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Stephen King's Biography

Stephen King's
Biography

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy--and I keep it in a jar on my desk."
Stephen King
(New York Times interview)

Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 at the Maine General Hospital in Portland Maine . His parents were Donald Edwin King and Ruth Pillsbury King , Stephen being the only natural born child in the family (his older brother David having been adopted at birth two years earlier). His birth was no joy for the family . " Instead of being a pleasant surprise, I was the one that wasn't supposed to be, a sort of living dead". The Kings were the typical family until one night, when Stephen was three, Donald King said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard from again. Stephen will always suffer from this, and later on he will call his father " a jerk". 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.

He started writing scary stories at a young age. His connection to this type of writings was first piqued by his father's collection of fantasy novels. This was the match that started the fire. As a teenager, he wrote and sold a couple of mystery stories to a local publication, a mystery magazine. But it wasn't all blood and guts: the adolescent Stephen King also used to play in a rock band and as a teammate in the high school's football team. 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...