Stephen King and Twilight author Stephenie Meyer have got two gigantic thing in common.

Number one: their books get turned into awful, awful films. Number two, both Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer write books for 14-year-olds. True, Stephen King writes books for 14-year-old boys who smell of BO and secretly want to machinegun their school, while Stephenie Meyer writes books for 14-year-old girls who can’t spell and wet themselves every time they think of Robert Pattinson. But it’s true.

So you’d think that Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer would get along, wouldn’t you? Wrong – Stephen King hates Stephenie Meyer rotten.

Take it as a given that Twilight is critic-proof. You can say what you like about it. You can say that it’s a Harry Potter rip-off. You can say that it’s a deliberately manipulative and poorly-concealed conservative manifesto written in the form of a schlocky fantasy book. You can say that even thinking the word ‘Twilight‘ will immediately bring you out in 19 different types of ulcers.

But it doesn’t matter. So long as there’s at least one scene where Robert Pattinson gets to suck his cheeks in and look away into the middle-distance, millions of teenage girls will snap Twilight up and spend the next few hours urinating themselves and sighing wistfully at the same time.

The worst thing is, Twilight knows that it’s critic-proof. You can see it in the cavalier way it’s treating the sequel to the Twilight movie – letting Robert Pattinson cut his hair, not sacking that scrawny boy who looks like a toilet brush, not hiring that teenager who spends most of her time naked.

However, just because Twilight is critic-proof, it doesn’t mean that some critics aren’t having a go. Specifically Stephen King. Since he’s a) not 14, b) not female and c) is capable of rational thought, it’s no surprise that Stephen King isn’t a Twilight fan. But what might be a surprise is that he’s starting badmouthing Twilight’s author Stephenie Meyer in public. The Guardian reports:

King compared the Mormon author to JK Rowling, saying that both authors were “speaking directly to young people”. “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good,” he told an interviewer from USA Weekend.

What prompted Stephen King’s outburst? It could be jealousy – Stephenie Meyer’s books get turned into hopeless films that make millions of dollars, while Stephen King’s books get turned into hopeless films called The Mist that everyone ignores. It could be a generational thing – Stephen King remembers when he was the author of choice of creepy teenagers who smell like old towels, and he doesn’t like that someone else has taken his position. Or it could be that Stephenie Meyer actually is a terrible writer.

We really couldn’t say for sure. Because we’d need to read a Twilight book to find out, and we’re not mental.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!