Everything's Eventual (Mar 2002)

A collection of 14 short stories. Includes "Riding the Bullet," the first thing Stephen King wrote after his accident in 1999. The roller coaster is named after the Rottweiler that was distracting the driver of the car that hit King.

Common King themes:

  • The number 19 (In 1408, Mike Enslin gets a phone call: "This is nine! This is nine! Nine! This is ten! Ten! We have killed your friends! Every friend is now dead!" In Riding the Bullet, Alan's mother is in room 487 in the hospital. In The Man in the Black Suit, the fish Gary catches is 19 inches long. In The Road Virus Heads North, Kinnell's alarm code is 3817.)
  • Someone has The Shining (In the title story, Dinky has the shining, although in this case it's referred to as "trans".)
  • Roses as a force of good (In "The Man in the Black Suit," the narrator recalls a strong memory of his mother standing in sunlight in their kitchen and wearing a dress with red roses on it.)
  • Main character is a writer (Richard Kinnell, the protagonist in The Road Virus Heads North, is a well known horror author.)

Everything's Eventual has connections to the following books:

It

Lisey's Story

Pet Sematary

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

The Dead Zone

1408 / Chapter III : Roland Deschain

The man who saves Mike in 1408 is named Dearborn. In Mejis, Roland was known as Will Dearborn.

Rufus Dearborn, who was staying that night in room 1414, up near the elevators, was a salesman for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, in town from Texas to talk about moving up to an executive position.

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away : Bool

He snapped the cylinder back in with a flick of his wrist, then slipped the short barrel into his mouth. It tasted of oil and metal. He thought, Here I SIT, about to COOL it, my plan to EAT a fuckin’ BOOL-it.

Autopsy Room Four : Derry, ME

Howard Cottrell, the narrator, is from Derry.

Nowadays I am Howard the Conqueror, stock broker extraordinaire, terror of Derry Municipal Country Club.

Everything's Eventual : Skipper Brannigan

Skipper is the main antagonist against Dinky in the titular story.

I’ve got a good job now, and no reason to feel glum. No more hanging out with the gumbyheads at the Supr Savr, policing up the Kart Korral and getting bothered by assholes like Skipper. Skipper’s munching the old dirt sandwich these days, but one thing I have learned in my nineteen years on this Planet Earth is don’t relax, there are Skippers everywhere.

Riding the Bullet : Monkey's Paw

I wished again I could take my own wish back; as the dark drew down and I stood there at the crossroads, it was too easy to think of that story about the monkey’s paw.

The Man in the Black Suit : Castle Rock, ME

The narrator references a story from nearby Castle Rock (and also mentions having written for the Castle Rock Call for 20 years, so maybe he ended up moving there later in life.) Pretty sure this reference inspired the novella "1922" in the later collection Full Dark No Stars.

We hunkered and listened to the wind in the chimney and hoped no one would get sick or break a leg or get a headful of bad ideas, like the farmer over in Castle Rock who had chopped up his wife and kids three winters before and then said in court that the ghosts made him do it.

References will be here!