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There are plenty of great horror writers out there, like Bram Stoker, the man behind Dracula…

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…and Mary Shelley, the woman behind Frankenstein. [Dracula and Mary Shelley as Frankensteins monster appears]

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We can understand why they were always behind the monsters…those guys were scary…

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But great as they were, neither could boast sales of 350 million copies of their books.

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For that, we need to look to the king: Stephen King. [A crown and Stephen King appears]

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Stephen was born on September 21st, 1947 in Portland, Maine.

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When he was eleven years old, he and his older brother, David, started publishing their own [Newspaper printing]

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local newspaper.

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They called it "Dave's Rag," and sold it for five cents per issue.

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Not exactly enough to retire on, but hey, it was a start.

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Stephen managed to publish his first short story in a real-life magazine when he was

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still in high school.

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In 1965, the magazine Comics Review published his story "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber."

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And he didn't do any first-hand research to write it. [Stephen King stood in a graveyard]

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…We hope..

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After graduating from the University of Maine in 1970 with a B.A. in English… [Stephen King graduating from Maine University]

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…and marrying Tabitha Spruce in 1971…

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…Stephen headed back to school, where he taught high school English. [Stephen King teaching English class]

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We're going to be that was the scariest thing he's faced in his entire career…

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high schoolers….

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But teaching high school didn't break King's spirit. [School kids playing]

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He continued writing during the evenings and on weekends, working on short stories and

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novels.

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Things really started to pick up for Stephen when he started working on a short story about [Stephen King working on a story in an office]

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a girl named Carietta.

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After three pages, King decided he wasn't happy with it, and threw it in the trash.

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Luckily for Stephen, he married a big ol' snoop. [Woman looks in the trash]

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Tabitha saw it in the trash, went, "I guess I'll read this thing that my husband clearly

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didn't want me to read," and was impressed by what she saw. [Tabitha reading Stephen's novel]

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She encouraged Stephen to finish it.

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We hope Stephen was like, "why were you fishing around in the trash can, you lunatic…?"

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Possibly crazy wife aside, these three pages would become Stephen's first novel, Carrie. [Tabitha stood in a kitchen]

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Carrie was also adapted into a feature film that earned tens of millions of dollars and

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two Academy Award nominations.

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For those of you keeping score at home, that makes those three pages some of the most valuable [Hand keeping scores on a board]

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things found in the trash since a lady in the Midwest found an egg with three yolks [Woman looking in the trash and finds an egg with 3 yolks]

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in her compost.

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That was an exciting day.

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And Carrie was just the beginning.

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Stephen King's novels have been published in over 35 countries in 33 languages… [Selection of Stephen Kings novels]

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…and more than 100 adaptations of his works have been made in movies and TV serials.

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That said, he did also write and direct a movie about killer trucks... [Green monster on the front of a truck]

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Hey, nobody's perfect.

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