Scary Stories

This is a multi-author horror anthology to which King contributed a story. The collection gathers horror fiction from various writers under a genre banner. King's inclusion reflects his status as the preeminent American practitioner of the form—he is frequently invited to contribute to major genre anthologies alongside other horror writers.

King has described short stories as requiring a single sustained effort rather than the long-haul endurance of a novel. His short work tends to be more compressed and formally experimental—he has said that short stories demand a ruthless clarity about what the central image or revelation is, since there is no room for the digressions that novels permit.