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CONTEST: Win Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars by Being Stupid

I’ve spent a lot of time with Stephen King’s books. My respect for him is deeper than fandom. It feels more like having gone on a long road trip with someone, and even though you piss each other off a lot, you’re so glad you spent the time together. 
I was delighted, then, when Simon and Schuster offered to send me some copies of King’s upcoming book, Full Dark, No Stars (or at least I was delighted after I actually got the books, confirming that it wasn’t just a scam to get my address and send me poisonous dust. Sometimes I’m paranoid about people mailing me poisonous dust). Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of novellas, kinda like Different Seasons. I have read the first paragraph of the first story, and can confirm that it is very good up to that point.

I got three copies, and I’m still reading Under the Dome so I won’t have time to read one copy right away, let alone three. Therefore, I will give away the other two copies to you, Constant Blog Readers.

The book doesn’t come out until November 9th, so you can enter this contest before it is even in stores (you won’t actually get the book before it’s in stores, but you can smugly say you saw a picture of your book [see above] before it was). Here is how to enter:

1. Promise to read my blog every day forever. And like it.
2. Leave a comment1 here with your idea for a Stephen King story if Stephen King was really stupid.

Examples: 

  • A meteor crashes into a small town in Maine, and it turns all boys into girls and all girls into turtle creatures.
  • An isolated writer discovers that his computer is evil. He struggles to finish his novel while his computer constantly tells him he sucks and tries to electrocute him. While he sleeps, the computer orders a package off of eBay. It contains poisonous dust.

Two winners will be chosen at random in one week (November 11th). But make your entry good, because hey, look at that picture above. See how one copy is kinda bent at the bottom? The random entry that is better / more hilarious / sexier will get the non-shitty copy.

Good luck! Feel free to forward this to anyone who may be interested.

P.S. Simon & Schuster also has their own contest to win a bunch of King books, so go enter that too. Click on this:

P.P.S. Shipping costs are brought to you by some company that makes fabric blinds. Seriously, I’m paid $30 for that link. I really don’t care if you go and buy fabric blinds or not.

1 Or tweet it to me, or email if you’re shy, or whatever. It’ll be posted publicly if it’s good, though. For all entries, please make sure there is a way I can contact you.

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Comments

21 responses to “CONTEST: Win Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars by Being Stupid”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    A man goes around granting people the wish to be gorgeous, but they must give up brain cells. As they become more and more beautiful they become dumber and dumber. Eventually people are so stupid they can't even function and start to die. The hero of the story would have to be butt ugly.

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    This guy buys a car from an old man, only it turns out to be alive. Also, it's a space robot disguised as a car. It introduces him to some other space robots who learned his language by watching TV. They all team up to destroy an evil space robot disguised as a truck that wants to run people over for fun. The end.

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I'm raising a teenager. I don't have to make up any stuff. It's a nightmare. They throw themselves to the floor if they don't get their way. They are like blobby stains you can't get rid of, and yes they are plotting to “Menendez” you in their sleep because you remarked that the least they could do was empty the dishwasher.

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  4. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I was going to say “This guy gets driven insane by a giant finger poking out of the bathtub drain” but King already did that one….So instead:A couple driving in rural Maine come across a town with a terrible secret.All the people there are really actually moose in disguise and they transform outsiders into lush marshy grasses.By the end the man has been transformed into a stand of horsetail and the woman looses her left hand which transforms partly into pond weed before she escapes the evil moose.Then she crashes her car into an ordinary deer because she wasn't paying attention.

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  5. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Well it looks like I'm already leading this competition given that the first four entries failed to note condition one.1. I promise to read your blog every day forever. And like it.2. An airborne plague descends on Castle Rock, Maine causing all the homes in the town to begin creaking and settling incessantly. There are no real ill effects, but the townspeople are forever irritated by having to get up out of bed and tell their spouses “I swear I heard something,” only to hear, “It's just the house, go back to bed.”

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  6. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Jumping on the 'Twilight' bandwagon a bit late, King opts to write the YA novel to end all other YA novels.Our heroine is a misunderstood high school hipster outcast – a scrawny vampire girl who is rejected in her Southern California suburb because she does not surf and lacks the all important tan.On the hunt one evening, she drains a neo-Goth couple who are in the midst of Satanic ritual to resurrect Edgar Allen Poe, who rises from the grave only half-witted due to the advanced decomposition of only half of his brain. Our heroine and her new sidekick, Half-Wit Poe, decide to seek revenge on the high school bullies by unleashing The Army of Literary Undead during her graduation ceremony. Throughout the mayhem of Zombie Austen, Zombie Hemingway and Zombie Vonnegut attacking the high school bullies, the heroine is bitten by a drunken Zombie Plath and turns into a zombie-vampire hybrid.She eventually finds love with Half-Wit Poe and they continue their mystery-solving, robot-battling adventures throughout a 13-part series.

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  7. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Additionally, I promise to always read and make love to your blog and will also make the promise that I won't get drunk and decide to turn my awful, ill-conceived plot into a book or short story. Maybe some Stephen King haiku, but not that plot.

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  8. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Don't worry, your entries will still count even if your blog-reading promises are silent. You may not say it out loud, but I can feel the love.Awesome / stupid plots so far!

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  9. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I promise to read your blog every day even though I just found you. Of course, I will like it! Will you promise to write every day?Story Idea: The inside out world, everyone is suddnely transported to another part of the world, a part that they would hate and they have to deal with it. Sound familiar, like moving to a place without checking it out and then being sorry.CarolNWong(at)aol(dot)com

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  10. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Of course I will read your blog forever! I'll come back even when the sun explodes and we become frozen zombies who lose all ability to communicate besides this blog. You will be the king.Story:After a number of seemingly mysterious incidents not associated with the main characters, we find out that a random, previously-thought-insane scientist was correct in his assumption that the state of Florida is actually a living being put here thousands of years ago to potentially intercept the knowledge of human's space travel.

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  11. Avatar
    Anonymous

    A disgruntled blogger/tweeter is slowly driven insane by the sheer number of twibbons he sports on his avatar. His only recourse is to write increasingly disturbing tweets and blog posts to keep the little twibbons from consuming his soul.

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  12. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Promise to read your blog.My story: Water in the town turns everyone into giggling maniacs.

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  13. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Not only will I read your blog, but I will link to it from my own.In our Stupid King story, an unsuspecting forty-something from Maine dives into the world of social media for the first time. While reading a seemingly harmless blog at http://www.gypsyblogcurse.com he makes an off-handed promise to read the blog every day. After failing to read the blog a week later due to a car accident and subsequent hospitalization strange things start happening to him. In an attempt to determine the nature of the supernatural disturbances before it is too late he must journey to the heart of the internet with his partner, a 400 year old gryphon.

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  14. Avatar
    Anonymous

    An author of a blog runs a contest to win a prize. The prize is a new book that has yet to be released to the public. The author becomes unsatisfied with the number of enteries his “dumb little contest” receives so he becomes obessed with it.He reads the book more and more so he can promote it and eventually finds his sense of reality becomes scewed with reality and he morphs into the characters from the book.When it comes time to send the winner the prize, he puts himself in a box and ships it to the winners house.The winner opens the box to find the author of the blog inside.

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  15. Avatar
    Anonymous

    An insecure woman walks into an old pawn shop and finds an old bodylength mirror covered by a faded, dusty blanket. Charmed by it's ornateness and a sense of pride when she looks at herself into it she tries to buy it but the shopkeeper refuses, seemingly distressed that it was discovered.She insists and threatens to call the Better Business Bureau for shady business practices and the shopkeeper relents but spits out a curse that she'll get what she wants, but she'll regret it. Ominous words.That night while brushing her hair in front of it she finds and reads an inscription in the frame that begins with, “In this mirror I see myself, and with a wish, I grant my fate, I wish.. I wish..” She reads it aloud as she found it and playfully follows it up with “to be the most desired and sought after woman in the world!”The next day through a series of accidents she causes the horrifying death of 6 out of 8 of the world leaders at the G8 convention in town and becames the most Wanted woman in the world.

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  16. Avatar
    Anonymous

    My Stephen King story would be about alien cats that come to earth and kill people with their lazer beam eyes (wait, isn't this already a Stephen King book?) You can have your people contact my people if I win 😉

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  17. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I will continue to read your awesome blog! I will also point at my monitor and laugh ridiculously loud so everyone around wonders what is so magically awesome, thus spreading the word about its awesomeness.All of the internet's horrible meme characters (LOLcats, dancing baby, Old Spice guy, Pedo bear, the RickRoll, the ORLY owl, keyboard cat) come to life and annoy the crap out of people, causing them to off themselves. All that remains of civilization are babies, my parents and the elderly, as they have never seen the memes and they find them to be incredibly funny. Double Rainbow guy opens a daycare/rest home. Everyone lives happily there until the badgerbadgers develop rabies and eat everyone's internal organs.

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  18. Avatar
    Anonymous

    O.K.here is the “stupid story”. It is called “The Swimming Tomato” .Farmers in a small town called Nightshade grow salmon gene tomatoes which do not spoil. After three years of using the salmon gene seed tomatoes on the town's special BLT's.- the towns-people start to grow scales and want to jump into the river ,spawn and die. Bears eat the giant human salmon and the process repeats-soon everywhere those tomatoes went salmon are sure to spawn from anything that eats them. The book would have overtones of the sermon on the mount ,with the endless fish -delivered by pink ministers ready to spawn. A terrifyingly fishy fish story. Part 2 of the book would be called Nightshade Fishmongers Die Tomatoes rule the world.

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  19. Avatar
    Anonymous

    This Constant reader cant keep up with all the limited editions. You are a generous person. Sure I'll read your blog. You are hilarious and comical in a great way. I am so glad I surfed onto your Blog. I chatted with Sai King at The Under The Dome- “times Talks”. Another bucket List achieved. Keep p the great erudite humor. PLease I am disabled ,and I cannot afford one of these books, -just telling it like it is-King reminds me that my lot in life is not so bad- at least I am not covered in “THe Little Sisters of Eluria”

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  20. Avatar
    Anonymous

    In Castle Rock Maine a county fair has just happened.People laughed. People rode the rides. People ate fires, cotton candy, chill cheese dogs, deep fried mars bars. They ate and Ate and Ate. Now the town suffers heavily.Into this plugged up place comes a wanderer with no past, no present, no future. He eases the way….his name is Lax. And for a price….he brings relief

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  21. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Hey mike. Probably just give the book to my sister but here we go.The story goes something like this.A boy falls in love with a girl. They get married and have a child. This child turns out to be some sort of hybrid half man half bear and half pig.What you don't find out until after they kill him is that his crap cures cancer.Did I blow your mind? Thought so@stevenshelby

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