Biography

Born in Portland, Maine, 1947, Stephen Edwin King had a split childhood due to his parents Nellie and Donald divorsing when he was young. His time was spent in Fort Wayne Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut, being the second child and having a bigger brother named David.

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. At the end of the summer of 1973, the Kings moved their growing family to southern Maine because of Stephen's mother's failing health. Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado. They lived there for a little less than a year, during which Stephen wrote The Shining, set in Colorado.