When King's Desperation and "Richard Bachman's" TheRegulators appeared, readers were offered, as an incentive for purchasing them together, a "FREE 'keep-you-up-all-night' LIGHT," a small battery powered lamp. The packaging of the hard cover editions linked the two novels. On the back of each dust jacket is a small "window" with an miniature image of the cover picture of the other novel. It is an indication of King's extraordinary productivity that in 1996 he produced not only two hefty novels, intricately linked, but The Green Mile chapbooks (see separate entry), as well!

Repeated in part on the inside of the dust jacket of The Regulators, an "Editor's Note" makes a playful addition to the biography of King's alter ego, Richard Bachman, the cancer-stricken chicken farmer. The author's photograph appears to be a young Stephen King sitting in front of a manual typewriter. Bachman's "editor" gives a mock account of the...