Stephen King Writing Sequel to The Shining
Posted on November 27, 2009
Stephen King is writing a sequel to The Shining. The sequel will focus on Jack Torrance's clairvoyant little boy Danny, who barely escaped from the nightmare at the Overlook Hotel. In the sequel Danny is 40 and working at a New York hospice. King told fans in Toronto that he's been working on the idea since last summer.
Danny, he said, was certain to have been left "with a lifetime's worth of emotional scars" after his experiences at the Overlook, where his father was possessed by the hotel, tried to kill him and his mother and eventually died.King's fans got so excited that he seemed a bit worried, saying he wasn't "completely committed" to the project yet. Then he waffled some more, saying "Maybe if I keep talking about it I won't have to write it." Oh, it's much too late to back out now. He can't tease us like that and not follow through.How Danny deals with both his nightmarish experiences and the clairvoyance, or "shining", which saved him, might make "a damn fine sequel", King said, according to local Toronto news website the Torontoist. His vision of the book -- tentatively called Doctor Sleep -- sees Danny now aged 40, working at a hospice for the terminally ill in upstate New York. He is apparently an orderly at the hospice, but his real work is to help make death a little easier for the dying patients with his psychic powers -- while making a little money on the side by betting on the horses.