Stephen King

Stephen King is synonymous with the keywords "weird", "strange", and "spooky". It's not unheard of to hear him referred to, not as Stephen King, but as "the weird guy who wrote (insert work here)." King obviously has no problem with his persona, as he has been writing since the early 1960s and is undoubtedly one of the most successful writers of 20th century novel and film.

Born on September 21st 1947 in Portland, Maine, King was raised in a typical fashion for his first few years of life. Then, one night, King's father Donald made a routine excursion to purchase some cigarettes and was never heard from again. After this, King's mother Ruth took over the raising of the family, which moved about the country until moving to Durham, Maine in 1958. Stephen and his brother David began publishing a local newspaper entitled "Dave's Rag" in 1959, signifying the first printed work of King. Stephen began attending Lisbon High School in 1962. King, along with best friend Chris Chesley, published an 18-story anthology entitled People, Places, and Things - Volume One in 1963. In '64, King's amateur publishing company (Triad and Gaslight Books) released the two-parter The Star Invaders.

Stephen's first actual publishing occurred in a 1965 issue of Comics Review magazine, with his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber". In 1966, King received a scholarship to attend the University of Maine. During his first year of college, King completed his first complete novel, The Long Walk. King took Random House's rejection of Walk badly, and he filed it away. King graduated from U of Maine in 1970. King gained his next inspiration from the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", and he began work on The Dark Tower Series. But due to low income, King couldn't pursue this work at any length and filed it away as well. King then took a job pumping gas, and began submitting his short stories for cash to men's magazines.

In early 1971, King married his wife Tabitha. Later that year, the Kings moved to Hermon, west of Bangor, Maine. It was there the King began working on a story centered around the character "Carietta White". But after completing a few pages, King was unsatisfied with his work and tossed it. Tabitha took the pages out of the trash and read them, and subsequently encouraged Stephen to continue his story. He did, and in March 1973 Doubleday bought the rights to his novel Carrie.

Since then, King's work has been converted into numerous film incarnations. He's also one of the world's most published authors (300 million copies of his work are in print) and he has an estimated yearly salary of $40 million.