Stephen Edwin King was born in 1947 in Maine. He has spent most of his life there in the Victorian home he now lives in. The Kings were the typical family until one night when Donald King said he was stepping out for cigarettes and was never heard from again. At this point his mother took over raising the family with help from other relatives. They traveled a lot, but returned to Maine in 1958. Stephen King began his actual writing career at age 12 when his brother David and Stephen decided to publish their own local newspaper named "Dave's Rag". At age 16 they published a collection of 18 short stories.
     After attending college King took a measly job of pumping gas earning $1.25 an hour. He then began to earn money for his writings by submitting his short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. In 1971, Tabitha Jane Spruce and Stephen King were married.

     In the fall of 1971, King took a teaching job at Hampden Academy earning $6,400 a year. They moved to Hermon, of Bangor, Maine. Stephen King then began work on a short story about a teenage girl named Carietta White.After completing a few pages, King decided it was not a worthy story and crumpled the pages up and tossed them into the trash. Fortunately for us all, his wife Tabitha took the pages out and read them. She then encouraged Stephen to continue the story. He did. King submitted Carrie to Doubleday. Doubleday bought the book, and sold the paperback rights of Carrie for $400,000. Based on the book contract, Stephen King would get half of that. At this point, he bought he his wife the hair dryer she had been wanting, and their lifestyle changed considerably. King quit his teaching job to pursue writing full time. And the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, King has had numerous short stories and novels published and movies created from his work. Stephen King is called the "Master of Horror".
     His books have been translated into 33 different languages and published in over 35 different countries. There are over 300 million copies of his novels in publication.
      In June 1999 Stephen King was severely injured in an accident that left him in critical condition with injuries to his lung, broken ribs, a broken leg and a severely fractured hip. After three weeks of operations he was released from the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine.

From the Jay Leno Show
"Doctors took it as a positive sign that Stephen King was asking about a Boston Red Sox game when he came out of surgery following his accident." They also took it as a positive sign that while he was in the recovery room, he wrote four novels, two short stories, and another miniseries.