10 Fascinating Stories Behind Stephen King's Most Famous Books

3. Stephen King Wrote Lisey's Story After Imagining What Would Happen If He Died

Lisey's Story feels like one of Stephen King's most personal novels... which makes a lot of sense when you consider that he wrote the thing as a way of probing his own mortality.

The story concerns one Lisey Landon, who - two years after the death of her husband, famous novelist Scott Landon - decides to clean out his office. Soon enough, Lisey finds herself caught in a dangerous situation when a mysterious stranger contacts her and demands that she gives over all of Scott's papers and files... or there will be trouble.

The seeds of Lisey's Story actually came about in a really interesting - and incredibly sombre - way. After King spent a period of time in hospital with pneumonia, his home study was cleared out so that it could be redecorated in his absence. When he came back to his house, he saw that many of his possessions were still packed into boxes, and a thought struck him: this is what this room would like if I had died.

This rather sad thought set the premise for the book, in which a famous author - somebody with the weight of Stephen King's legacy - dies and his wife is left to go through his stuff. It's a clever idea, and one that obviously resonated with King on a fiercely personal level, given that he often claims that his favourite of all his books is, in fact, Lisey's Story.