The pseudonym King first picked (Gus Pillsbury) is the name of King's mother's grandfather. At the last moment King changed the name to Richard Bachman. Richard is the same as crime author Donald E. Westlake's pseudonym Richard Stark. (The last name Stark "was" later used in King's book "The Dark Half." Bachman was picked from Bachman–Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King was listening to at the time his publisher asked him to choose a pseudonym on the spot.