Five fun Stephen King facts – including phobias, pseudonyms, and mistaken identities

1. Stephen King threw away early drafts of the manuscript of his first novel, Carrie. His wife retrieved it, encouraged him, and it was later published. King’s fiction has repeatedly centred on the loner, the figure who is bullied at school, who fails to ‘fit in’. His first novel, Carrie (1974) – about a girl who has telekinetic powers which she uses to exact revenge on her school bullies – perfectly exemplifies this. But King had doubts about the first few pages of the novel’s draft, and abandoned it; it was only down to his wife’s faith in the idea that he persevered with it. Indeed, Tabitha, King’s wife and a novelist in her own right, has come to the rescue in King’s career a number of times. For instance, the original title for King’s second…