The most creative, and one of the smartest bestselling authors, Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine. King suffered terribly in a difficult childhood. After his father left his family, Stephen’s mother Nellie Ruth took care of him and his adopted brother David by herself. They moved to many different states before they settled down in Maine, where his mother started her job as a caregiver in a facility for the mentally challenged.
When Stephen was a child, he witnessed a fatal train accident that killed his friend, after which he returned home shocked and with no memory about what happened, as his family said to him. That accident may have psychologically inspired some of King’s gloomy works of fiction, as some commentators have suggested. Another inspiration in Stephen’s life was The Lurker in the Shadows, one of the H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories.
He first started writing for entertainment while he was studying in high school. In 1967, The Glass Floor, his first professional short story, was released. He kept on sharing his short stories in magazines and worked on ideas for novels. At that time, Stephen had suffered from drinking problems for more than 10 years. After he released 50 novels and 200 short stories, King’s books sold more than 350 million copies, which was the first step to his impressive net worth of $400 million. In 1973, his first novel, Carrie, was taken by publishing house Doubleday. Many movies were inspired by King’s works, such as Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Stand By Me, The Running Man, It, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne, The Green mile, Hearts In Atlantis, Rose Red, Autopsy Room Four, Secret Window, 1408, The Mist, and others. King earned many awards for his creative and genius writing in suspense, science fiction, horror and fantasy works. Also, Stephen has acted in TV series such as: Kingdom Hospital and Sons of Anarchy. With $400 million net worth, King is the richest author in the world.
