http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080120/NEWS0104/139361346
At 60, horror writer Stephen King accepts that he's no longer middle-aged
Article Date: Sunday, January 20, 2008
BANGOR, Maine (AP) _ Best-selling author Stephen King turned 60 last
September, a milestone that forces him to accept the fact that he's no
longer middle-aged.
"I look the same as I ever did when I look in the mirror. I can still see
the kid there. But people seeing you see someone who's older. I went to a
movie theater, and the woman asked if I wanted my golden-ager discount. I
asked how old you have to be for that, and she said 65. I said, 'Not yet,
dear,'" King told the Bangor Daily News.
In a wide-ranging interview that touched on politics, the longtime supporter
of Democratic candidates said he is backing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for
president.
"We need a big change," King said. "It's an amazing thing to see the two
frontrunners be a woman and a black man. Obama has the least baggage of the
two and is willing to try new things. It wouldn't be business as usual. Also
it would do wonders for us in the world community to have a black man in the
White House," he said.
Speaking by phone from his winter home near Sarasota, Fla., King recalled
why he began heading south for the winter.
"In '98, during the ice storm, I was walking my dog in our driveway and a
chunk of ice dropped off the mailbox, which just missed him. That's when we
asked ourselves, 'Why are we still here in the winter?' So we decided to
start coming down here."
But he said he still regards Bangor, where he has lived for 30 years, as
home.
King was getting ready to head to New York to promote his new novel, "Duma
Key," his first to be set in Florida.
In "Duma Key," which hits bookstores Tuesday, Minneapolis building
contractor Edgar Freemantle moves to Florida and takes up art after being
badly injured in an accident at a construction site. But his new life takes
another turn when the supernatural intrudes.
For Edgar's ordeal, King drew on his experiences after he was struck by a
van while walking near his summer home in North Lovell in 1999.
"I'd heard how creativity, how make-believe, can help the body heal from
physical injuries," he said. "I also got interested in psychic phenomena
connected to phantom limbs. The writer's dictum is to write what you know,
so I started from there. But Edgar shouldn't be thought of as me."
King spends his mornings in Florida writing and his afternoons taking
3½-mile walks, with tennis mixed in twice a week.
"That seems to keep everything working fairly smoothly," he said.
With spring training about a month away, King is looking forward to trips to
Fort Myers to see his beloved Boston Red Sox. A pair of World Series
victories hasn't changed his feelings about the team.
"There seems to be this theory that Red Sox fans are masochists," he said.
"But if you can support your team in bad times, you can support them in good
times too. The Aaron Boone homer in 2003 seems to put New England psyches in
the ICU, but winning the Series in 2004, and again last year, has taken off
some of those effects."
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