Stephen King Wrote One of His Nastiest Horror Books Under a Different Name

Richard Bachman. The name came from Donald E. Westlake's pseudonym, Richard Stark, and Bachman Turner Overdrive, who happened to be playing on the radio when Stephen King's publisher asked him to choose a name for his alter ego in 1977. It's hard to believe now that Stephen King kept his pseudonym a secret for so long, but for roughly eight years, he was able to publish several novels under this alias, building a body of work completely distinct from those released under his own name.