R.L. Stine

Robert Lawrence Stine (born October 8, 1943), known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called "the Stephen King of children's literature", is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas.

Stine's books are read all over the world. So far, he has sold over 400 million books, making him one of the best-selling children's authors in history.

Personal life
R.L. Stine was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1943. He was the son of Anne and Lewis Stine. He has a younger brother and sister-- Bill and Pam. No one in his family ever called him R.L. Everyone calls him Bob.

When Bob was nine, he found an old typewriter up in the attic. That discovery changed his life. He carried it down to his room and started typing stories and little joke books. His mother begged him to go outside and play, but Bob always said it was too boring outside. He stayed in his room typing away — and he has been writing ever since. In school, Bob was not a great student; he got mostly B's, but he never studied very hard. He spent most of his time writing stories and joke magazines to become more popular, as he was a very quiet and reserved student. He was terrible in math and he hated gym class; the only sport he was ever good at was ping pong!

After graduating from Ohio State University in 1965, Bob headed to New York City to become a writer. He wrote dozens of joke books and humor books for children. He also created Bananas, a zany humor magazine which he did for ten years. In those days, he wrote under the name Jovial Bob Stine. He married Jane Waldhorn in 1969. Jane became an editor and writer, and they worked together on several children's books. Later, Jane and her partner formed their own publishing company, Parachute Press, and helped create all of R.L.'s most popular book series.

R.L. currently lives in New York City, with his wife Jane and his dogs Minnie and Nadine. His son Matthew is a composer, musician, and sound designer, and he was married in 2014, and had a son, making Stine a Grandpa. If you need other info about R.L. Stine, check out his website (www.rlstine.com) or his autobiography, It Came From Ohio!, published by Scholastic.

These days, R.L. is busier than ever. He is working on many books, including Fear Street and of course, the Goosebumps SlappyWorld series. In the Goosebumps movie, R.L. Stine is a character, played by Jack Black. The real R.L. Stine makes a cameo at the end as the High School's drama teacher, Mr. Black.

History with Goosebumps
In the early 90s', R.L. Stine was writing the Fear Street books, horror novels aimed at teenagers. His editor at the time suggested he should try doing a horror book series for 7 to 12 year olds, as it was an untapped market. Stine didn't want to do it at first, as he thought it would "screw up" Fear Street. He thought the audience for Fear Street would think it wouldn't be as cool due to it being aimed at a younger audience. However, he ended up agreeing to do it anyway.

Stine needed a name for this new series. He was reading a TV Guide, when he saw an ad at the bottom of the page that said, "It’s goosebumps week on channel 11." Stine thought it would be the perfect name for this new series. He was contracted to do four books for the Goosebumps series, those being Welcome to Dead House, Stay Out of the Basement, Monster Blood, and Say Cheese and Die!. The first three Goosebumps books were released simultaneously in July 1992. Sales for the series were initially very slow. However, within a few months, the sales of the books exploded. That's when Scholastic decided to extend Stine's contract for six more books. Sales increased even more, and the contract was extended to one book a month.

Stine claims it took eight days to write a Goosebumps book. Before he would start writing, he would spend two to three days outlining the book.


 * Welcome to Dead House: Stine says this book was "too scary" for kids. Stine says this is due to the series not having formula yet, and if he were to rewrite it, he would put in "more funny stuff" and make it less intense.
 * Stay Out of the Basement: According to Stine's biography, It Came from Ohio!, the idea for this book came when an image "flashed" into his head of a father taking off his baseball cap, and leaves were growing out of his head instead of hair. Stine then started asking himself questions: "How did the leaves get there? Who is the father? Is he turning into a plant. Is he ALREADY a plant?"
 * Monster Blood: Stine says he was inspired to write this story after his son, Matt got his green toy slime stuck to the wall and couldn't get it off.
 * Say Cheese and Die!: When illustrator Tim Jacobus finished the cover art for this book, Scholastic became concerned that it didn't match the story. So Stine quickly wrote a dream sequence that made the cover fit with the book.
 * Night of the Living Dummy: Stine's mom would read him a chapter out of the original Pinocchio story every night, when he was about three or four years old. There were two scenes in the book that scared him. The first was when Pinocchio had enough of the crickets lectures, and smashed him against the wall with a wooden mallet. The second was when Pinocchio fell asleep with his feet burning on the wooden stove, and burnt both of his feet off. Stine says him being scared of the book partly inspired the Living Dummy books.
 * The Haunted Mask: Stine says he was inspired to write this story after his son, Matt had trouble taking off a green rubber Frankenstein mask that he wore for Halloween. Stine has also said that this is his favorite book in the franchise, and that he would enjoy seeing a film adaptation of it.
 * The Girl Who Cried Monster: Stine once stated, "In my original manuscript, the librarian eats a kid. And everyone thought that maybe was going a little too far." To make the story more tame, Mr. Mortman eats turtles instead.
 * Welcome to Camp Nightmare: Stine says the camp in the story was based on his son's camp, which he claims was a "bug-infested swamp." Stine wrote a camp-themed Goosebumps book every summer due to the success of this book.
 * Piano Lessons Can Be Murder: The book was originally titled Guitar Lessons Can Be Murder. Stine's son, Matt, was taking guitar lessons at the time. That's when Stine got the idea for a haunted guitar story, so he began writing it. However, people around Stine told him guitars weren't scary, so it was changed to piano lessons.
 * The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight: Stine says that this is probably the scariest Goosebumps book, due to it taking place in a cornfield, which he believes are creepy.
 * Go Eat Worms! & The Barking Ghost: Stine says these are his least favorite Goosebumps books. He wasn't happy with the story of Go Eat Worms! specifically.
 * It Came from Beneath the Sink!: On Twitter, a user asked R.L. Stine, "Did the previous owner of the killer sponge die? Is that why the kids from the family that moved in suddenly became the owners of it?" Stine jokingly responded with, "I think you need to get a life", suggesting he hadn't thought that far into the matter.
 * A Night in Terror Tower: Stine says the first draft of the book had a lot more scenes where the main characters were running away. Stine's editors thought all the running was "boring", and that the characters should catch their breath every once in a while. So he rewrote the book to feature less running.
 * The Horror at Camp Jellyjam: Stine's favorite Goosebumps monster, King Jellyjam, comes from this book.
 * Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes: When asked which Goosebumps books could've been better, one of the books Stine brought up was this one, stating he wasn't happy with the writing.
 * The Haunted Mask II: Like with The Haunted Mask, Stine said he would enjoy seeing this book adapted to film.
 * Calling All Creeps!: According to It Came from Ohio!, Stine got the idea for this book from a joke he once played when he was in college, but it ended up backfiring on him afterwards.
 * Give Yourself Goosebumps: Stine said he enjoyed working on these books, but no publishers were interested in reviving the series.
 * Are You Terrified Yet?: Stine teased the title of this book in August 1997, stating it was going to be a camp-themed book, which ended up not being the case. It's likely Stine confused the plot with that of Fright Camp, which was the book that proceeded this one.
 * Brain Juice: Stine teased the title of the book while he was still working on the original series, but he had trouble coming up with a plot. Consequently, the book wasn't reportedly finished until March 1998. Ultimately, Stine would go on to name Brain Juice as one of his favorite Goosebumps books because of the underlying comedy of the situations that the protagonists find themselves in.
 * Goosebumps Gold series: Stine claims the books for this canceled series were never written. Although, he says he may have had the stories outlined.
 * Little Shop of Hamsters: Stine thought of the title for this book while walking his dog in Riverside Park.
 * It's Alive! It's Alive!: Stine got the idea for this book after learning how popular robotics was in schools.