King first mentioned the sequel to his 1977 novel The Shining during a promotional tour for his novel Under the Dome in November 2009. During a reading moderated by filmmaker David Cronenberg at the Canon Theatre, King said the sequel would follow a character from the original, Danny Torrance, now in his 40s, living in New Hampshire where he works as an orderly at a hospice and helps terminally ill patients die with the aid of extraordinary powers. Later, on December 1, 2009, King posted a poll on his official website, asking visitors to vote for which book he should write next, Doctor Sleep or the next Dark Tower novel: Voting ended on December 31, 2009. Doctor Sleep won the poll with 5,861 votes to The Wind Through the Keyhole's 5,812.
Similar Topic: The shining returns! Doctor Sleep Trailer is here
On September 23, 2011, Stephen King received the Mason Award at the Fall for the Book event at the George Mason University in Virginia, during which he read an excerpt from Doctor Sleep. King finished work on the first draft in early November 2011. On February 19, 2012, King read the beginning section of Doctor Sleep at the Savannah Book Festival, in Georgia.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, King revealed that he had hired researcher Rocky Wood to work on the continuity between The Shining and Doctor Sleep.
The story was partly inspired by Oscar, a therapy cat who allegedly predicts the deaths of terminally ill patients. King said, "I thought to myself: 'I want to write a story about that.' And then I made the connection with Danny Torrance as an adult, working in a hospice. I thought: 'That's it. I'm gonna write this book.' The cat had to be there. It always takes two things for me to get going. It's like the cat was the transmission and Danny was the motor.
A film adaptation of the novel was released on November 8th, 2019. The film was directed by Mike Flanagan. It starts Ewan McGregor as Danny Torrance. The film is both an adaptation of the novel and a sequel to the 1980 film adaptation of the first book. It therefore makes significant changes to the plot in order to preserve continuity with Kubrick's popular film.
Here is the goodreads synopsis of Doctor Sleep:
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky 12-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the "steam" that children with the "shining" produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant "shining" power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes "Doctor Sleep."
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
Source: Wikipedia