'The Voicemail Menu' next?

In my teens, I was really wary of reading Stephen King's books, because his fantastic talent for creating psychological horror freaked me out much more than any monsters or ghouls! 'Cujo', 'It', 'The Shining', 'Needful Things'.. whew! But I stopped reading this bloke way back in the late '90s when all his stories started getting stereotypical, and his writing held nothing new for me. It seems Stephen King has finally exhausted Castle Rock, Maine of all its demons.. with no more ghosts and spirits to be found, he has started exorcising the world of modern-day evils.. his new book 'Cell' releases today, about diabolic cell phones!

Now, I'm tempted to write a few horror novels* too..

• '140 WPM': A beautiful woman is stranded in a gothic cathedral on a remote island and chased down lonely, dark corridors by a strange creature making clacking noises. The thing gets closer and closer, keeps getting bigger, bullets bounce off it until at last she realizes it is a supernatural typewriter churning out thousands of pages of formula horror novels in which people get chased down lonely, dark corridors by strange creatures. And it can't be stopped!


• 'Vente Latte': A spunky recently divorced single mom is stranded in a deserted Starbucks on an abandoned super-secret military base on a remote island during a power failure. The espresso maker comes to life as a hideous beast controlling an army of extra-shot double-half-skim peanut-caramel lattes. The recipes alone evoke horror! The heroine must defeat the living lattes without burning her hand on the coffee, which is very hot.


• 'Individually Wrapped': An evil multinational corporation prepares to market individually wrapped portions of toothpaste. A mysterious Indian shaman appears and recites an ancient Native American chant about not misusing the Earth. Suddenly everything that's individually wrapped comes to life seeking vengeance! Beautiful housewives die horribly when attacked by slices of American cheese. Handsome hunk college students die horribly when attacked by printer ink cartridges that were not recycled. In the finale, the sinister CEO is trapped in a gigantic abandoned warehouse at a deserted corporate research facility deep in the woods during a hailstorm. All the wasteful environmentally damaging products the company was testing - prescription food, disposable one-use-only shoes, remote-control bras - come to life and attack him.


• 'Double-A': We're surrounded by devices that work on batteries. We use the batteries until they fail and them toss them into the trash. What if the batteries are angry about being thrown away? What if a supernatural demonic being from another dimension gave the batteries the power of revenge? Remember, they're full of deadly acid.

*from Greg Easterbrook, at NFL.com