Biography of Stephen King

Stephen King is surely the best horror author of all the last 20 years. He wrote 16 novels and sold more than 350 million of them. He even directed a film points. He was born on 21st September 1941 in the northern state of Maine in the USA. His father Donald King was a vacuum cleaner salesman, but he left Stephen and his other son with their mother when Stephen was only two years old. Stephen’s mother had to take two to three jobs to pay for everything. They did not even have enough money to pay for a babysitter. That's why Stephen and his brother spent hours home alone reading comics and stories such as Dracula and Tales from the Crypt. After years of moving the family finally settled in Portland when Stephen was 11 years old. But then a traumatic event struck Stephens's life: he saw a friend killed by a train. Stephen repeated that he did not remember the details and that he was not fearful even after this event. When he had money, he would go to the cinema.

When he was a teenager, he found one day some manuscripts belonging to his father in the attic. He later published his first book called I Was a Teenage Grave Robber which was inspired by one of his jobs which was as an undertaker in a cemetery. He was also a cleaner as a part-time job. He finally managed to attend the University of Maine to study English language art. Stephen met his wife at the faculty library. They had their first child, Rachel, in 1970 and he got married in 1971 as soon as Stephen graduated. But they had to live in a trailer and Stephen only published short stories in magazines. He had to take a job to support his family. In his spare time, he locked himself in a room and spent time writing.

In between, his second son, John Hill, was born, and although Stephen continued to send manuscripts of new novels, none of them were ever published, and he began to get desperate. One day, Tabitha retrieved a manuscript he had scrapped from the house’s dumpster. It was called Carrie and told the story of a marginalized teenager pressured by a controlling mother who developed psychic powers. Stephen thought he didn't know how to portray teenage characters, but his wife convinced him to rewrite and send it to the publisher. The result was his first big sales success, which not only allowed him to get out of his modest life and dedicate himself completely to writing but it was taken to the cinema a few years later by Brian de Palma, also with great success.

His next work was Salem’s Lot, the story of a vampire who lives in a small village in Maine. And shortly afterward he had his third son, Owen. After this, Stephen thought that he and his family needed a vacation, so they went to spend some time in a big hotel in the mountains, which at that time of the year was deserted. Wandering through the empty corridors, he came up with his new novel, The Shining, where a child with psychic powers is frightened by the spirits that inhabit a hotel and turn his alcoholic father against him and his own mother. In addition to becoming a best seller, it was taken to the cinema by the director Stanley Kubrick, but Stephen was unhappy with the result.

Meanwhile, he continued with his frantic writing pace and soon had a new novel ready, Rage. However, publishers didn't allow the writers to publish more than one novel a year to maintain their prestige. The solution for Stephen was to create a pseudonym, Richard Bachmann, under which he published this and 6th other novels. He even went so far as to put himself behind the camera to direct Maximum Overdrive in 1986, although it had had little success.

But the 80s was also a difficult time for Stephen as he had to deal with his addiction to alcohol and other drugs, which he managed to overcome with the help of his family and friends. He continued to publish bestsellers such as       Pet Cemetry, where he translated his children's tradition of burying dead animals in front of his house into the story of a father resurrecting his recently deceased son. Others were also taken to the movies such as It, the Terrifying Clown’s Tale based on anecdotes from his childhood in Maine. Or Misery, the story of a writer kidnapped by a fan, which reflected his fear of harassers.

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