Who's Richard Bachman?

Long before Carrie was published Stephen King had written two novels called Getting It On and The Long Walk, both of which he was quite fond of but couldn't quite manage to get published (though Getting It On almost made it to the bookstands). After the runaway successes of Carrie and Salem's Lot, King - obviously in a position of some strength now - decided to resurrect what he thought were good books. On the advice of his publishers however, who cautioned King on the dangers of overpublishing the market, Getting It On - renamed Rage - was published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. And a new author was born. Given an identity all his own - which included a cow, a wife, and a son who died in an freak accident - Bachman went on to publish more books and gather quite a cult following, his true identity kept a secret by all those who knew the truth for a long time.

Several years, and five books later, however, a book store clerk named Steve Brown got suspicious and engaged in a little investigative work, discovering Stephen King's name on one of the Bachman copyright forms. That was the death of Bachman.

Official Biography of Richard Bachman

Born in New York, Richard Bachman's early years are a mystery. As a young man, Bachman served a four year stint in the Coast Guard, which he then followed with ten years in the merchant marine. Bachman finally settled down in rural central New Hampshire, where he ran a medium - sized dairy farm. He did his writing at night (he suffered from chronic insomnia) after the cows came home.
Bachman and his wife, Claudia Inez Bachman, had one child, a boy, who died in an unfortunate, Stephen King - ish type accident at the age of six. He apparently fell through a well and drowned. In 1982, a brain tumor was discovered near the base of Bachman's brain; tricky surgery removed it. Bachman however, didn't long long after that, dying suddenly in late 1985 of cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.

At the time of his death, Bachman had published five novels: Rage in 1977, The Long Walk in 1979, Roadwork in 1981, The Running Man in 1982 and Thinner in 1984. The first four novels were published as paperbacks, but as Bachman had been gaining quite a constant readership, his last novel, Thinner, was published in hardcover and was well received by the critics.

Bachman fans, who mourned the death of the author, received a bit of good news recently. In 1994, while preparing to move to a new house, the widow Bachman discovered a cardboard carton filled with manuscripts in the cellar. The carton contained a number of novels and stories, in varying degrees of completion. The most finished was a typescript of a novel entitled, The Regulators. The widow took the manuscript to Bachman's former editor, Charles Verrill, who found it compared well with Bachman's earlier works. After only a few minor changes, and with the approval of the author's widow (now Claudia Eschelman), The Regulators was published posthumorously in September of 1996 by Dutton. As of this time, no other information has been forthcoming as to the possibility of the remaining unpublished carton works being published