On Meeting Literary Heroes, Part 2

So you may have already seen last night's post with my photo w/ Mr. King.  Or perhaps you woke up and picked up your copy of the Boston Globe, featuring us!

http://bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/names/2012/12/08/stephen-king-umass-lowell/wOTL2T65gxXxyZuheQsHjO/story.html

Needless to say, I had a pretty amazing day yesterday. I still can't quite believe it all happened.

It was my last teaching day of the semester.  For the last meeting of my upper-level Gothic seminar, I had students giving presentations on their final projects (on their own selected novel; three had chosen King novels).  After they had all presented, I had the unique pleasure of saying: "Great job!  Thanks for a great semester!  Now let's go see Stephen King!"  There were cheers (mine and theirs).

Next, I went to the "green room" where I got to meet Stephen King in order to prepare to introduce him before his talk to our students.  Yes, I found out late on Wednesday that I could (if I wanted to) be the one to introduce him for the afternoon for-our-students-only session.  It was terrifying and made me queasy.  I was worried that I'd be re-creating that scene from King's story "The Body" (also in the film Stand by Me) where a guy sets of a chain reaction of vomit.

So I got some pictures with King, and then a group shot (that's the one in the paper), and I had a personal, one-on-one conversation with Stephen  King.  He was incredible and lovely and amazing.  He asked me what I was teaching in my class!  He was just so so so nice.  (Did I mention that he donated his speaker's fee and all the proceeds from the talk to scholarships for English majors?)

Then I went over to the room where about 120 of our students (including my own class) were waiting to hear from King.  And I got up on stage, behind a podium and microphone, and introduced Stephen King.  I was pretty much shaking all over.  It was terrifying.  And then he came up and talked to our students and answered their questions and was just as lovely as you would never imagine someone who write such terrifying stuff would be.

And then, Jake and Lucy joined me, and we went to a reception for English faculty with Stephen King.  And he continued to be lovely and kind and generous.  He talked to Lucy.  He let people take pictures and he signed things.  (I didn't have a chance to get my book signed, but I felt like with all the photos and all the time I'd had with him, I wanted to let other folks get a chance for their books.)

Still pretty much vibrating with excitment, I headed over to the Tsongas Center for the main event: the 3000-member audience for "A Conversation with Stephen King."

Yup, that's King X3: in person, plus half of his giant head on the backdrop, plus him up on the jumbo-tron.  It was nuts.  He was hilarious.

I feel like this post isn't very eloquent, but really, I was pretty much speechless.  It's been tremendous.

Update: there are a ton of great pictures from the event (including a classic Lucy image) here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151143527007694&set=a.10151143371472694.441998.11833797693&type=3&theater

Update: The university is keeping track of all the press (not surprising) but has also begun posting video.  If you watch, right at the very start of the 5-minute promo, you'll see the end of my intro for the afternoon event: https://www.uml.edu/News/stories/2011-12/king-scares-up-great-night.aspx