Horror films and stories have been very popular in American culture. Many people don't realize that their favorite scary characters wouldn't have been thought of if it weren't for a certain writer; Stephen King. King dedicated much of his time and talent to giving us our most beloved stories that we tell around a campfire with our friends. King managed to take our most terrifying fears and put them into his stories. Stephen King was and still is a great source of inspiration for the world of horror. The horror genre would never be the same again. Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 to Donald King and Nellie Pillsbury in Portland, Maine. King was the couple's first child, but they later adopted their eldest son, David (Ramsey). When King was just two years old, his father abandoned the family. Over the next few years, King and his family moved constantly from place to place until they finally settled in 1958 (Ramsey). While in high school, Stephen King worked for a local newspaper. It was in 1965 that King sold his first story, I Was a Teenage Grave Robber, which was later changed to In A Half-World of Terror (Ramsey). Over the next two years, King successfully published two amateur novels, one of which is considered the beginning of the King era. Stephen King attended the University of Maine on a full scholarship (Ramsey). There he worked part-time at the school library where he met Tabitha Spruce, who later became his wife (Ramsey). Despite all his accomplishments at such an early age, Stephen King's legacy was just beginning. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay From an early age, Stephen King managed to publish some of his short stories. Now it was time for his career to take flight. In 1973, King wrote and published her first novel, Carrie, the story of a young teenager who takes revenge on her classmates. The novel soon became a success, paving the way for the full flowering of King's career. Salem's Lot was released soon after Carrie. Many of King's early works were hits, including The Shining (1977), Firestarter (1980), Cujo (1981), and the infamous IT (1986) (Stephen King). However, worried that people would no longer accept books by the same author in a year, King decided to create pseudonyms (Stephen King). He used Richard Bachman (Boman) and John Swithen (Stephen King). Even under different names, Stephen King's novels have never lost their touch. Some people wonder how a person can write such scary and deadly stories. What they don't know is that Stephen King actually had a near-death encounter. In the summer of 1999, King was struck by a driver and thrown 14 feet into the air (Ramsey). He was hospitalized for many weeks and suffered numerous injuries such as a collapsed lung, broken ribs and bones, and even multiple fractures to his legs (McCann). King also underwent numerous procedures. However, Stephen King used his misfortunes as inspiration. In the final book of the Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower King named a character Bryan Smith, after the man who hit him (McCann). He took almost every detail of his accident and put it into that novel, right down to the part where Bryan almost hits a person, named Stephen King, with his car after being distracted by his dog (McCann). Some of the interactions between the two characters in the book are based on actual dialogue that occurred between King and Smith (McCann). Stephen King used his story to make his novel unique.)..