The towering giant of horror, Stephen King, will now be thrilling us regularly with his updates on Twitter.
That's our hope, at least. King took his first tentative step onto the service Friday afternoon with this quip:
My first tweet. No longer a virgin. Be gentle!
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 6, 2013
His handle quickly gained a "verified" tick mark, and just as quickly changed from @StephenKingAuth to @StephenKing. Presumably whoever previously held that handle wasn't using it any more. (We've reached out to Twitter to find out.)
But then King's Twitter experience took an eerily familiar turn. He fell victim to one of the same problems that afflicted Jack Torrance in The Shining: writer's block.
On Twitter at last, and can't think of a thing to say. Some writer I turned out to be.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 6, 2013
See also: Self-Publishing: Why You Could Be the Next Stephen King
Despite being late to the Twitter party, King is a fan of new media in general. In 2000, he published what is generally thought to be the world's first mass market commercial e-book, Riding the Bullet; later that year he distributed a serialized online work, The Plant.
In 2009, King wrote a novella called UR, specifically tied to the launch of the Kindle 2 (it featured a prognosticating Kindle as part of the plot). A Twitter-based novella may not be that far behind.
Meanwhile, if King needs advice on how to expand his Twitter presence, he could do worse than asking fellow horror author R.L. Stine. Last year, Stine offered a spooky Halloween story in the form of 13 tweets.
Image: KENZO TRIBOUILLARD, AFP