
King, a lifelong fan of cinema, finally got his chance to step behind the camera in 1986 thanks to Italian movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis. When the author was only two years old, his father left to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned.

Although Stephen King has virtually no memories of his father, he has described him as "a man with an itchy foot." "As my mother once told me, he was the only man on the sales force who regularly demonstrated vacuum cleaners to pretty young widows at two o'clock in the morning," King says. With the end of the World War II, Donald King returned home on a more or less permanent basis and took a job as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. Lovecraft, would prove a revelatory moment for King. The discovery of a box of his father's books, which included a volume by horror writer H.P. As Stephen King writes in his 1981 nonfiction book Danse Macabre, his father was a fan of horror and science fiction stories and had himself unsuccessfully tried his hand at writing. Donald, a merchant marine, was frequently away from home. In the early years of their marriage, Ruth and Donald King were constantly on the move. This is the tragic and triumphant true story of Stephen King. From his hand-to-mouth childhood and battle with alcohol and drug addiction to the devastating road accident that nearly claimed his life, the king of horror has suffered more than his share of real-life terrors on the path to wealth and fame. Nevertheless, King's rise to the top of the literary heap has been anything but easy.

Popular and populist, Stephen King is a blue-collar boogeyman who delivers frights of the people and for the people.

This, combined with an uncomplicated prose style, has made him the horror genre's answer to Bruce Springsteen. At the core of King's success as a storyteller is his uncanny ability to channel the essence of ordinary life into extraordinary circumstances.

A true icon in an ever-changing entertainment landscape, his enduring popularity is rare for any celebrity and virtually unheard-of for a novelist. Having written over 60 novels and 200 short stories, King continues to produce work that's both relevant and influential. Now in his seventies, King shows no signs of stopping.
