Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. King, his older brother, and mother moved a lot as Stephen grew up, but moved back to Maine for good in 1958. King’s first novel, Carrie, came out in 1974. This was King’s first big paying gig, and his start to real success. King and his wife Tabitha have 3 children and 4 grandchildren.
Stephen King has an incredible talent for every aspect of good fictional writing, character development, plot, description and dialog. When reading his books you can picture his settings clearly in your mind. He uses his words to create terror in his readers, or amuse on a superlative level.
King follows the rule of writing, “write what you know”. How can a horror or fantasy writer follow this rule? King’s definition includes writing what his heart and imagination knows also. Many of the settings in his books take place in Maine, a state he knows well. In June of 1999, King was hit and almost killed by a car on one of his daily walks in Maine. He writes about it in his 2000 book entitled “On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft”. Writing helped him recover, and “writing what he, his heart, or imagination knows” continued from this experience with books such as Lisey’s Story and Duma Key.
If you’re new to Stephen King, start with some of his earlier works. Carrie is well written and relatively short and non-complicated. I’d also recommend my favorite, Pet Semetary. It combines true terror with the very human trait of wanting one last moment spent with lost loved ones. Some of King’s later works such as Rose Madder or Lisey’s Story are a bit more complicated and fantasy based.
I’ve been a fan of the horror genre since I was a child watching movies such as “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”. Scooby Doo was my favorite cartoon and fueled some of my childhood nightmares. Stephen King pulled me away from TV into a world of wilder imagination in reading, and helped to spark more mature, horrifying nightmares.
Sources:
Tabitha King, updated by Marsha DeFilippo, http://www.stephenking.com/the_author.html, StephenKing.com
Stephan King(2000). On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft. New York, NY: Pocket Books