Photo: Celine Grouard
Wait, at the end of the novel The Shining—does Jack knock out Dick Hallorann's teeth or his dentures with that roque mallet? Rocky Wood knows. His 6,000-page Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King, compiled with two coauthors, is the deepest of deep dives into the people, places, and ... things in King's oeuvre. So it's no surprise that King hired Wood, an Australian horror author, as a continuity adviser and fact-checker on his new novel, Doctor Sleep.
The book, out in September, tells the story of an RV-driving band of seeming retirees who capture, torture, and feed upon kids with "the shining," and it picks up the tale of Danny Torrance, the psychic child from the 1977 novel. But 1977 was a long time ago; King sent Wood sections as he wrote them so that Wood could check the accuracy of any reference to the events at the Overlook Hotel.
Wood says the goal was a comprehensive King index. Not so easy to do: Some stories were published more than once, in different versions. And many have Easter-eggy interconnections. Those are in the Guide—as is every song, car, and weapon. "I had to have everything," Wood says. For Doctor Sleep, the most important part of his job was keeping track of the injuries Wendy Torrance and Dick Hallorann suffered at the hands of Jack Torrance. (It was dentures.)
If the task sounds daunting, the truth is even worse. Wood is working on another book about King, but in 2010 he learned he had Lou Gehrig's disease, and 80 percent of patients die within five years of diagnosis. But, Wood says, "this has only spurred me on." He plans to keep tracking references and maintaining continuity down to the last razor-toothed clown.
