|
Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 at the Maine General
Hospital in Portland Maine. Stephen being the only natural born child in
the family and his older brother David having been adopted at birth two
years earlier. The Kings were the typical family until one night when
Donald King said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard
from again. At this point Ruth took over raising the family with help from
other relatives of the family. They traveled throughout many states over
several years finally moving back to Durham, Maine in 1958. Stephen King
began his actual writing career in January of 1959 when David King and
Stephen decided to publish their own local town newspaper named Dave's
Rag. David bought a mimeograph and they created a paper that sold for five
cents an issue. Stephen King attended Lisbon High School, in Lisbon, Maine
in 1962.
A year later King's amateur press Triad and Gaslight Books, published a
two part book titled "The Star Invaders". Stephen King made is first
actual published appearance in 1965 in the magazine Comics Review with his
story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber." The story ran about 6,000 words in
length. In 1966, Stephen King graduated from high school and took a
scholarship to attend the University of Maine. Looking back on his high
school days, King recalled that "my high school career was totally
undistinguished. I was not at the top of my class, nor at the bottom."
Later that summer King began working on a novel called "Getting It On",
about some kids who take over a classroom and try unsuccessfully to ward
off the National Guard.
During his first year at college, King completed his first full length
novel, "The Long Walk." He submitted the novel to Bennett Cerf/Random
House only to have it rejected. King took the rejection bad and filed the
book away. Stephen King made his first small sale with his story "The
Glass Floor" for the amount of thirty-five dollars. In June 1970, Stephen
King graduated from the University of Maine with a Bachelor of Science
degree in English and a certificate to teach high school.
On January 2, 1971, Tabitha Jane Spruce and Stephen King were married.
And in the fall of 1971, King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy
earning $6,400 a year. The Kings then moved to Hermon, a town west of
Bangor, Maine. Stephen King than began work on a short story about a
teenage girl named Carietta White. After a completing a few pages, King
decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed
them into the trash. Fortunately for Stephen, his wife Tabitha took the
pages out and read them. She encouraged her husband to continue the story.
He did. In January 1973, King submitted Carrie to Doubleday. In March,
Doubleday bought the book. On May 12, Doubleday sold the paperback rights
of Carrie to New American Library for $400,000. Based on the book
contract, Stephen King would get half of that. King quit his teaching job
to pursue writing full time. And the rest, as they say, is history. Since
then, King has had numerous short stories and novels published and movies
created from his work. Stephen King is called the "Master of Horror".
His books have been translated into 33 different languages, published
in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his
novels in publication. He continues to live in Bangor, Maine with his wife
where he writes out of his home. In June 1999 Stephen King was severely
injured in an accident that left him in critical condition with injuries
to his lung, broken ribs, a broken leg and a severely fractured hip. After
three weeks of operations he was released from the Central Maine Medical
Center in Lewiston, Maine.
|
