The Man Behind The Stories

Born: Stephen Edwin King

D.O.B: 21 September 1947

Place Of Birth: Maine General Hospital, Portland, Maine, USA

Parents: Donald Edwin King and Ruth Pillsbury King

Brothers/Sisters: One brother, David, adopted two years before Stephen's birth

Height: 6'4"

Spouse: Tabitha King, married on 2 January, 1971, met while working at a library as students in the University of Maine

Children: 3 children - Naomi Rachel (b. 1972), Joseph Hillstrom (b. 1974) and Owen Phillip (b. 1979).

History

• When S.K. was quite young his father one day declared that he was stepping out for cigarettes and never returned.  His mother, Ruth, then took over the running of the family, with help from relatives.  They moved around a lot of the states before finally settling back in Durham, Maine, in 1958.
• S.K. actually began his writing career at the tender age of twelve in 1959, when he and his brother, David, decided to publish their own local town newspaper, naming it "Dave's Rag".  Using a mimeograph they made a paper that sold for five cents per issue!
• In 1962, S.K. went to Lisbon High School (in Lisbon, funnily enough!).  While there (1963) he collaborated with a friend, Chris Chesley, to publish a collection of 18 short stories entitled "People, Places, and Things-Volume I".  A year later. S.K.'s own amateur press (Triad and Gaslight Books) published a two-part book called "The Star Invaders".
• His public career first started in 1965 when he had a story "I Was A Teenage Grave Robber" (about 6,000 words in total) published in the magazine Comics Review.
• S.K. graduated from High School in 1966 and took a scholarship at the University of Maine.  During that first year at Uni, he completed his first full length novel "The Long Walk", and tried to get it published through Bennett Cerf/Random House.  Unfortunately, they rejected it.  His first sale was with a story called "The Glass Floor" for the amount of a measly $35.
• S.K. went on to graduate from the University of Maine in 1970, with a BSc degree in English as well as a certificate to teach in High School.
• S.K.'s next ideas for a story (and probably has gone on to be one of the most popular he has ever written) were taken from a poem by Robert Browning, "Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came", but due to lack of money he was enable to continue the story for any length of time, and so filed it away.  It must have kept eating at him though, as he has now made great success with all the Dark Tower novels.
• In 1971, S.K. took a job teaching at Hampden Academy.  By then married to Tabitha, they moved to Hermon, just west of Bangor, Maine.
• After the move, S.K. started work on a new novel about a young girl called Carietta White, but deemed it not suitable enough for a story, so crumpled the pages up and dumped them.  Fortunately for him, Tabitha lifted the pages out and read them, liking it enough to encourage him to complete it and in January 1973, he submitted the completed novel "Carrie" to Doubleday, the publishers.  They bought the book.  The income generated made King optimistic enough to quite teaching and go to writing full time.
• Since the success of Carrie, King has gone on to write many, many short stories, novels and had more than a few movies made from his books.
• His books have now been translated into 33 different languages and have been published in over 35 countries.  There are well over 300 million copies of his novels in publication.
• He still lives with his wife and three children in Bangor, Maine, his home state, where he writes all his stories in the comfort of his home.

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