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| | Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947, Portland, USA) — American author of over 200 stories including over 50 bestselling horror, thriller, fantasy, mystic novels. He is universally recognised as “Horror king”.
He is also famous under a pen-name:
Richard Bachman:
Under this pen name, Kind published novels “Rage”, “The Long Walk”, “Road Work”, “The Running Man”, “Thinner” & “The Regulators”.
Pen name John Swithen is used only for short stories.
Biography of Stephen King:
Stephen King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, State Maine. He started his career as an author in January 1959, when he and his brother decided to publish own local city newspaper.
In 1962, Stephen King published 18 short stories “People, Places, and Things-Volume I”. After an year, the second volume “The Star Invaders” was published. Stephen King completed secondary school in 1966 and got admission in University of Maine at Orono, where he met his future wife Tabitha Spruce. In 1970, he graduated from University with a degree in Bachelor of Arts and he was considered unfit for military service. In the beginning, the family had to witness financial problems and they lived on the salary of King in an industrial laundry, on student grant of wife and occasional fees for the publication of short stories in journals. Stephen King and Tabitha Spruce have a son and daughter.
King taught English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine in fall 1971. His wife Tabitha Spruce rescued an unfinished novel in trash and encouraged Stephen King to finish it. He was not at all interested in completing the novel since he thought that it is unlucky but his wife insisted on completing the novel. After completing the novel, he titled it “Carrie”.
In 1974, publishing house «Doubleday» published the novel “Carrie” for which he was paid $ 2500 as an advance. Later on, “Doubleday” sold the paperback rights for “Carrie” to new American Library for 400000 dollars. Stephen King received halve of the amount and resigns from the teacher job in school.
In fall 1974, Stephen King wanted to spend a year away from Maine so that his next novel would have a different sort of background and randomly pointed to a place, which occurred to be Boulder, State Colorado. He stayed there for one year and in the meantime wrote a novel “The Shining”.
At the end of 1970s, King published his earlier novel «Getting It On” under a new name “Rage” and under pseudonym Richard Bachman. Under this pseudonym, King wrote 5 more novels.
In 1989, King signed a contract with publishing house “Viking”. As per the agreement, Stephen King should receive 35 million dollars for the next four novels. But in 1997, King annulled the contract as he decided to get 17 million dollars for the novel “Bag of bones”. He signed a new agreement with publishing house “Simon and Schuster” (Scribner), receiving 8 million dollars as advance for the novel and 50 percent revenues from sales.
In 1999, Stephen King met with a car accident & was seriously injured. Later on, he wrote about this tragic event in his memoirs— «On Writing. A Memoir of the Craft” and in the sixth volume “Dark Tower” (Songs of Susana”).
Interesting facts:
Stephen King is admirer pt television serial Lost and he wrote an article about this show for newspaper “Entertainment Weekly”. Interestingly, book “Bad Twin”, connected with the serial, written by King under the pseudonym Gary Troup was disproved (rejected).
“Rage” — novel of Stephen King was withdrawn from sales. When real school shootings took place in Kansas by juvenile offender, who killed three classmates although he stated that he did not read “Rage” until later. After this, Stephen King decided to let Rage fall out of print in the United States of America. |
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Famous horror novelist and story writer Stephen King celebrates his 60th birthday today. Up to date, he has written over 200 stories including some of the best selling horror and fantasy novels. Several of his stories were made into the 
