Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of hundreds of stories including dozens of bestselling horror and fantasy novels. King has been the recipient of The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and his numerous literary awards place him among the most honored horror authors in recent history.
Easton Press Stephen King books
The Dead Zone - Masterpieces of Science Fiction - not signed - 1993
Johnny Smith is injured in an accident and enters a coma
for nearly five years. When he emerges, he can see horrifying secrets,
but he cannot identify all the details because of an area of his brain
being dead.
Double Day Stephen King books
The Stand - signed first edition - limited to 1250 copies of which 52 are lettered copies - 1978
A post-apocalyptic science fiction / horror / adventure
novel. It re-works the scenario in King’s earlier short story, "Night
Surf". It is widely hailed by critics and fans as one of his best
novels.
(This book is published by Double Day it is leather bound and includes many of the same features as Easton Press or Franklin Library editions)
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Author Stephen King
King evinces a thorough knowledge of the horror genre, as shown in his 1981 nonfiction book Danse Macabre, which chronicles several decades of notable works in literature, cinema, television and radio. He has also written stories outside the horror genre, including the novella collection Different Seasons, The Green Mile, The Eyes of the Dragon, Hearts in Atlantis and his self-described "magnum opus," The Dark Tower series. In the past, Stephen King has written under the pen names Richard Bachman and (once) John Swithen.Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father, Donald Edwin King, deserted his family. His mother, Nellie Ruth (née Pillsbury), raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Durham, Maine, but also spent brief periods in West De Pere, Wisconsin, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Stratford, Connecticut.
As a child, he apparently witnessed a gruesome accident — one of his friends was struck and killed by a train. Some commentators have suggested this event may have psychologically inspired King's dark, disturbing creations, but King himself dismisses the idea, noting that he has no memory of the event: his family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death.
King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon Falls High School. As a young boy, King was an avid reader of EC's horror comics including Tales from the Crypt, which provided the genesis for his love of horror. His screenplay for Creepshow would later pay tribute to the comics. When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he had seen, copying them with a mimeo machine his brother used to publish a newspaper, Dave's Rag, to which King contributed. King sold the stories to friends, but his teachers disapproved and forced him to return his profits.
His first published story was "In a Half-World of Terror" (retitled from "I Was a Teen-Age Grave-robber"), published in a horror fanzine issued by Marshall Henderson of Birmingham, Alabama.
From 1966 to 1970, King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono, where he wrote a column entitled "King's Garbage Truck" for the student newspaper, the Maine Campus. He met Tabitha Spruce there while attending a mutual writing workshop with his mentor, Burton Hatlen; they married in January, 1971. The campus period in his life is readily evident in the second part of Hearts in Atlantis, and the odd jobs he took on to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry, would later inspire stories such as "The Mangler" and the novel Roadwork (as Richard Bachman).
After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in English and a certificate to teach high school, King taught English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He and his family lived in a trailer, and he wrote short stories, most for men's magazines, to help make ends meet. As Carrie's introduction relates, if one of his kids got a cold, Tabitha would joke, "Come on, Steve, think of a monster." King also developed a drinking problem, which would stay with him for over a decade.
Success with Carrie
On
Mother's Day, 1973, King's novel Carrie was accepted by publishing
house Doubleday. King has written how he became so discouraged when
trying to develop the idea of a girl with psychic powers into a novel
that he threw an early draft in the trash, but his wife, Tabitha,
rescued it and encouraged him to finish it. King and
his family relocated to Southern Maine because of his mother's failing
health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming,
later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to
'Salem's Lot (published 1975). Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974,
his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to
her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at
this time, stating that he was drunk while delivering the eulogy at his
mother's funeral. After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The Shining (published 1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand (published 1978). In 1977, the family traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. King has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.
In On Writing, King admits that at this time he was often drunk and was even intoxicated while delivering his mother’s eulogy. He states he was the basis for The Shining's alcoholic father, though he would not admit it (even to himself) for several years.
Shortly after The Tommyknockers publication, King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash—beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine), and marijuana—on the rug in front of him to show the evidence of his addictions. As King related in his memoir, he sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.
King spends winter seasons in a waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. Their three children, Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hillstrom (who appeared in the film Creepshow), and Owen Phillip, are grown and live on their own.
Owen and Joseph are writers; Owen published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories in 2005. The first collection of stories by Joe Hill (Joseph's pen name), 20th Century Ghosts, was published in 2005 by PS Publishing in a very limited edition, winning the Crawford Award for best new fantasy writer, together with the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Collection. Irish film director Neil Jordan will adapt Hill's first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, for a 2008 Warner Bros release.
Shortly after The Tommyknockers publication, King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash—beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine), and marijuana—on the rug in front of him to show the evidence of his addictions. As King related in his memoir, he sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.
King spends winter seasons in a waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. Their three children, Naomi Rachel, Joseph Hillstrom (who appeared in the film Creepshow), and Owen Phillip, are grown and live on their own.
Owen and Joseph are writers; Owen published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories in 2005. The first collection of stories by Joe Hill (Joseph's pen name), 20th Century Ghosts, was published in 2005 by PS Publishing in a very limited edition, winning the Crawford Award for best new fantasy writer, together with the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Fiction Collection. Irish film director Neil Jordan will adapt Hill's first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, for a 2008 Warner Bros release.
Writing style
In his nonfiction book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, King discusses his writing style at great length. King believes that, generally speaking, good stories cannot be called consciously and should not be plotted out beforehand, they are better served by focusing on a single "seed" of a story and letting the story grow itself. King often begins a story with no idea how it will end. He mentions in the Dark Tower series that halfway through its nearly 30-year writing period a terminally-ill woman asked how it would end, certain she would die before the series's completion. He told her he did not know. King believes strongly in this style, stating that his best writing comes from "freewriting." In On Writing, King stated that he believed stories to exist fully formed, like fossils, and that his role as a writer was to excavate the fossil as well as he could. When asked for the source of his story ideas in interviews, however, he has several times, including the appearance on Amazon.com's Fishbowl, answered, "I have the heart of a small boy……and I keep it in a jar on my desk." (This quote is most often attributed to Robert Bloch, author of Psycho.)On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
He is known for his great eye for detail, for continuity and for inside references; many stories that may seem unrelated are often linked by secondary characters, fictional towns, or off-hand references to events in previous books. Many of the settings for King's books are in Maine, though often fictional locations.
King's books are filled with references to American history and American culture, particularly the darker, more fearful side of these. These references are generally spun into the stories of characters, often explaining their fears. Recurrent references include crime, war (especially the Vietnam War), violence, the supernatural and racism.
King is also known for his folksy, informal narration, often referring to his fans as "Constant Readers" or "friends and neighbors." This familiar style contrasts with the horrific content of many of his stories.
King has a very simple formula for learning to write well: "Read four hours a day and write four hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until its met. He also has a simple definition for talent in writing: "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."
Shortly after his accident, King wrote the first draft of the book Dreamcatcher with a notebook and a Waterman fountain pen, which he called "the world's finest word processor."
King's writing style throughout his novels alternates from future to past, character development (including character illumination, dynamics and revelation), and setting in each chapter — leaving a cliffhanger at the end. He then continues this process until the novel is finished.
When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple – there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do."
Influences
King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most as a writer." Both authors casually integrate characters' thoughts into the third person narration, just one of several parallels between their writing styles. In a current edition of Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man, King is quoted: "A horror story if there ever was one…a great adventure story — it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."King is a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and refers to him several times in Danse Macabre. Lovecraft's influence shows in King's invention of bizarre, ancient deities, subtle connections among all of his tales and the integration of fabricated newspaper clippings, trial transcripts and documents as narrative devices. King's invented trio of afflicted New England towns — Jerusalem's Lot, Castle Rock and Derry — are reminiscent of Lovecraft's Arkham, Dunwich and Innsmouth. King's short story "Crouch End" is an explicit homage to, and part of, Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos story cycle. "Gramma", a short story made into a film in the 1980s anthology horror show The New Twilight Zone, mentions Lovecraft's notorious fictional creation Necronomicon, also borrowing the names of a number of the fictional monsters mentioned therein. "I Know What You Need" from 1976's anthology collection Night Shift, and 'Salem's Lot also mention the tome. Another tribute to Lovecraft is in King's short story "Jerusalem's Lot", which opens Night Shift. King differs markedly from Lovecraft in his focus on extensive characterization and naturalistic dialogue, both notably absent in Lovecraft's writing. In On Writing, King is critical of Lovecraft's dialogue-writing skills, using passages from The Colour Out of Space as particularly poor examples. There are also several examples of King referring to Lovecraftian characters in his work, such as Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth.
Edgar Allan Poe exerts a noticeable influence over King's writing as well. In The Shining, the phrase "And the red death held sway over all" hearkens back to Poe's "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all" from "The Masque of the Red Death." The short story "Dolan's Cadillac" has a theme almost identical to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," including a paraphrase of Fortunato's famous plea, "For the love of God, Montresor!" In The Shining, King refers to Poe as "The Great American Hack".
King acknowledges the influence of Bram Stoker, particularly on his novel ’Salem's Lot, which he envisioned as a retelling of Dracula. Its related short story "Jerusalem's Lot", is reminiscent of Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm.
King has also openly declared his admiration for another, less prolific author: Shirley Jackson. 'Salem's Lot opens with a quotation from Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Tony, an imaginary playmate from The Shining, bears a striking resemblance to another imaginary playmate with the same name from Jackson's Hangsaman. A pivotal scene in Storm of the Century is based on Jackson's The Lottery. A character in Wolves of the Calla references the Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
King is a big fan of John D. MacDonald and dedicated the novella Sun Dog to MacDonald, saying "I miss you, old friend." For his part, MacDonald wrote an admiring preface to an early paperback version of Night Shift, and even had his famous character, Travis McGee, reading Cujo in one of the last McGee novels.
In 1987 King's Philtrum Press published Don Robertson's novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man. In his forenote to the novel, King wrote, "Don Robertson was and is one of the three writers who influenced me as a young man who was trying to 'become' a novelist (the other two being Richard Matheson and John D. MacDonald)."
In an Amazon.com interview, King said the one book he wishes he'd written is William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
King makes references in several of his books to characters and events in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Robert A. Heinlein's book The Door into Summer is repeatedly mentioned in King's Wolves of the Calla.
Richard Bachman
In the late 1970s-early 1980s, King published a handful of short novels—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Road Work (1981), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The idea behind this was largely an experiment to measure for himself whether or not he could replicate his own success again, and allay at least part of the notion inside his own head that popularity might all be just an accident of fate. An alternate (or additional) explanation was because of publishing standards back then allowing only a single book a year.
The Bachman novels contained hints to the author's actual identity that were picked up on by fans, leading to King's admission of authorship in 1985. King dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half about a pseudonym turning on a writer to "the deceased Richard Bachman", and in 1996, when the Stephen King novel Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators carried the Bachman byline.
In 2006, during a London UK press conference, King declared that he had discovered another Bachman novel, titled Blaze. It was published on June 12, 2007 in the UK and US. In fact, the manuscript had been held at King's alma mater, the University of Maine in Orono for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King completely rewrote the 1973 manuscript for its publication.
Source and additional information: Stephen King