[lloyd]

As some people might know, I'm a big fan of stephen king. I read all he writes. Last book by him is Cell, kind of The Stand with another source for humanity to wipepout by a large %, and a lot shorter.
While his plots and ideas and the different layers in his books and short stories are always good, it often lacks them just 'that little more' for him to be a great writer.
I think that the Dark Tower series, 7 books in total, is indeed discribing a journey like in the Lord of the Rings. It has a lot of the dept of it too, the mytical world(s), the (semi)religious like meaning of it all, discribing the different psychological types of people etc. But Lord of the Rings is far better written. You'll find in both series of books that the writers in the later parts hurry writing towards the end and it's there that King looses points from Tolkien (for me that is). The Dark Tower will never be as influencial at writing then Lord of the Rings has been, first because it's by King, lots of people don't like him because he writes horror, and second because it's only good, not great.
As for cross references in the books.. King dos that all the time and that is fun to puzzle with. The Dark Tower connects with Salem's Lot, Regulators, Black House and The Talisman, Insomnia (his best book I think), IT and The Stand amongst others (they find the wheelchair for susan in 'The Stands world') .The wizzard of OZ is in there too and I think that The Lord of the Rings is ever present and that it has been a BIG insperation for King for this serie of books.
The use of himself as a caracter in 2 of the DT books is really interesting and shows his power, thinking out plots.
King said once, I believe in Dans Macabre, that writing is hard work. The fun part thinking out plots, constructing the story, playing with words and language etc but mainly hard work filling pages and that's showing in most of his books. He has his great moments, and DT has lots of them, but he isn't the greatest writer out there.