Editing Stephen King (section)

=== 1970s: ''Carrie'' to ''The Dead Zone'' ===
[[File:Portrait photograph of Stephen King by Alex Gotfryd, c. 1974.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait from the first edition of ''[[Carrie (novel)|Carrie]]'' (1974)]]
[[File:Portrait photograph of Stephen King by Alex Gotfryd, c. 1977.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait from the first edition of ''[[The Shining (novel)|The Shining]]'' (1977)]]
King recalls the origin of his [[debut novel| debut]], ''[[Carrie (novel)|Carrie]]'': "Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together." It began as a short story intended for ''Cavalier''; King tossed the first three pages in the trash but his wife, [[Tabitha King|Tabitha]], recovered them, saying she wanted to know what happened next. She told him: "You've got something here. I really think you do."<ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=Stephen |title=[[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]] |year=2000 |pages=75–77}}</ref> He followed her advice and expanded it into a novel.<ref>King, Tabitha, Introduction to ''Carrie'' (Collector's Edition) Plume 1991</ref> Per ''[[The Guardian]]'', ''Carrie'' "is the story of Carrie White, a high-school student with latent—and then, as the novel progresses, developing—telekinetic powers. It's brutal in places, affecting in others (Carrie's relationship with her almost hysterically religious mother being a particularly damaged one), and gory in even more."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/24/rereading-stephen-king-carrie|title=Rereading Stephen King: week one – Carrie|first=James|last=Smythe|date=May 24, 2012|via=www.theguardian.com|access-date=February 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190215215627/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/24/rereading-stephen-king-carrie|archive-date=February 15, 2019|url-status=live|work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref> ''[[The New York Times]]'' noted that "King does more than tell a story. He is a schoolteacher himself, and he gets into Carrie's mind as well as into the minds of her classmates. He also knows a thing or two about symbolism — blood symbolism especially."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Callendar |first=Newgate |date=May 24, 1974 |title=Criminals at Large |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/lifetimes/kin-r-carrie.html/ |access-date=November 2, 2023 |archive-date=November 2, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102165000/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/lifetimes/kin-r-carrie.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

King was teaching ''[[Dracula]]'' to high school students and wondered what would happen if Old World [[vampires]] came to a small New England town. This was the germ of ''[['Salem's Lot]]'', which King called "''[[Peyton Place (novel)|Peyton Place]]'' meets ''Dracula''".<ref name=":Deaver" /> King's mother died from uterine cancer around the time '''Salem's Lot'' was published.<ref name="OfficialBio" /> After his mother's death, King and his family moved to [[Boulder, Colorado]]. He paid a visit to the [[The Stanley Hotel|Stanley Hotel]] in [[Estes Park, Colorado|Estes Park]] which provided the basis for ''[[The Shining (novel)|The Shining]]'', about an alcoholic writer and his family taking care of a hotel for the winter.<ref name=":ParisReview"/> 

King's family returned to [[Auburn, Maine]] in 1975, where he completed ''[[The Stand]]'', an apocalyptic novel about a pandemic and its aftermath. King recalls that it was the novel that took him the longest to write, and that it was "also the one my longtime readers still seem to like the best".<ref>{{Cite book |last=King |first=Stephen |title=[[On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft]] |pages=201}}</ref> In 1977, the Kings, with the addition of [[Owen King|Owen Philip]], their third and youngest child, traveled briefly to England. They returned to Maine that fall, and King began teaching creative writing at the [[University of Maine]].<ref name="OfficialBio" /> The courses he taught on horror provided the basis for his first nonfiction book, ''[[Danse Macabre (King book)|Danse Macabre]]''. In 1979, he published ''[[The Dead Zone (novel)|The Dead Zone]]'', about an ordinary man gifted with [[second sight]]. It was the first of his novels to take place in [[Castle Rock (Stephen King)|Castle Rock, Maine]]. King later reflected that with ''The Dead Zone'', "I really hit my stride."<ref>{{cite book| last=King| first=Stephen| title=Four Past Midnight| date=1990|page=609}}</ref>