Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine. His father, Donald Edwin King, and mother, Nellie Ruth King, were experiencing difficulties in their marriage. When Stephen King was only 2, his father left the house to but a pack of cigarettes...but never returned. Stephen King hasn't seen his father since.
After their parents separated, Stephen and his adopted older brother, David King, lived with their mother back and forth between Massachusetts and Maine.
Stephen King's passion in writing began in 1959 when he found a box of old science-fiction and horror magazines at his Aunt's house. He began thinking about horror, and writing, and published "I Was A Teenage Grave Robber" in comics review later that year. Despite this early publication, Stephen King's first professional sale occurred in 1967 when Startling Mystery Stories accepted his story "The Glass Floor".
Stephen King graduated from high school in 1966 and continued on to the University of Maine at Orono. While studying at University, he met his wife-to- be, Tabitha Spruce. He received his bachelors of science in English in 1970, then married Tabitha Spruce in 1971.
Stephen King began his work at an industrial laundromat, then became a janitor, then finally became an English teacher at Hamden Public School in Maine. He didn't earn enough money, and had trouble paying the bills. He wrote whenever he wasn't working, and published Carrie in 1974 with Doubleday. Carrie was an instant success, and it's movie, released in 1976, was also popular.
Since then, he has published over 30 novels, and he has over 100 million copies in print. Despite writing about gruesome horror subjects, Stephen King has many fears (See the list above).
Stephen King enjoys rock music (i.e. Bruce Springsteen). He has many quotes in his novels from rock songs, and is in the band "Rock Bottom Remainders". The other members of the band are Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Robert Fulghum, Matt Groening, and Roy Blount, Jr.
Born in New York, Richard Bachman’s early years are somewhat of a mystery. As a young man, Bachman served a four-year stint in the Coast Guard, which he then followed with ten years in the merchant marine.
Bachman finally settled down in rural central New Hampshire, where he ran a medium-sized dairy farm. He did his writing at night (he suffered from chronic insomnia), after the cows came home.
Bachman and his wife, Claudia Inez Bachman, had one child, a boy, who died in an unfortunate, Stephen King-ish type accident at the age of six. He apparently fell through a well and drowned. In 1982, a brain tumor was discovered near the base of Bachman’s brain; tricky surgery removed it.
Bachman died suddenly in late 1985, of cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.
At the time of his death, Bachman had published five novels:
The first four novels were published as paperbacks, but as Bachman had been gaining quite a constant readership, his last novel, Thinner, was published in hardcover and was well received by the critics. At the time of his death, he was toying with an idea for a new novel, a rather gruesome suspense novel which would have been titled Misery, had he lived to write it. (Note: This title was later plagiarised by a well-known horror writer.)
Bachman fans received a bit of good news recently. In 1994, while preparing to move to a new house, the widow Bachman discovered a cardboard carton filled with manuscripts in the cellar. The carton contained a number of novels and stories, in varying degrees of completion. The most finished was a typescript of a novel entitled, The Regulators.
The widow took the manuscript to Bachman’s former editor, Charles Verrill, who found it compared well with Bachman’s earlier works. After only a few minor changes, and with the approval of the author’s widow (now Claudia Eschelman), The Regulators will be published posthumorously in September of 1996 by Dutton. As of this time, no other information has been forthcoming as to the possibility of the remaining unpublished cartonworks being published.
As a brief side note, Charles Verrill also happens to edit the works of Stephen King, a writer whose works have been compared to the late Richard Bachman’s. When asked his opinion of Bachman, King replied, "A nasty man....I'm glad that he's dead."