Who is Stephen King ?

Before Stephen King was a world-famous author, he was a struggling, and broke, writer merely trying to get published in short story magazines. When he worked on the manuscript for “Carrie,” he threw it in the trash; fortunately for everyone, his wife Tabitha pulled it out, read it, and encouraged him to finish it. It eventually became his first published novel and a huge hit.

One day while Stephen’s brother David was exploring the family attic, he found boxes of his father’s belongings. He called Stephen up to the attic, where Stephen discovered a box filled with horror novels.

In order to publish more novels a year, Stephen King started using a pen name. He published seven novels under the name Richard Bachman and one short story under John Swithen. Eventually, his fans started to figure out King was writing under the name Richard Bachman. After that, he stopped using the name.

King used to have a recurring nightmare where he entered a room to witness a suicide victim hanging from the ceiling. To make matters worse, suicides have occurred in three of King’s houses.

Many of Stephen King’s works have been adapted to screen, and he’s not shy about appearing in them. He’s made at least 14 cameos in both the television and movie adaptations.

Stephen King started writing and submitting his short stories when he was 16. Every time he got a rejection letter, he put the letter on a nail on his wall. Eventually he got so many rejection letters that the nail fell down. King finally got his first acceptance when he was 19 for a story called “The Glass Floor.” He was paid $35.

King was raised by a single mother, and his family grew up very poor. His first part-time job was pumping gas, and he eventually started cleaning laundry and working as an English teacher.

Stephen King fans know all of his works are somehow connected. While characters from other books appear in some of his others, The Dark Tower series is the saga of books which connect the entire underlying universe together.

King worked as an English teacher starting in 1971. He made $6,400 per year, about $40,000 in 2017.

Stephen King has been called “The Master of Horror,” and there are hard numbers to back it up. He’s sold 350 million copies of his books.

King has published seven novels under the pen name “Richard Bachman.”

In the original TV mini-series of “IT,” everyone knows Tim Curry played the evil and malevolent monster “Pennywise.” However, before Curry, Alice Cooper was in the running to play the character.

King played guitar in the literary super group band the Rock Bottom Remainders. Other members include Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, and Barbara Kingsolver.

Calling Stephen King an avid writer might be understating things. Since his first published novel, he’s written 48 novels, 84 short stories, and 16 novellas. He keeps writing today, publishing at least one book a year.

Stephen King listens to hard rock while he writes. Two of his favorite bands are AC/DC and The Ramones.

In the 1980’s, when he was one of the hottest writers around, Stephen King’s addictions almost killed him. He used drugs and alcohol to escape his troubling past as a child, but eventually, it all caught up with him. His wife Tabitha and his family organized an intervention which was a big wake-up call, but he still struggled to get off the drugs.

Stephen King and his wife Tabitha own a radio station in Maine called Zone Radio, which plays mostly rock music.

King is a huge fan of the Boston Red Sox. He even played himself as a Red Sox fan in the movie Fever Pitch, and wrote the story The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon about the Red Sox pitcher.

In 1992, King donated money to his town of Bangor, Maine so the municipality could build the Mansfield Baseball Stadium. King’s only condition was that the score board be positioned so that he could see it from his home while he was working.

As if being one of the world's most successful and prolific writers wasn't already reason enough to celebrate, Stephen King is ringing in his birthday as the toast of Hollywood.

Stephen and Tabitha King own Zone Radio, a company that serves to head their three radio stations in Maine. One of them, WKIT, is a classic rock station that goes by the tagline "Stephen King's Rock Station."

The best advice Stephen King can give to aspiring writers is: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

Not only did he write a story about the Boston Red Sox—The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (who was a former Red Sox pitcher)—he also had a cameo in the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore movie Fever Pitch, which is about a crazed Sox fan. He plays himself and throws out the first pitch at a game.

Stephen’s wife Tabitha has written several novels of her own as well, including the titles Candles Burning and Survivor.

You probably remember that King was hit by a van not far from his summer home in Maine in 1999. The incident left King with a collapsed lung, multiple fractures to his hip and leg, and a gash to the head. Afterward, King and his lawyer bought the van for $1500 with King announcing that, "Yes, we've got the van, and I'm going to take a sledgehammer and beat it!"