After graduating from Ohio State University, he moved to New York City, where he worked on a variety of writing jobs.Īlthough his books are fun and exciting, writing them is serious stuff. “The teacher would grab them and take them away,” Stine says, “but I kept doing it.” He wrote for his high school newspaper in Columbus Ohio. Stine started writing when he was 9 years old! He would write stories and jokes on an old typewriter and hand them out at school. His ability to know what kids will laugh at, as well as what will frighten them, makes the Goosebumps series all the more enjoyable for his readers. Before he was R.L., he was Jovial Bob, author of such works as 101 Silly Monster Jokes, and Bozos on Patrol and editor of Bananas magazine. Kids reading Goosebumps may be looking for a scare, but the laughs they get are no accident. Although he handles the writing by himself, Stine says he gets “lots of help from my editors, my readers, and my friends.” “When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.” He also keeps a tribal mask and a skeleton hanging in his writing studio to provide eerie surroundings. His ideas came from two sources: his memory and his imagination.

I used to get a haircut every Saturday so I wouldn't miss any of these comic books. I discovered them in the barbershop and thought they were fabulous. “When I was a kid, there were these great comic books called Tales From The Crypt and The Vault of Horror. That gave me the idea for The Haunted Mask.”Īlthough he never experienced terror first hand, he did enjoy reading about it. For example, one Halloween my son, Matt, put a mask on and then had trouble pulling it off. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

“I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. However believable his plots seem to his readers, Stine insists he has never lived one of his stories. Despite the fact that almost every book has a different collection of characters, the series has one common element that kids can't get enough of: THE AUTHOR! Goosebumps cast a spell upon children by transforming even the most reluctant students into avid readers.

Classic goosebumps