So when you were a little kid, did you ever get put to bed and then sneak a peek at your phone or grab a flashlight so you could dig back into a favorite book?

We all did that because who doesn't love a good story?

Now, imagine that that thirst for a great story ignited your ability to tell a story.

I'm Patty Steele, under the covers with the budding king of horror.

That's next on the backstory.

The backstory is back.

All right, it's late at night, but you have a book you're dying to devour.

So you haul out a flashlight, slide it under the covers,

and you dive in. This is the nest where Stephen King, the King of Horror, was hatched.

You see, before there was the King of Horror, there was a little boy in Maine, who did just that.

He slept with a flashlight under the covers and read until the batteries died, and then, if he could, he'd keep going by moonlight.

The thing is, the monsters on the page felt safered him than the ones in the dark corners of his room.

This is about how Stephen King, a working-class kid with a second-hand typewriter, became the most adapted

living author in history. It's about how his words literally crawled off the page and onto our

TVs, as well as into movie theaters, and the cultural bloodstream. Okay, let's go back. We're in

Portland, Maine. It's 1947, and Stephen Edwin King is born.

When he turns two years old, his dad walks out to buy a pack of cigarettes, and he never comes

back. The emptiness and financial insecurity he leaves behind starts to shape Stephen

as a storyteller, with an achiness that echoes in book

after book. Stephen and his big brother, Dave, bounced between relatives in Chicago as well as

small towns in New York State, Wisconsin, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. When he turns

11, the boys and their mom move to Durham, Maine,

...