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BRITTA HAYSThe man who writes the Goosebumps books, R.L. Stine, now has something especially for teen readers: a book about his two favorite subjects, summer camp and vampires.
When you hear the name R.L. Stine, you are instantly transported to a time when you were 8 years old, curled up in bed with a flashlight and a Goosebumps book, maybe reading the bone-chilling story Egg Monsters from Mars.
Flash forward a few years and you realize that you haven't read Stine in a while. Books you read at age 8 may not appeal to you when you are a teenager. But now Stine wants to reintroduce himself. He has written a book, Dangerous Girls, hoping to get into the niche market of writing for young adults.
The book is a little more mature than Stine's Goosebumps and Fear Street books. Dangerous Girls follows the adventures of teenage twin sisters who are very different from each other. They go to camp and come back slightly different. (It's probably a good book for preteen and teenage girls up to age 14 because parts are a little juvenile for anyone older.)
"I love writing for kids, but I really enjoyed writing Dangerous Girls," Stine said. "I included my two favorite topics: summer camp and vampires. They are both so scary."
Stine is working on the sequel to Dangerous Girls and is starting a series for younger readers called Mostly Ghostly.
You have to wonder what kind of twisted mind could concoct such gruesome, terrifying tales. You may think that Stine is a hermit who has goblins and werewolves incessantly scampering through his brain. But Stine, who turned 60 about two weeks ago, is incredibly knowledgeable, humorous and amiable.
Robert Lawrence Stine grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and began his writing career when he was 9. Using an old typewriter he found in his attic, he began to write joke magazines to pass around at school.
"The teachers hated me because I always disrupted class with the papers," Stine said.
School was more of a chore to the young novelist than a challenge. The work was too easy for him, he said, and his teachers constantly complained that his intelligence was being masked by his listlessness.
"I was always bored at school," he said. "I thought I was smarter than everyone."
The force that pushed Stine to be a writer was his love of reading. The revolting stories of Tales from the Crypt tantalized his mind.
"They were horrible, gruesome, bloody books," Stine said, "but I loved them."
At 10, he developed a passion for Ray Bradbury science fiction books.
"(Bradbury) changed my life," Stine said. "He was so great and imaginative, he turned me into a reader."
Stein said he was a "weird kid."
"All I did was sit up in my room and write," he said.
Stine and a group of his classmates made a pact that one day they would leave Ohio and move to New York. Stine was the only one who did.
"I had a nice childhood, but Ohio was too boring and primitive," he said.
After he made his way to New York, Stine worked at a magazine. He spent his days making up interviews with celebrities.
"I had never even met these people, but I would make up interviews I had with them," he said. "It taught me how to be very creative and how to write fast."
He also met his wife in New York when they worked at Scholastic Books. They have a son.
Before he was known for his terrifying stories, Stine was a jokester. He wrote joke books such as How to Be Funny: An Extremely Silly Guidebook and 101 School Cafeteria Jokes.
"Parents absolutely hated them," he said.
As every 8 year old knows, Goosebumps and Fear Street are the works that set Stine apart from every other children's writer. In these books he weaves intricate webs of fear. Perhaps being a kid at heart gives him the insight to know what kids want to read.
The dominant theme of Stein's books is location. None of his stories takes place in big cities. They are in suburbs, summer camp or rural areas.
"None of my stories are ever set in New York (City) because I think it's hard for kids to identify with it," he said.
Each character also has a personality that fits like a jigsaw puzzle piece into the framework of the story.
"In the Goosebumps books, I pulled the names from my son's school directory. Just about every kid got to be in a book," Stein said. "Other times there would be contests held, and the winner would be the next main character in a book."
The plot is the key. And the story lines have kept thousands of hyperactive prepubescent readers enthralled and captivated. "I never can tell where I will get my ideas from," he said. "Sometimes I could just come up with a great title and then everything would just fall into place from there. I might just be walking my dog and a title would just flash into my head." Stine has written a novel for some of the people who read the Goosebumps books when they were kids and now have grown up and want another dose of the addictive Stine style.
"When I write, I try to picture the reader. When I'm writing for a 10-year-old, I imagine a 10-year-old reading it," Stine said. "When I write for adults, it needs to be more descriptive and richer and more real."
Stine has advice for anyone who has dreamed of becoming a writer. It's simple and makes sense.
"READ, READ, READ! Read all kinds of books by many authors and many styles," he said. "When you read, you absorb the styles without knowing it."
- Britta Hays, 16, is in 11th grade at Seminole High School. Information from Times wires was used in this report.