Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. There are over 7000 on there, so it may take some time with an enlargement and a magnifying glass to find me again if I bother.Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. You can see the dots in the cover which are the size of everyone’s heads. I was sent a link to my exact location – but the link is now broken and I can’t remember where I am (serve me right for not printing it out). I only really mention it because I entered a Facebook competition to have my photo (see left) included in the photo montage on the back cover of the UK hardback – and I’m on there – somewhere! Jenny and Teresa have already read and reviewed it here.

King’s latest novel is another in the Dark Tower series set between books 4 & 5 called The Wind Through the Keyhole.

Or should I read the new volume 4.5 instead? The final battle is everything it should be, and the cliff-hanger coda left me dying to open volume six. Such is King’s skill though that it all hangs together really well. It gets quite complex but holes get filled in and back-stories expanded, and more strands start. This traditional Western guns-for-hire against the bandits story forms the back-bone to this chunkster, but the real plot developments are in all the other bits. Once every generation, the ‘Wolves’ arrive in force and carry away half the children, who return to their families years later as mutant idiots. Meanwhile the folks of the Calla are expecting something awful to happen, and believe that the Gunslingers could be their salvation. The ka-tet make his acquaintance as they stop in Calla Bryn Sturgis on their quest to the tower, and we soon find out that he will become essential to the story. Pere Callahan is an ex-drunk priest from New York who, like the rest of Roland Deschain’s ka-tet (fate-bound compadres), found his way into Roland’s world when life got too hot in his own. The Wolves of the Calla introduces a major new character. This is a series of books which you have to begin at the beginning, it would be nigh on impossible to join in successfully partway through, despite the author’s summary at the beginning of each volume. I always intended to return the following summer to read the remaining couple of thousand pages! However, events prompted me to pick up book five sooner more of that below. I didn’t have the time to get through the increasing page-count then, but was definitely hooked by the genre-busting dystopian western cum SF & fantasy series. Last year I took part in Teresa & Jenny’s Dark Tower readalong at Shelf Love, but I dropped out after book four in the series.

Stephen king dark tower 5