Rise to Fame
He was teaching high school English in Maine and writing short stories for men's magazines on the side when he finished Carrie in a trailer and threw the manuscript in the trash. Tabitha rescued it. Doubleday paid him $2,500; the paperback rights went for $400,000, and King took home half. The 1976 De Palma film reportedly pushed the paperback to 4 million copies, and King quit teaching. 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and The Stand all followed within four years. The trash can almost won.
In the Spotlight
He's sold over 400 million books across 65+ novels and operates at a scale where the publishing industry mostly moves around him. But the bigger story lately is his mouth. He left X in November 2024 citing a 'toxic' environment, returned three months later, and kept going. When he called ICE 'the American Gestapo' in January 2026, one conservative commentator reportedly told him he was 'more monstrous than any character you ever came up with.' He seemed unbothered.
Side Notes
In June 1999, a distracted driver sent him flying 14 feet on a Maine roadside. Nine breaks in his right leg, fractured hip, four cracked ribs, chipped spine. Doctors debated amputation. Five weeks later he was writing again. The recovery novel, Dreamcatcher, was written on OxyContin, longhand, and he's acknowledged it reads like it. Before any of that, Tabitha had staged an intervention in the late 1980s, dumping his empty beer cans and cocaine residue in front of him as evidence. He barely remembers writing Cujo.