Oh, well, that love comes down with a divorce, huh?

Well, it takes the strong man, baby, but I'll shoot the door.

Because I got to have faith.

I got to have faith.

Because I got to have faith, faith, faith.

I don't have to have faith, the faith.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Stephen King cast, one man's musings on the works of Stephen King.

Each week I'll review one entry in the bibliography of Stephen King in the chronological order of publication,

and this week I'm reviewing one of the eight publications that saw release in 1996 and one of two publications that were released

on the same day.

Nineteen ninety-six was an incredible year for Stephen King.

March through August saw the monthly publication of the Green Mile, and September

saw the release of two novels on the very same day, one

written by the late Richard Bachman and one written by Stephen King himself. The two novels

function as a mirror image of the other, two what ifs. What if two authors with two writing

styles were given a premise and then asked to write a novel around it. Because of the

clearly different styles, it's natural to get two distinct versions, and that's what we get

with Richard Bachman's The Regulators and Stephen King's Desperation. I'll never forget

rushing out to the bookstore to get these books. I'll never forget seeing the books on the front display

and realizing that when I put them next to each other, they formed a full picture.

Knowing that between desperation's 700 pages and the regulator's 480 pages,

I had over a thousand pages of new Stephen King material to digest, and I was a happy constant reader

...