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 the Crypt, and Tales from the Vault. He also went to see science fiction and monster movies.
             "Eventually, countless viewings over the years of such classic horror films as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Thing, and It came from Outer Space convinced me that the horror movies chief value is its ability to form a liaison between our fantasy fears and our real fears." The fortunate discovery of his fathers paperback collection of fantasy-horror fiction gave King, in his own words, "a taste of a world that went deeper than the B-pictures & or the boys fiction of Carl Carmer and Roy Rockwell." As a child Stephen King was surprised to find that his long-absent father had shared his interest in science fiction, but even more surprised to learn that Donald King wrote several horror stories and submitted them, to Bluebook, Argosy, and other magazines. Stephen King was determined to become a writer. While still a student at the local high school, he tried writing short stories. He never sold a single one, but he did win first prize in an essay competition sponsored by a scholastic magazine. He took time off from his studies to play on the varsity football team, and was, for several years, the rhythm guitarist in an amateur rock n roll band called the MoonSpinners
             After he graduated from high school, he attended the University of Maine at Orono on a scholarship. Majoring in English, he took creative writing courses and was apart of a week...