Some books have changed me fundamentally over the years. So have some writers. Stephen King is one of them: he's ridiculously prolific, a great storyteller, and has an amazing gift for crafting characters so realistic, so recognizable and compelling that you believe the unbelievable situations into which they are thrust. He makes you care about the characters, deeply, and agonize over their fates as they face supernatural forces that would paralyze a Navy SEAL.

For those who haven't experienced it, The Stand is a must-read. It's one of my all-time favorites, a thousand-page epic that ends too soon, the ultimate battle between good and evil. The soldiers on both sides are mostly just people: good people with flaws, not-really-evil people with fatal flaws that lead them down a dark path. King makes you cheer for the good guys, but he makes you feel sympathy for the bad guys, too. As a reader who also writes, I find that to be an awesome achievement, one to which I aspire every time I sit down at the computer and try to tell a story.

So Stephen King has educated me steadily over the years as I've gobbled up as many of his novels as I could. But he also educated me more explicitly when he released his memoir, On Writing. For any fiction writer or reader who appreciates insight into the craft, this is a wonderful book. Its tone is personal, engaging, sometimes intimate and often enlightening; full of anecdotes that make you feel like you're sitting in your living room, drinking a cold beer with a friend. But it also offers down-to-earth, common-sense advice about how to be a writer, and how to keep being a writer even when that blank page / screen intimidates the heck out of you.

The memoir also deals with King's nearly fatal accident in 1999, when he was walking along the side of a country road, reading, and was struck by a passing van. I remember hearing that news and being devastated, as countless fans around the world were. King describes the experience - before, during, and after - in graphic detail, and proves once again that he's a brilliant storyteller. Personal confession: my wife regularly walks around the block in our sleepy neighborhood, where there's almost no traffic and a 20-MPH speed limit, reading her book. She tells me it's utterly safe, that I'm an overprotective goof to be worried... but I flash back to the end of On Writing and have to suppress the urge to skulk around behind her, keeping watch for weaving vans.

Great stories stay with you, as do great characters. Turns out that Stephen King is a great character, too!

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