Several years ago my assistant buzzed me and said, “Stephen King on the line for you.”

I have any number of friends who would pull such a prank, but fortunately I fought the urge to pick up and say, “John Grisham here.”

Turns out it really was Stephen. We happened to have the same audio reader (a brilliant voice actor named Frank Muller) who performed our novels for the marketplace. In the fall of 2001 he’d had a horrible motorcycle accident and was left severely brain damaged. (Frank was about my age but had married late and had kids the age of my grandkids.)

I showed up on Stephen King’s radar because we were both trying to help out the family. Stephen had called to suggest other ways we might assist, including visiting Frank in rehab.

During the conversation I said, “It may surprise you to know that I’m a reader of yours.” I told him that while I wasn’t into horror fiction, I had read many of his short stories and that The Green Mile was one of my favorite novels.

He said, “It may surprise you to know that I’m a reader of yours.”

Surprised doesn’t begin to describe it. Frank had given him copies of some of the Left Behind titles.

We enjoyed a nice chat and then spent a day together a few months later at Frank’s rehab center.

Though Stephen doesn’t claim to be a man of personal faith, he grew up in a church-going home and is respectful of mine.

We began an email relationship that continues to this day, and we still laugh about having our driver swing through McDonald’s drive through so we could enjoy Big Macs on the way back to the airport.

The May/June 2009 issue of Writer’s Digest reunited us with a cover story titled “An Epic Conversation on Writing.” (Sadly, Frank Muller died that year.)

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