Does Tabitha’s Coffee Get Cold?

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve started to write and then found something to clean. 

Get my area ready, coffee poured and then I find that I need to clean the litter box or an animal needs feeding and their feeding area needs to be cleaned. The floor needs sweeping, the dishes are piled up and the floor needs to be vacuumed. 

Now my coffee is cold and I can’t remember what I wanted to write. 

The kids are up by now and they’re looking for food and while they’ve asked their father for help and he has finally gotten up to do it, he has no idea where it’s at. Also let’s face it, I’m too distracted to write at this point. 

I wanted to be the female Stephen King when I was young. That was my fantastical dream. But instead I find myself wondering about Tabitha. 

Tabitha King is the wife of Stephen. He speaks of her often and always thanks her in his books. Some of which she’s even inspired. She herself is an author. 

There are none of her books at my local library and I have never seen them in the bookstores. Though I’ll admit that I most frequent second hand stores where I can trade my books for other books. I find comfort in worn paperbacks. Oh sure, there’s nothing so spiritual as the smell of a new book, or the feel of untouched sheets of freshly printed paper but a worn novel feels as though there’s a bit of story wrapped around a story. 

A printed novel.

It is the religious experience that all writers hope to one day achieve. To put their own world together and hold it in their hands. How close to godlike one must feel.

Does Tabitha’s coffee get cold?

I grew up seeing the name Stephen King in the local library, online, in movies, and at home. My mother was a huge fan of horror and not at all restrictive of what I read or watched. I saw the tome of Needful Things on our shelf at home and when I read the list of the books he’d written on the inside pages, I could only hope to one day achieve that sort of success. 

I wrote every day as a child, and later on as a teen. 

I wrote poems and fiction. I kept daily journals. 

My grandma kept blank paper and pens and notebooks in a drawer at her house because of the number of times she’d caught me writing in her calendars notes sections or her address book. My scribbling eventually filling up the pages and leaving no space for their intended purposes. 

I’m 36 years old now. Married with three children and so sometimes I have to force myself to write. I burrow away in the bathroom closet to get away from the rest of the house where chores all silently beg for my attention and children openly ask for it constantly. 

I had hoped to write some great horror novel in the vein of Shirley Jackson by now. Some southern gothic dark tome that might sit next to that old copy of Needful Things. Next to the likes of John Saul and Dean Koontz. 

Most of my stories sit unfinished in half full journals that were eventually overtaken with to do lists and grocery needs. 

Others are just ideas with characters scribbled about in the margins. 

I write stories like a waitress taking meal orders, in quick notes with just enough not to forget later on when it matters. 

But so very often that moment never comes. 

I can’t help but think about the girl that I once was. Constantly writing and dreaming of the day when she would hold the published version of the world that she created in her hands. 

The day she could feel what it felt to be like Stephen King but instead I’m here. 

A sometimes blogger with a few readers desperately trying to go back into that place in my head. That place where I could create an entire world with nothing but pen and paper as a guide. 

So I wonder about Tabitha King. I’ve found a few articles in which her relationship with Stephen is discussed. Her husband sure to point out that she is a fantastic writer herself and that many of the charities and goodwill they do is because of her but still the topic always returns to the man himself.

I grew up loving King’s books and dreaming about what it would be like to turn out these incredible stories with intimate characters living in such detailed worlds. But now I find myself searching for Tabitha’s stories. I want to know if she found herself hiding in closets or forgoing sleep for the ability to write and then discovering that she could only stare at the blank page.

Does Tabitha’s coffee get cold?

***Since writing this I have purchased two of Tabitha’s novels and am currently in search of her poetry book Grimoire.