Thoughts on 'Salem's Lot and Stephen King as a Whole

I'm personally pretty partial to all of Stephen King's works, and I decided I might as well read this one. I started it I think three or so days ago and I'm 248 pages in. So far it's been pretty enjoyable, outside of the obvious downsides of reading books from King (the weird thoughts he has of women, especially teenage ones.) I'm getting a bit tired of the self inserts he has within his stories. I can understand using media as an outlet to share your experiences, but when he has so many books with the same writer main character with a female love interest in her early 20's who's obsessed with his books, it gets frustrating. I was able to look past it when reading Bag of Bones for the most part (even though the self interest part was even worse, given Michael Noonan, the main character, even went to the same college as King with the same major, and even met his wife the same way King did his), but Jesus his repetitiveness. Also the whole small town in New England thing. Small towns are easier to write horror around, I guess, but dude please I'm gonna end it all if I read one more story like this.

I sound like I hate his work. TRUST ME I don't I'm just uber frustrated with how much he repeats the same characters and settings over and over, especially because he's shown he can do a lot more than he does for his works. I.E The Stand.

As a writer myself, albeit an amateur hobbyist of one, I can understand why he does the things he does. People don't read his stories for interesting settings or characters, they read it for the scary shit inside. But as someone who holds a lot of appreciation for emotional depth within characters, it's disappointing knowing he has the capabilities of putting in those intricacies and complexities that he doesn't. Yap sesh over