Hi everyone.

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Special editions of "Duddits" with original signature of Stephen King

Next Monday, 23 April, we celebrate the "World Day of the Book" with
a special contribution by Stephen King. The master of suspense has
handsigned ten special german editions of his new novel "Duddits".
He will put them up for auction at "http://www.welt.de/auktion" on
the 23rd of April. The auction on the net will start in the morning
at 8 am CET, ending at 8 pm in the evening. The Proceeds will go to
two german non-profit organisations, which are promoting
literature: "Bayern liest" and "Stiftung lesen". "Welt.de" is one of
germans leading daily newspapers in the web.

http://www.welt.de/auktion

(PS - it might help if you are able to read German in this site!)

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I have added a heap of new links to the site, but this time they are
not to websites, but books for sale. Yes, I finally finished the
links to Barnes & Noble. They are linked from each of the book pages,
and I will be adding more as time permits.

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I have added the description to Talisman 2 - Black House to the
website at http://www.horrorking.com/blackhouse.html

It's worth the read! There will also be excerpts available on the web
soon - I'll keep you posted!

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Christina Starobin is a poet, author and assistant adjunct professor
at Ulster County Community College in Stone Ridge, N.Y claimed that
Stephen King stole some ideas from her novel Blood Eternal and added
them to Desperation. Well here is an article from the New York Law
Journal April 25, 2001.

A federal judge in New York has dismissed with disdain a complaint by
a writer and adjunct literature professor who claimed that prince of
horror Stephen King stole her work.

U.S. District Judge David N. Hurd of the U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of New York shot down Christina Starobin of
Saugerties, N.Y., for engaging in a "recurring and vitriolic attack
upon the character and abilities of King."

Starobin v. King and Penguin Putnam Inc., 00-CV-0185, stems from a
complaint brought by Starobin, a poet, author and assistant adjunct
professor at Ulster County Community College in Stone Ridge, N.Y.

Starobin had written a novel, "Blood Eternal," about vampires who run
a car service in suburban New Jersey. The copyrighted novel was
submitted to Penguin and then returned to Starobin on Sept. 20, 1996.
Two days earlier, King copyrighted his novel, "Desperation," which
was published by Penguin.

The complaint alleged that King, whose 40-plus books have sold
millions of copies, is essentially devoid of literary talent, could
not have written "Desperation" on his own and pilfered from the work
of Starobin during the three months her manuscript was in the
possession of Penguin. About the only similarity Judge Hurd found
between the two novels was that, in his opinion, neither was very
good.

"There are no common characters, locations or occurrences shared by
her novel and King's," Hurd wrote. "There are no common references to
popular culture, historical events or common sequences of
events ... . When the two works at issue are viewed as a whole, it is
utterly beyond dispute that no reasonable person could regard them as
similar, much less substantially so."

The judge added that he was not all that impressed with King's
literary abilities either. Hurd said he had never before read a
Stephen King novel, and was not exactly enthralled by the horror
writer's tale of an evil spirit that emanates from a mine in the
Nevada desert and possesses passers-by, transforming them into
homicidal maniacs.

"Quite frankly, neither work was a particularly good read," Hurd said,
referring to "Desperation" and "Blood Eternal," both of which he said
were read cover-to-cover.

Regardless, "Desperation" spent some 15 weeks on The New York Times
best-seller list in hard cover and was highly successful as a
paperback.

LITERARY CREDENTIALS

Starobin repeatedly contended that her literary credentials are
superior to King's, and that assertion alone established an issue of
fact as to whether King is capable of writing "Desperation."

She attempted to bolster that point with this statement from her
plaintiff's memorandum:

"Although plaintiff's having graduated Harvard cum laude, gone on to a
Masters in English and Comparative Literature at Colubmia [sic] and a
PhD in English at New York University does not mean intelligence
[sic], it does mean a long number of hours reading books other than
Grisham and other best sellers and exposure to philosphy [sic], plot
and symbolism in heavy enough doses to become queasy with the
superficiality espoused by [defendant] King."

Judge Hurd, however, termed Starobin's conduct "reprehensible,"
considered her character attacks on King unseemly and found
it "disheartening that a person of plaintiff's education and self-
professed abilities would resort to such attacks, particularly in
light of the obviously baseless nature of her claims."

Starobin argued pro se. Peter A. Herbert, of Lankler Siffert & Wohl in
Manhattan, appeared as co-counsel for King. Also representing the
defendants, including the publisher, were Gerald E. Singleton, Maura
J. Wogan and Yuki A. Hirose, of Frankfurt, Garbus, Kurnit, Klein &
Selz in Manhattan.

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Production of the new miniseries "Firestarter: The Next Chapter"
began on April 17 and is due to be aired in December 2001. It stars
Marguerite Moreau, Malcolm McDowell, Danny Nucci and Dennis Hopper.

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That's it for this email. Please feel free to forward this email to
King fans, and encourage them to sign up and receive the newsletter
themselves.

David
http://www.horrorking.com