1st Edition Stephen King's Night Shift with an Edward Lee twist!

1st Hardcover Doublday Edition of Stephen King's Night Shift

Owned by Edward Lee - But here is the rest of the story from Edward Lee himself:

 A NOTE ABOUT NIGHT SHIFT

                It may be known to you that the 1st edition hardcover of Stephen King’s awesome first collection Night Shift is a pretty coveted and pricy book when found in good condition.  My (former) copy, however, displays a brow-raising discrepancy when one looks at the inside back flap of the dust jacket: the author’s photo has been cut out.  How came this, you may ask?  Well, I’ll give you the long version.  When my first exposure to Stephen King came about, I wasn’t even aware of him.  Like many, I’d seen the cool-as-shit Brian DePalma film, Carrie, but I was unaware of the novel on which it was based.  It wasn’t till a year or so later, after I’d joined the Army, that Stephen King the author was made known to me.  Until that point, the only horror fiction I’d read extensively was Poe.  I also read Stoker’s Dracula in 8th grade, after having been infected with the Dark Shadows craze.  After I’d finished basic training (in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, which, I regret to say, is the UGLIEST place I’ve ever beheld with my own eyes.  But I’m sure the rest of the state is lovely!) I found myself in Fort Knox, Kentucky, training to be a tank crewman (cool job, by the way.)  Here, I’d started reading Michael Moorcock’s Count Brass books but a friend of mine named Keith gave me a paperback by Brian McNaughton called Satan’s Love Child and another paperback called ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, (The first edition paperback had the creepiest cover I’ve ever seen: it’s all black, no title and no author’s name, just the embossed face of a dead-eyed little girl with one drop of very dark blood at the corner of her mouth. I still have it, though it’s now what in collector’s palaver would call a “beater.”  Oops, I digress.)  I won’t comment on the McNaughton book save to say that had a huge creative influence on me in that it introduced me to H.P. Lovecraft.  ‘Nuff said there.  (Oh, and on an interesting note, I read many pages of both of the aforementioned novels inside an M60A1-series tank.)  ‘Salem’s Lot packed a big creative wallop as effective as a cinderblock in the face.  It’s better than Dracula and it’s better than any other vampire novel I’ve ever read; in fact, after a point, I stopped reading vampire novels at all because it was inconceivable to me that anything on the subject could be better than ‘Salem’s Lot.  Hence, my horror fiction fuse was ignited, for modern horror thanks to King, and for the foundation of modern horror thanks to Lovecraft.  One night on guard duty at a tank park in Germany called Area November, I read the pb of King’s The Shining,  (I had the cool mylar cover one) and, like many, discovered perhaps the most influential and FUCKIN’ TERRIFYING haunted house novel ever written.  (And let me add this aside: a dark, creepy, lonely guard shack is probably not the best place to read The Shining.)  However it was in this same tank park and its accommodating ammo depot, whilst I walked by boring security foot patrol, that I got the idea that it just might be a whole lot of fun being a horror novelist like this guy Stephen King, and I even considered that I might be able to take a crack at it.  I began taking notes for potential future stories, and it got to be a lot of notes.  When my stint in the Army was up, I came back to “The World,” around Christmas time as I recall, and my dear departed father got me Stephen King’s Night Shift–yes, the one you’re likely holding in your hand this very instant.  The brilliant, magnificently imaginative stories herein rocked my world.  They made me want to write.  They proved to be an indispensable catalyst for my own youthful motivations, just at that time in a young man’s life when he decides what he “wants to be” when he grows up.  King decided for me; his work made me decide to be a horror novelist.  Easier said then done, yes, and though it took a while before I was able to write fulltime (the Dream Come True for any writer) it did happen and I’m lucky enough to have been writing fulltime for 24 years.  And when I first started trying to write way back when, do you know what I did?  I’ll tell you.  I cut the photo of Stephen King out of the dust jacket of Night Shift and I taped it to the hood of my fluorescent desk lamp, over my Smith-Corona Coronet typewriter.  Why?  Because I liked the idea of the image of King over-watching me as I plunked out my first attempts at horror fiction.  It seemed that this image was encouraging me in my plight and sometime even nodding in approval.   

            And I went on like this for decades, ever-motivated by that cut-out author photo and the enthralling stories and novels it represented.  The stories in Night Shift kick-started my dreams and for that I am forever grateful to them and to the man who created them.  

            Ah, now you’re asking something like “If Night Shift has some much symbolic importance to you, why the hell are you selling it?”  The answer is, now, after fifty-some-odd books published, I’m becoming a cranky old man who is burdened by the ownership of hundreds and hundreds of books.  I just moved, and lemme tell you, that stuff’s hard to move if you’re an old duffer like me.  May the Book Gods curse me but I must say, I’ve got it all on Kindle now and, hence, I have a lot more room!  

            But additionally, I’m hoping that the person who bought this book will receive from it the same good luck that I received.

Sincerely,

Edward Lee!

The book itself is solid, the jacket as you can see from the pictures has some issues, but it's the story your buying!  I should note that if you take the stapled Whispers off the picture it fits perfectly into the hole!

If you want it signed by him we are always looking for a reason to meet up with him for lunch!