Stephen King - Birth:

Stephen King was born September 21, 1947 in Scarborough, Maine.

Stephen King Background and Writing:

Stephen King had what he calls "an odd, herky-jerky childhood" in New England where he and his brother David were raised by their single parent mother. Measles, strep throat, ear infections, and tonsillitis kept King in bed during the better part of a year when he was six, during which he read and read - "six tons of comic books, progressed to Tom Swift and Dave Dawson (a heroic World War II pilot whose various planes where always 'prop-clawing for altitude'), then moved on to Jack London's bloodcurdling animal tales."

King loved stories, and his mother encouraged him to write his own. She gave him a quarter each for his early tales about magic animals, and it wasn't long before a horror fanzine published one of his stories, "I Was a Teen-Age Graverobber." King continued to write and submit his stories to publications like Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Some were published, many more were not. But despite the piles of rejection letters, King continued to write through high school and college, when magazines like Cavalier, Dude, and Swank began paying him regularly for his stories.

King was married, the father of two kids, and a high school English teacher when he began working on Carrie, his debut novel about a telekinetic teenager wreaking vengeance upon her cruel peers. The novel, which was published in 1974, taught him a great deal about writing, launched his career as a full time writer, and was the first of scores of novels that King has penned these past forty years, many of which have been made into movies and television miniseries.

In 1999, King was struck by a minivan while walking along a roadside in rural Maine. His injuries - a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip — stopped his writing for a significant amount of time. In fact, in 2002, he announced that, as a result of his pain and reduction in stamina, he would indeed stop writing. And though he claims that the injuries have significantly slowed him, Stephen King still writes prodigiously, publishing nearly a book every year.

Recent Work:

• Lisey's Story (2006)
• Duma Key (2008)
• Under the Dome (2009)
• On Writing (10th Anniversary Edition - 2010)
• 11/22/63 (2011)

Website:

Stephen King's website

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