<Li> Colonel James Cox--Former superior of Dale Barbara and overseer of Dome surveillance / eradication, Cox attempts to control the events under the Dome from the outside to no success . </Li> <P> Other minor characters, including many who are introduced just prior to being killed, appear throughout the book, including a mention of Lee Child's Jack Reacher . Other human survivors are Dougie Twitchell, Ginny Tomlinson, Gina Buffalino, Harriet Bigelow, Janelle Everett, Judy Everett, Pete Freeman, Tony Guay, Claire McClatchey, Joanie Calvert, Alva Drake, Little Walter Bushey and Lissa Jamieson . Julia Shumway's dog' Horace' also survives . </P> <P> In January 2008, Time magazine quoted King as saying he would "be killing a lot of trees" with his next novel . The first draft was completed in late August 2008, with the manuscript weighing 19 lb (8.6 kg). King has stated the novel is twice as long as his most recent, Duma Key, at "over 1,500 pages in manuscript", and "deals with some of the same issues that The Stand does, but in a more allegorical way". King also described the novel as "very, very long", adding: "I tried this once before when I was a lot younger and the project was just too big for me ." King read from the first draft at "The Three Kings" reading event that was held on April 4, 2008 at the Library of Congress, which was broadcast by C - SPAN as part of their Book TV series on May 4, 2008 . </P> <P> Under the Dome is a partial rewrite of a novel King attempted to write first in 1972 under the same title and then a second time in 1982 as The Cannibals . As King stated on his official site, these two unfinished works "were two very different attempts to utilize the same idea, which concerns itself with how people behave when they are cut off from the society they've always belonged to . Also, my memory of The Cannibals is that it, like Needful Things, was a kind of social comedy . The new Under the Dome is played dead straight ." From the material originally written, only the first chapter is included in the new novel . </P>

When did stephen king write under the dome