Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947, the son of Donald and Nellie Ruth king. His father, a merchant seaman, walked out on the family in 1950. His mother struggled with a number of low-paying jobs to support him and his adopted brother, David. As a child, Stephen King invented an alter ego named Cannonball Cannon, a daredevil who did good deeds and enjoyed reading comic books such as Weird Science, Tales from …showed first 75 words of 571 total…

…showed last 75 words of 571 total…sales of the book eventually topped the 4,000,000 mark and the film version, became one of the top-grossing films of 1976. King cheerfully admits that the movie made the book and the book made me. Over the next several years, Doubleday published four more horror books by Stephen King: Salems Lot (1975), The Shining (1977), Night Shift (1978), and The Stand (1978). In 1980, he published Firestarter, in 1981, Cujo, in 1987, Misery, and has produced many more novels and short stories since then.