One of my favourite Stephen King’s books is The Dark Half. I have read it a couple of times but not for a good few years. Looking back in hindsight I can see why it grabbed me the way that it did and that is the theme of the book.

Ever since coming across the psychological and mythological theme of the Ego and the Shadow and how the idea is the foundation of so many stories I have been fascinated by it.

The Dark Half is a perfect example of this theme. We are people of extremes but we cannot be both extremes at once. If you decide to to be selfless in certain respects you will inevitably selfish in others. If you choose to be a nice person, you still have dark thoughts at the very least. The Ego is the person that you choose to be and the Shadow is the exact opposite.

Even if you chose to be a nasty person – you are being nasty for what you feel are the right reasons and therefore your shadow is your nice side, but that nice side is as much a threat to the world you live in as a nun’s dark side is to hers. By threat I do not mean danger, I mean change!

Stephen King’s The Dark Half spoiler alert:

In the book, Thad Beaumont writes successful crime novels about a violent killer under a pseudonym George Stark. In the book he decides to come back to writing under his own name and so has a symbolic burial of George Stark. From then on strange things start happening as a violent killer of Thad’s description starts closing in on Thad and his wife and the mock burial plot has been dug up from within.

I loved the concept and now I am writing my own dark fiction I can really identify with it. I am a pretty nice guy on the whole but some of the ideas on my stories are dark and I have often joked that my writing is a way to exercise my demons, taking them for a spin to stretch their legs so that they do not get too cooped up in my soul and therefore start getting restless.

I will never bury them though as that is to reject them and demons do not take well to rejection, that gives them a chance to become autonomous and autonomy is power.

The Ego and Shadow fascinate me so much so that it has inspired my entire trilogy ‘The Trilogy Of The Realms’ the first of which ‘I Am You‘ is available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Mineeye.co.uk. I have just started writing the second, ‘This Is Me’ today. All stories are about the psyche – all stories are about you!