Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books, by Gary Paulsen

I was upside down in a pile of dogs, all howling over the roar of the engine, when I heard the pilot scream, "There's too much weight in the tail! Throw the dogs forward or we're going down!"

I was still wearing my full winter gear, which included a down parka, and the dogs bit me and the pilot and ripped my parka so that soon the plane was filled with small white feathers and flying dogs and swear words and blood.

Only Gary Paulsen. He's to wild winter tales what Adrian Tchaikovsky is to bugs.

The true stories behind his books are much more OTT than the books themselves. I hate to doubt a person's word just because their stories seem unlikely considering how much hard-to-believe stuff has actually happened to me, but I can't help wondering if Paulsen just heard some stories and then said he saw them happen. Specifically, the plane he witnessed crashing in the ocean when he was a child on the boat that went to rescue the survivors, only to witness them all get eaten by sharks a la Quint's story from Jaws. ("The sailors were literally pulling people out of sharks' mouths." REALLY?) Or the kid he saw get killed by a deer he was feeding in front of a "Don't Feed The Deer" sign. I 100% believe the dog-and-plane story though.

Be that as it may, this book is pure distilled essence of Paulsen: nature and its dangers and beauty and grossness and violence, hunting and survival and life and death. And flying dogs.

Dear King of Exchanges Creator

Thank you for writing for me!

My requests are for fic, but if anyone feels moved to make me an art treat, I would be delighted.

For any prompts where I say it would be OK to mix-and-match the character sets, or if it would make sense to include more characters in your story, feel free to include any characters from any of the fandoms I nominated characters from.

I would be happy with a story of any length, from an epic to 500 words exactly. Of course, as a King fan, I adore long stories. However, some of my favorite exchange stories are extremely short, and that length is especially good for horror. So seriously: anything is fine.

If you'd like to do a crossover that isn't requested, go for it. I'm always happy to see characters or canon from Carrie, Cujo, The Dead Zone, Doctor Sleep (book or movie), Dolores Claiborne, Duma Key, Firestarter, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the Holly Gibney books (but I haven't read "If It Bleeds" yet), The Institute, It, The Langoliers, Later, Lisey's Story, The Long Walk, Misery, Needful Things, Pet Sematary, Rose Madder, Salem's Lot, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Shining.

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( Gerald's Game - Stephen King )

( The Stand - Stephen King )

( The Stand (1994) )