Nellie Ruth King, whom King describes in
Danse Macabre as a "talented pianist and a woman with a great and sometimes eccentric sense of humor," kept the family together by working at a succession of low-paying jobs. In 1958 the family moved to Durham, Maine (later fictionalized as Castle Rock, Maine), to care for her parents. King finished elementary school in a one-room building in Durham and attended high school in nearby Lisbon Falls. He gained his first experience as a professional writer while still in high school, covering high-school sports for the
Lisbon Enterprise. In 1965 he published his first story, "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber," in
Comics Review, a fan magazine, and wrote his first novel-length manuscript, "The Aftermath," about life after an atomic-bomb explosion.
King received a scholarship to the University of Maine at Orono. He majored in English and minored in speech; wrote a column, "King's Garbage Truck," for the Maine Campus, the student newspaper; and participated in student politics and the anti-war movement. During this period he also published the first fiction for which he was paid, "The Glass Floor," in Startling Mystery Stories (Fall 1967).
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