NEW YORK CITY–It's arguable that novelist Stephen King has been the most high-profile writer in the entertainment business over the past 30 years. His many novels have been turned into dozens of films and television productions, some that hurt his reputation and others that have probably helped it. No matter, he keeps selling novels. He says, in a New York hotel room, that although he would prefer the productions were successful, even the worst of the films have never gotten in the way of his ability to sell books.

"There is a story about a college-newspaper reporter who came to see James M. Cain at the end of his life," he says. "This guy was bemoaning about what Hollywood had done to Cain's books and Cain whipped around and pointed to his shelf and said, 'They haven't done a damn thing, son; they are all right up there.' And that's the case. I am always interested when you beat the piñata. And it's always different. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's Children of the Corn. You just can't tell what is going to happen, but I am always interested to see. There has never been any frustration. Either they are good or they are bad. If they are bad, you just kind of laugh. But it is good to see [film versions of] my books back again. They were in rehab for awhile."

His chances of getting a successful film out of a novel seem to improve when Frank Darabont is involved. Darabont directed the film versions of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile and was behind the camera for The Mist, which opens Friday (November 23) in Vancouver. It's the story of townspeople who are stuck in a local supermarket when a strange mist comes off the local lake. When it appears that there might be monsters in the mist, the people who stay in the store divide into two groups. One is led by a local artist (Thomas Jane) who tries to find practical solutions while the other is led by a religious extremist (Marcia Gay Harden) who believes they are doomed by God's work. King says that his best work plays with people's fears.

"Fear is a survival project," he says. "You can be afraid of certain things, like walking down the centre line of a highway at night or going out in hunting season in Maine. It's going on now, and if you aren't wearing red or orange, you may be afraid that you will be shot. So I think that it is a survival project. In the stories that I write, I try to provide people with nightmares, which are really safe places to put those fears for a while because you can say afterwards that it is all just make-believe anyway. You just take your emotions for a walk. If this is a negative emotion, then it is kind of like a pit bull. It still needs to walk and it still needs to be petted and at least you have a place to go. This is what these stories try to do.

"The people in the movie are trapped in a supermarket and things happen to them that are not normal, but sooner or later every one of us faces those things in our own lives. You might call it 'cancer' instead of 'things in the mist', but we are all afraid of those things and we have a need to explore them. But I am glad I do what I do because it has allowed me to sort of vent a lot of this stuff and get paid for it, whereas people who go to shrinks pay them. This is a win-win for me."

As for his own fears, King says that they are too many to list. "I am afraid of everything, and it shows in my work. Elevators, cars”¦ The thing that started my latest book was a combination of a car accident that I had and a truck that was backing up. People said 'Look out!' and a whole novel came out of that. Every night that I go to bed and no one has popped a rogue nuke somewhere in the world, I can't believe that we escaped another day. A lot of people out there are afraid and angry because fear and anger go hand in hand. When that happens, there is always someone saying, 'We have the answer.' That feeling is reflected in The Mist. Whatever the religion might happen to be, there is someone to say, 'We have the only answer, so let's get down on our knees and pray about it and on your way out there are guns in the vestry.'"