane that was polarizing due to the grim nature but beloved by most Stephen King fans. It even has a black and white version that has become a huge cult favorite with fans. The TV show based on the short story won’t receive the same love.

As for the story, instead of having the mist roll in and trap a number of people in a supermarket, The Mist Stephen King TV adaptation focused on the entire town – starting before the mist rolls in – and then dealing more with the controversies surrounding the people of the town. The show even goes beyond the monsters in the mist and has it show people images from their past, as well as bringing their fears to life. It was an interesting take but was so dark and bleak that had most people cheering for deaths rather than survival of the townspeople.

22. Bag of Bones

In 2011, the A&E Network aired the Stephen King TV adaptation for Bag of Bones. Longtime King director Mick Garris took on the project and created a two-night miniseries based on the 1998 novel about an author who suffers writer’s block at an isolated lake house after his wife dies. He also suffers from delusions that are exasperated when a ghost shows up at the lake house that might somehow tie into the relationship between a young girl and her widowed mother.

The mini-series stars Pierce Brosnan (James Bond) as author Mike Noonan, and the first thing the series does is change his wife Jo’s death from an aneurysm to an accident where a bus hits and kills her. After that, Mike heads to the lake house, and the proper story gets underway. However, a considerable problem for the entire adaptation is the over-acting of Brosnan, a talented actor who drives Mike to levels of insanity throughout the movie.

The TV adaptation also tried too hard to be scary, without succeeding, and seemed to prefer the horrors to the actual drama of the man and his neighbors that made the novel work so well. The movie looks great and is one of the most stylish Stephen King TV adaptations but the story gets so tangled up in its own supernatural happenings that the entire thing just falls short in the end.

21. Tommyknockers

Tommyknockers had two things going against it from the start. First of all, Tommyknockers is one of the most disliked Stephen King novels by his fans. It was King’s attempt at creating a science fiction novel instead of a pure horror novel and wasn’t well accepted by his faithful fans, many of whom still deride the novel to this day. The second problem was that Tommyknockers didn’t really improve on the problems with the story and added to it by delivering some of the most insipid special effects anyone could have expected.

The 1993 television mini-series starred Jimmy Smits, who was a huge television star at the time thanks to L.A. Law, and Marg Helgenberger, seven years before she became a beloved TV actress for her role on C.S.I. The story of the mini-series followed that of the Stephen King novel. Marg portrayed Bobbi Anderson, a western fiction writer, and Smits was her boyfriend Jim Gardner, a poet. They live outside Haven, Maine, and stumble upon something buried underground. As they excavate the object, people in town begin to undergo mental and physical changes.

The acting isn’t that bad, but this movie completely dies due to the abysmal special effects and poor direction (the original director was fired just days into the shoot and a replacement had to come in and finish the movie). This isn’t a good movie but it isn’t as bad as others might have you believe.

20. Carrie (2002)

Carrie has now been made three different times, with the first being the clear best starring Sissy Spacek and the most recent being an entertaining effort starting Chloe Moretz. However, in between those two movies was a made-for-TV network effort with a 2002 version made for NBC. The pedigree was huge with this one as the screenplay was written by Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, American Gods) but the movie itself, which was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for what they hoped could be a TV show, fell short.

David Carson (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) helmed the movie and set it up with a police interview investigating a case concerning the missing Carrie White (Angela Bettis). The most significant names in the cast were David Keith (Firestarter) and Patricia Clarkson (Six Feet Under) as the police detective investigating the case and Carrie’s mother Margaret White respectively.

The biggest problem with this version of Carrie is that is copies a lot from the Brian Del Palma movie and what it adds is mostly straight from King’s novel, making this a repetitive effort. The one difference and a nice change is making Margaret less crazed when it comes to dealing with Carrie. The entire cast is good while the CGI is disappointing, as was par for course with Stephen King TV adaptations of that era. It just wasn’t fresh enough to help them kickstart the TV show that Fuller hoped to help bring to life.

19. Kingdom Hospital

Kingdom Hospital was an interesting Stephen King television project. Instead of being based on one of King’s books or short stories, this 13-episode television series was based on the Danish TV series The Kingdom by Lars von Trier. Anyone who is familiar with von Trier’s work knows that he makes bizarre, minimalist movies and his TV show was no different. Von Trier’s TV series lasted eight episodes while Stephen King’s series lasted 12 in the United States.

Initially, ABC planned to make this as a mini-series but changed their minds and created it as a full season television series, although it only lasted the one season. King himself developed the American version of the series and moved the story to Maine. Craig Baxley (Rose Red) came on to direct it and some very familiar faces signed on including Bruce Davison (X-Men), Diane Ladd (Wild at Heart), Andrew McCarthy (Pretty in Pink) and Ed Begley Jr. (St. Elsewhere).

The story involved a hospital in Maine that happens to be haunted by spirits. The series was originally meant to be a mini-series, so it is clear why it ended up a bit disjointed and bloated at times. It does deserve credit for its strange moments, similar to Twin Peaks, but without the ingenuity of that show. The show ended up dropping in ratings thanks in large part to the strange nature of the show but the lack of scares that Stephen King fans might have expected.

18. Golden Years

Golden Years is another Stephen King original that was not based on a prior novel or short story. Stephen King wrote the screenplay for this mini-series that aired on CBS in 1991. This series was a very different King adaptation, an eight-episode series that was not so much a King horror series but instead was more like what it would look like if Stephen King wrote Twin Peaks. King once said that Golden Years was like Twin Peaks without the delirium.

The entire mini-series was supposed to lead into a regular television series but CBS refused to pick it up after the eight episodes ended. The story focused on Harlan Williams, an elderly janitor, who starts to age backward after an explosion. Golden Years also ties into other Stephen King stories like Firestarter and The Tommyknockers, as the secret agency The Shop showed up to try to capture Harlan.

The most significant problem here is that – much like King’s other mini-series – this one dragged on and seemed to just drift from episode to episode with things happening but little in the way of suspense or horror or even action for that matter. Golden Years is a series about growing old together and throws in the regular King tropes with a secret organization and the threat of death. It isn’t horrible, but it isn’t something people need to rush out to see.

17. The Shining

One of the greatest horror movies of all time is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and while it is a fantastically nuanced story of a man going insane, it is in no way a great Stephen King adaptation. It is so far off base from what King was trying to say with his novel that the horror master takes every chance he gets to bash the movie, even now – almost 40 years after its release. In the film, Jack Torrance seems insane from the start, and the haunting of the Overlook Hotel is practically an afterthought.

In 1997, Stephen King got a chance to make things right. He wrote his own screenplay for a mini-series that his collaborator Mick Garris directed. It ended up as an ABC mini-series, and many Stephen King fans will argue that it – and not Kubrick’s masterpiece – is the better version simply because it finally followed King’s ideas from the book. Jack Torrance is an alcoholic father who takes his family to a remote hotel in Colorado to be the caretaker during the winter months when it is closed.

The sense of isolation added to the fact that the Overlook Hotel is haunted led to Jack – an otherwise good husband and father – losing his sanity and trying to kill his family. There is also a stronger look at Danny’s “Shining” abilities. While this is the more faithful version, it is also a lot less serious than the Kubrick movie and is very hokey at times, especially when Steven Webber’s Jack looks possessed when he snaps to try to kill his family.

16. Salem’s Lot (2004)

Unlike a lot of movies on this list, Salem’s Lot received two versions, but both were on television without the King vampire story ever getting a theatrical release. The second version came out in 2004 with Rob Lowe in the lead.

It also featured a fantastic supporting cast that included Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Donald Sutherland (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Samantha Mathis (The Strain), Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) and James Cromwell (L.A. Confidential) as Father Callahan.

This Stephen King TV adaptation aired on TNT, a cable network release which helped to allow this mini-series to take a few more chances than the network television adaptations couldn’t touch.

Much of the story is similar to the original 1979 mini-series with Ben Mears (Lowe) returning to his home in Jerusalem’s Lot to work on his new novel and try to work out some traumatic childhood memories.

The problem with the new Salem’s Lot is that it isn’t really scary. None of the vampires bring the fear that the 1979 movie did. For King fans, there was disappointment that important moments from the book was glossed over in the mini-series and regular TV fans watched some moments that just seemed too silly for a horror movie (Ben used two tongue depressors as a cross to fend off a vampire).

On the positive side, there were some great performances, especially Donald Sutherland as Richard Straker.

15. Gerald’s Game

In 1992, Stephen King wrote a very different type of horror novel. In Gerald’s Game, King wrote a story about a man and wife who go to a secluded cabin in the woods.

When their sex play goes too far, and husband Gerald won’t stop, Jessie kicks her husband in the groin to make him stop and he has a heart attack and dies. The problem is that Jessie is handcuffed to the headboard and no one else is there to free her.

Meanwhile, someone may or may not be outside the cabin watching, and a stray dog makes its way in and starts eating Gerald.

In 2017, Mike Flanagan (Oculus) directed the movie starring Carla Gugino (Watchmen) as Jessie and Bruce Greenwood (National Treasure) as Gerald. This film was made directly for Netflix, which allowed it to take chances that most other Stephen King TV adaptations couldn’t even fathom.

Carla Gugino was fantastic in her role as Jessie, something that was very important for this movie to succeed since she carried most of it by herself.

Flanagan uses a lot of nice tricks in the movie to move it forward with just one character in most of the scenes, including having Jessie have delusions and talking to illusions. However, the one thing that holds this movie down is the ending, which is loyal to the book but neither end is very good.

14. Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Up next is an anthology television series. In 2006, TNT created a series called Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and it featured a new Stephen King adaptation every week.

There were eight weeks, and each episode was the length of a regular one-hour television episode. Most of the stories were from the short story collection of the same name, but three episodes were from other books.

The episodes included adaptations of “Battleground,” “Crouch End,” “Umney’s Last Case,” “The End of the Whole Mess,” “The Road Virus Heads North,” “The Fifth Quarter,” “Autopsy Room Four,” and “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.” Names involved included stars like Tom Berenger, Ron Livingston, William H. Macy, William Hurt and Steven Weber.

These Stephen King TV adaptations were hit-and-miss, but they were all entertaining in their own right. “Battleground” might be the highlight but “Umney’s Last Case” was also a solid effort despite straying somewhat from the theme of the original story.

“The End of the Whole Mess” is also a great little sci-fi episode but the other episodes are not up to that level. Despite that, seeing an entire collection of King short stories adapted into films made this a can’t miss event for fans.

13. 1922

The newest addition to Stephen King TV adaptations is 1922, which like Gerald’s Game was made directly for Netflix. The movie stars Thomas Jane (The Mist) as a father in 1922 whose wife threatens to leave him and take their son with her.

To keep his son, Wilfred kills his wife and throws her into their well. His actions attract the attention of the local sheriff, who investigates her disappearance, and also helps Wilfred financially with his farm.

Wilfred, who convinced his son to help kill her, then suffers through a horror story that pays homage to Edgar Allen Poe’s Tale Tell Heart, although since this is a Stephen King adaptation, includes the decaying corpse of his wife to appear to come after Wilfred for revenge.

The Netflix adaptation is very loyal to the original short story from Full Dark, No Stars, except for changing the ending to add some ambiguity to the entire climax.

The movie is a slow burn, well-acted and well-directed film with a lot of creepy and disturbing scenes. It shares a similarity with The Shining, where a husband and father goes mad, but does it in a way that is both poetic, disturbing, and somehow fresh in an old theme of a killer’s remorse.

Thomas Jane is spot-on in his performance, and this is one of King’s better recent television adaptations.

12. The Night Flier

While it is rarely talked about, the 1997 Stephen King TV adaptation The Night Flier is a solid little horror movie that deserves more attention.

The movie stars Miguel Ferrer (NCIS: Los Angeles) as reporter Richard Dees, a man trying to investigate the story of a murderer whose motif is killing people in a style similar to that of a vampire. The twist is, as one might expect from a Stephen King story, that the killer is a vampire.

The original short story was originally published in a 1988 horror anthology called Prime Evil and then appeared in King’s Nightmares & Dreamscapes short story collection in 1993.

Because the movie came out in 1997, that was a quick turnaround from the moment that it appeared in one of King’s books. When looking at the story from a personal level, this is King attacking tabloid journalism.

The Night Flier was an HBO release, and the movie contains a ton of Easter eggs, including tabloid story topics, referring to other King stories like Strawberry Spring, Children of the Corn and The Lawnmower Man.

It is funny moments like these that make King fans smile that mixes in with some decent practical effects – especially with The Night Flier himself – that makes this a movie worth seeking out.

11. Sometimes They Come Back

Sometimes They Come Back was initially written in 1974 for a magazine, and Stephen King included it in his very first collection of short stories titled Night Shift.

The story centered on a school teacher named Jim who saw his brother murdered by kids in a gang when he was a child. Soon, kids in his class start dying, and new students enroll to replace them – the same kids who killed his brother 17 years before – none of them aged at all.

The made-for-TV movie adaptation came in 1991 for CBS and starred Tim Matheson (Animal House) as Jim. Just like the short story, students begin to die – all looking like suicides – and one by one the gang members who killed his brother so many years before show up and seem to be targeting Jim himself.

There were some significant changes here, with the ending a little more uplifting and the way that Jim dealt with the greasers a little less fantastical.

When it was all said and done, Sometimes They Come Back was an above-average Stephen King TV adaptation and one that worked well to be both frightening and tense.

For a network television movie, it also worked well to keep fans scared without having to cross too many lines of decency. It was successful enough to warrant two sequels, both suffering from diminishing returns.

10. Haven

If you ask fans of Haven what it was based on, there are a large number of SyFy fans who would have no idea that this started out as a Stephen King adaptation. In 2005, Stephen King was asked to contribute a novel to the Hard Case Crime series of hardboiled detective books.

His offering was called The Colorado Kid and was about a group of reporters who are talking about an unexplained mystery, and they tell her the story of the Colorado Kid.

Haven takes place in the same town as that fictional newspaper and stars Emily Rose as FBI Special Agent Audrey Parker sent to Haven to investigate a case but realizing there are some unexplained mysteries simmering under the surface of this Maine coastal town.

She ends up quitting the FBI and taking on a role in the Haven Police Department before she realizes that there may be something about her past that she doesn’t remember that may tie into the mysteries of the town.

This was one of the most successful Stephen King long-running TV series, lasting five seasons and 78 episodes before SyFy canceled the series.

While the series wasn’t groundbreaking, it was highly entertaining and took the police procedural and added some nice supernatural elements. If anyone is familiar with SyFy original series, this is a step above many and was the start of the network starting to put out solid originals.

9. The Outsider

The Outsider is the newest addition to the Stephen King television library and it ended up as a great adaptation thanks mostly to the fact that it was on HBO, meaning that it didn’t get cut up and  censored like network television adaptations in the past.

The story is a twisted murder mystery. Jason Bateman starred as Terry Maitland, a little league baseball coach arrested and charged with a murder with all the evidence pointing at his guilt. The problem is that he was not in town when the murder happened and has an airtight alibi. Of course, this all came down to a doppleganger, and the tragic part is that Terry died before his trial and before the world learned he was innocent.

 The acting all the way through was solid, with Ben Mendelsohn great as Det. Ralph Anderson and Cynthia Erivo stealing every scene she was in as the King-favorite character Holly Gibney. The series is slow burn and matches up well with the book for another great later-day Stephen King TV adaptation.

8. Castle Rock

While it is not based on a Stephen King novel, the Hulu original series Castle Rock is based on the world that many of King’s novels exist in. Castle Rock is the fictional town in Maine that was the location for novels like The Dead Zone, Doctor Sleep and Needful Things.

The series, produced by J.J. Abrams, had a chance to create a new story in the world of Stephen King. It also had a ton of fun Stephen King Easter eggs, including Shawshank Prison, Sheriff Alan Pangborn, actress Sissy Spacek from Carrie and Bill Skarsgard in a lead role (he was Pennywise in the new It movie).

The first season aired in 2017 and had Henry Deaver (Andre Holland) as an attorney who returns to represent a prisoner from Shawshank Prison known as The Kid that just appeared one day and no one knows who he is or where he is from.

As a Hulu original series, it was 10 episodes in length. It received mostly positive ratings with an 86-percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can check out our recaps starting out with the premiere a the link above.

The series looks to be an anthology series (ala Fargo and American Horror Story), so whether future seasons keep this highly rated (or even moves it up the list remains to be seen).

7. Mr. Mercedes

Not a lot of people were able to see Mr. Mercedes because Stephen King sold it to AT&T who then created the show and broadcast it on their own network, which was only available on UVerse and Direct TV.

However, those who were able to see it saw a Stephen King TV adaptation that shared more in common with is writing than almost anything else made from his work. The series is based on the first book in the Bill Hodges trilogy about a serial killer who never escaped that begins tormenting the retired police officer who worked the case.

While the plot of the series if Bill Hodges trying to once again capture the one serial killer that escaped justice before that same killer hurts anyone that he loves, the real treat of this show is the small-town setting.

One of King’s specialties in his writing is to take people in small towns and put them in extraordinary situations and then showing how they deal with it. In this case, there isn’t an extraordinary situation, but instead just a serial killer with a screwed-up life messing with a retired cop with a messed-up life.

This series is about two men who are damaged and how their lives intertwine. There are a lot of interesting characters floating through this series, from the killer’s twister mother to the younger sister of one of his victims developing a relationship with Hodges.

The conflict is interesting, but the small-town setting and the internal conflicts of the major characters make this series a must-watch.

6. The Stand

Stephen King fans give The Stand a lot of grief and it honestly doesn’t deserve it. The mini-series never stood a chance, to begin with. The Stand is widely considered the greatest novel that Stephen King ever wrote. It is about the end of the world, due to a disease, and the battle between the forces of good and evil, with the bad guys led by the amazing character of Randall Flagg. It was an amazing epic story and there was no way a network television adaptation could ever do it justice.

Created for ABC in 1994, The Stand was four-episode mini-series that did everything that it could while still pleasing the network censors. That meant having to leave out some great scenes, just because the violence wouldn’t pass muster on network television. However, what they did allow was very loyal to the source material, and this might be Mick Garris’ best Stephen King adaptation.

The cast was top-notch, with Gary Sinise (CSI: New York) as Stu Redman, Molly Ringwald as Frannie Goldsmith and Rob Lowe as Nick Andrus. On the other side was heavy hitters like Miguel Ferrer as Lloyd Henreid, Matt Frewer (Max Headroom) as Trashcan Man and Jamey Sheridan as Randall Flagg. While it could never match up to King’s novel, it remains one of the best TV adaptations based on his work.

5. It

2017 saw arguably one of the best Stephen King adaptations of all-time with the big screen release of It. The idea that this movie was so great is surprising to the many people who wanted to dismiss it when they first heard about it and saw images of the new Pennywise, the Dancing Clown. That is because the 1990 miniseries remains in the hearts of many of Stephen King’s fans.

It had a lot of problems as a miniseries but none of them keep it from being a favorite and a cult classic for many horror fans. The biggest lure of this mini-series falls squarely on the lap of Tim Curry. While the movie version of It will go down as one of the best of all-time, Curry’s Pennywise will remain, for many fans, the best version of the villain from one of King’s most beloved novels. To recap, the novel saw a demon feeding on children in the town of Derry, Maine, and the demon takes the form of the clown, Pennywise.

When a group of kids defeats Pennywise, the children return years later as adults to finish the job. The mini-series does what King’s novel did, and that is to flip back-and-forth between the characters as kids and adults, and big-name television actors like Richard Thomas (The Waltons), John Ritter (Three’s Company), Harry Anderson (Night Court) and Anette O’Toole (Smallville) carried the load. The only drawback was the finale with a ridiculous looking spider-demon.

4. Storm of the Century

Storm of the Century is another Stephen King original script that is not based on any of his previous novels or short stories. Released in 1999 by ABC and directed by Craig Baxley, Storm of the Century takes place on Little Tall Island in Maine (the same town Dolores Claiborne took place) during a blizzard that is so strong that it blocks off all outside communication from the island and secludes all the residents there with no way out.

Soon, a mysterious stranger named Andre Linoge (Colm Feore) shows up in town and reveals that he knows the dark secrets that rest in the hearts of the townspeople. While he is put in jail by the town’s constable (Tim Daly), he is still able to exert his influence and people begin to commit suicide and suffer from terrible dreams. He then tells them that he will not leave until they give him what he wants – all the children of the town given to him.

For a mini-series on ABC, Storm of the Century was an incredibly dark and grim story – a morality tale that doesn’t hold back when showing that people will do anything to protect themselves. It is a philosophical movie that forces the viewers to ask a lot of questions and remains one of the best Stephen King TV adaptations ever made.

3. 11.22.63

While Netflix is proving to be an excellent platform for Stephen King TV adaptations, the most critical streaming service for King might end up being Hulu. This is because, in 2018 they will start the new Castle Rock series, taking place in the most famous of King’s fictional towns. However, the adaptation that proved to Hulu how big Stephen King could be for their platform was the mini-series based on the novel 11.22.63.

This novel is a time travel story that features a school teacher named Jake Epping who learns that there is a portal that will take a person back in time to 1960. A diner owner named Al has been using this to try to figure out a way to go back in time to stop the JFK assassination. However, when a person goes back, they can stay as long as they want but come back just minutes later in real-time. Al asks Jake to take his place since he is dying, and Jake agrees and heads back in time to try to figure out a way to stop the JFK assassination and hopefully make the world a better place in the future.

James Franco took on the role of Jake while Chris Cooper stars as Al. The mini-series lasted eight episodes and was a smart look at time travel and how the past will fight back to prevent changes that could disrupt the future. It is also a great story of how changing history isn’t always the best thing and that sometimes it is just better to leave the past alone. This is a great story, a great mini-series, and gives us high hopes for Castle Rock in 2018. 

2. The Dead Zone

The most successful Stephen King TV series of all-time is The Dead Zone. The novel came out in 1979, the seventh book for King, and told the story of Johnny Smith, a man who suffered a head injury as a child and developed the supernatural ability to see the future by touching someone. The book then had Johnny realize that if a man named Greg Stillson lives to become president, he will bring about a nuclear war that will end the world.

Four years later, filmmaking mastermind David Cronenberg adapted it into a great film with Christopher Walken starring as Johnny. Finally, in 2002, USA Network produced a television series starring Anthony Michael Hall as Johnny Smith. The idea of Johnny being able to save people’s lives by seeing the future made it perfect for episodic television and the idea of Greg Stillson (Sean Patrick Flannery) causing the destruction of the world was a great running storyline for the series. 

Sadly, USA Network canceled the series after six seasons. While that is more time than many television series get, the fact is that The Dead Zone never got a proper finale. Hall was perfect as Smith, and the entire series was a blast. It is just too bad low ratings at the end never allowed the show to see the end of Johnny and Stillson’s storyline.

1. Salem’s Lot (1979)

When it comes to the Stephen King TV adaptations, it has been hard for anything to match the first. Salem’s Lot came out in 1979, four years after King released the novel – his second release after Carrie. Directed by the great Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Salem’s Lot tells the story of a writer who returns to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot to try to finish his latest novel and learns that vampires have taken over the town.

Stephen King wrote Salem’s Lot before Anne Rice published Interview with the Vampire and he brought vampires into the modern day, especially placing them in small-town America. The CBS mini-series did a great job of painting this portrait as well with Reggie Barlow frightening as the legendary vampire Barlow and Richard Straker excellent in his role as Richard Straker, the man bringing in the vampires.

While Hooper proved with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that he could do gory and disturbing, with Salem’s Lot, he proved that he could create a scary and spooky horror movie as well. It is also interesting that Hooper was able to create a bleak and dark horror mini-series for network television as well.

The acting is great, the direction is great, and the story is memorable. While the special effects show their age, that isn’t enough to keep this from being the best Stephen King TV adaptation of all-time.