You are not Clive Barker, nor Dean Koontz, nor Anne Rice, nor R.L. Stine. You’re not even Shaun Hutson or Richard Laymon. With the exception of Barker, these authors spent years building solid fanbases by providing relatively consistent product. Not naming any names, but consistent shit sells better than inconsistent mediocrity.

(Barker blew out of the gate with his finest work, then slowly wound down with increasingly uneven novels. But Barker’s worst is still better than your best. He will continue to have a cabal of sexually ambivalent fanboys and toadying academics who call themselves “literary fantasists”, when your grandkids forget where your grave is.)

(Apologies to the 1,500+ people who are Stephen King.)

There are any number of theories to explain the staggering success of SK. Most include timeliness (the great horror revival of the 1970’s) and luck (having an-form wunderkind director make your first novel into a hit film), and a large measure of knowing his audience (there’s a reason most of his novels are set in contemporary America). Even SK has said publicly that talent is the easy part.

There was a time when lazy newbies thought all you had to do was write a fat, scary book about Billy the Truck-Stop Grease Monkey and The Slobbering Pus-Beast from America’s Dark Heart, and publishers would cut you a seven digit cheque. But as any number of failed me-too SK clone writers can tell you, the horror revival is long over.

There’s something that keeps SK writing, two decades and maybe a quarter of a billion dollars after any rational motivation to write was well and truly met. My guess is it’s the same thing that kept him writing after four failed early novels, a handful of magazine sales, and $60-a-week job in a laundry.

There may well be room in the market for another blockbuster horror writer. But it ain’t you.