Fame & Fortune: Stephen King A Halloween visit with the king of all things scary
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We also had the phone taken out. When I got the news that "Carrie" had sold, I was teaching school and I had a message to come to the office and call the next-door neighbor, your wife has a message for you. And I knew I had either sold the book or one of the kids had fallen down and broken an arm. We just couldn't afford to pay the bill at the same time because we had to try to stay on top of those damn interest charges. We were right on the edge.

Bankrate: Fortunately, you hit pretty early in your career with "Carrie." How did that change your life?

King: Well, the first book, "Carrie," sold for $2,500, that was the advance. I got such a laugh when they said they were going to send out 2,500 galleys (advance paperback review copies) of "Lisey's Story" -- they haven't been sending out a lot of galleys because they end up on eBay -- and I laughed and said that was the entire first run of "Carrie." I've come full circle; they're giving away a like number of this book. That's how much things have changed.

Bankrate: Did you do anything to celebrate that princely advance?

King: At that time, we bought a car with the advance, and my wife said, "Do you think there's going to be a paperback sale?" and I says, "Yeah, I really think there is, and I'll be able to quit teaching for a year if we're very, very careful with the money." And of course it turned out to be much more than that.

Bankrate: Dozens of books later, Tabitha now chides you a little about only writing about writers. Is that due to your early success?

King: You start with what you know and what you have. I always took the idea of "write about what you know" very seriously. I've written a lot about writing because that's the life that I know. As you say, I was fortunate in that I was able to start this life earlier so that, when you read these things on an author's thumbnail on the back of a book that so-and-so was a housepainter, the shill on street corners, they were a preacher, they were this and that and the other thing, I was not those things. I did some jobs early on and then I taught school, and since then I've written. I tell people I'm a little bit like Dick Francis, only what I write about is writing instead of jockeys. You have to try to find a way to make that work, and it's not that hard really. You just start with what you know and from there the story takes you someplace entirely different.

Bankrate: Some readers will take "Lisey's Story" to be Tabitha and Stephen's story. Are they wrong?

King: Of course people are going to say this-equals-this in a person's life, and it's just not the case. If you really take a close look at "Lisey's Story," Lisey and Scott don't have any kids and we have three, and there's all this other stuff.