He then attended the University of North Carolina, where he played on UNC's 1982 National Champion Lacrosse team and edited the undergraduate literary magazine while earning his bachelor's degree in English.

While there he became an original contributing editor to Men's Journal and wrote for other publications, including Esquire, Art & Antiques, Travel + Leisure Magazine, Connoisseur, and The New York Times.

[2] For his 2004 non-fiction book, Skeletons on the Zahara, he traveled more than 100 miles across the western Sahara Desert on foot and by camel in order to experience a similar journey to Captain James Riley.

[5] During research for Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival he spent July 2009 in China's Sichuan province, trekking eight days through treacherous highland bogs and hiking up the Dagushan Mountain on the Tibetan border.

As with Africa, his goal was to retrace his historical protagonists' dangerous journey, in this case the 30 women who walked 4,000 miles in the Communists' Long March with Mao Zedong in 1934.

[2] King also helped establish the James River Writers Conference, which is held annually at the Richmond Library of Virginia.

He is a founder and co-chair of the Virginia Literary Festival (VLF), a week-long, multi-organizational celebration of reading and authors in Richmond.