Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine. Raised by his mother in Durham, Maine where she worked several odd jobs to support Stephen and his brother David. Stephen's father, a merchant seaman left the family in 1950. King went to grammar school and then attended High School at Lisbon Falls, where short stories started to bud in his mind. In 1960, King submitted his very first story for publication but was rejected. That did not stop King from writing as he wrote for the local newspaper as well has the high school newspaper which he edited in his spare time.
In 1970, King graduated from the University of Maine and went on to married Tabitha Spruce, a gained fame writer the next year. For most of King's career, he lived in Bangor, Maine. Many of his books are set in an imaginary town called Castle Rock, Maine, which greed destroyed in the book Needful Things (1993). 1971-1974 King was an instructor at the Hampden Academy where his earnings were only $6,400 a year. This was during his first novel, Carrie (1974). In the very beginning of the book writing process of Carrie, King threw the first several pages into the trash were his wife retrieved them and urged King to continue. Even though the sales were slow in the beginning, rights were sold and a movie was launched in 1976 paying King $400,000 for its paperback rights. This was only after the novel of Salem's Lot (1976) was a success. Soon after the reputation that King carried was that of a major horror writer. In the late summer of 1974, King decided to stay in Colorado with his family for an extended visit. Soon after settling there, King wrote about The Shining (1977) after visiting the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. King turned this novel into a miniseries on television in 1997.
Richard Bachman was King's pen name for his first paperbacks in the late 1970's. Peter Staub also participated in some novels with King, such as The Talisman (1984) and The Black House (2001). King has gone on to write such books as, Danse Macabre (1981), Pet Cemetery, The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half, Bag of Bones (1998) and many, many more. A great number of King's books have been adapted to movies.
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