[Theme music plays]

R.L. STINE: People always people always say, What's the moral of the Goosebumps book?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: What are you trying to teach them? And I say oh the only moral is run! Think, run. No, I don't really I this is the secret of Goosebumps, right? Don't try to teach them anything. I just want – they probably lose IQ points when they read it. Right?

[Cassette tape player clicks open]

ALISA ROSENTHAL: Helloooo boos and ghouls, you’re listening to Chicago Humanities Tapes, the audio arm, leg, and eyeball to the live Chicago Humanities Spring and Fall Festivals. I’m your host Alisa “Makes Halloween Her Whole Personality in October” Rosenthal, and today: best-selling children’s author R.L. Stine, author of the book series Goosebumps, Fear Street, in addition to short stories, comic books, and even a memoir or two, pulls us into his delightfully dark world.

First introduced in 1992, Goosebumps has become one of the best-selling book series of all time. This speaks to my generation perfectly – Goosebumps was so popular at my school in the mid-90s that the books were actually banned – but not because of content, but because kids kept stealing them from each other! So if you ever see a vintage Goosebumps book floating around a bookstore, check the inside cover – it might’ve belonged to a certain Alisa R.

R.L. Stine slithered by Chicago’s iconic Music Box Theatre, the nearly century-old beloved movie theater, to chat with the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Borrelli, a features writer who frequents the horror novel beat. Live attendees to this event were treated to a pre-show “school-tastic” book fair, Halloween-themed cocktails and mocktails, and other horror-related shopping. Plus, an episode of the Disney+ TV show Goosebumps on the big screen. A number of early ticket buyers were also able to nab tix to the meet and greet with R.L. Stine himself!

But, fret not if this sounds up your alley and you want to be the first to know about these kinds of special events next time. The best way to keep up on our event announcements is to sign up for our email list or give us a follow on Instagram @chihumanities. Plus, becoming a Chicago Humanities member unlocks a range of exclusive benefits including presales, discounts on tickets, access to members-only events, complimentary tickets, and much more. Head to chicagohumanities.org for all that good info.

This is R.L. Stine with Chris Borrelli at the Music Box Theatre in October 2024.

[Theme music plays]

R.L. STINE: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for coming tonight. Wow, What a crowd. What an ugly crowd. Nice. But before you talk, I want to tell you why I'm especially glad to be here tonight. This is why I'm especially glad: I did a book signing in Baltimore a few weeks ago, and a teacher came up to the table and she said, Can I have my picture taken with you? The kids all think you're dead. That's why. That's why I'm especially glad to be here.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So I thought we could start by. Well, I'll start with a personal way. I wanted to recite a few of your favorite. My. My favorite titles of some of your books for a reason. Little Shop of Hamsters. The Blob That Ate Everyone. Escape from Camp Run–For–Your–Life. Heads You Lose. The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena. That's my favorite one. The Egg Monsters from Mars. I Live in Your Basement. So the reason I'm mentioning that is because. Is it true that you start with the title? You don't have an idea necessarily.

R.L. STINE: No I don't.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You don't try to go backwards.

R.L. STINE: People always say, where do you get your ideas? I mean, that's the most asked question of any author. And of course, there's no answer to it. Anything an author will tell you an answer to that question. Garbage. It's all garbage because you don't know, where do you get ideas, right? We all get ideas. I don't try to think of id – well, for one thing, I've done every story. There's nothing left. So I just try to. I try to think of a good title. And then the title will lead me to the story. One day I was walking my dog in the park. I live in New York and these words flashed into my mind: say cheese and die. That where where did I come from? I don't know. But I thought: good title. And I started to think, What if there was an evil camera? What if some kids discovered it? What if it took pictures of bad things that happened? And that's really how I do every book. Sometimes I'll have an idea for a book, and I can't think of a good title, and I throw out the idea.

CHRIS BORRELLI: I mean, obviously the titles are sort of a nod to the history of monster movies and horror movies to some extent. Were you a monster? Sort of a creature? Monster kid? Were you part of that whole culture?

R.L. STINE: Actually, next week, I'm going to my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, and I'm going to the little movie theater that my brother and I used to go to when we were kids every Saturday morning. And we would see a Tom and Jerry cartoon Festival and a horror movie. And we saw all the great, you know, The Brain That Wouldn't Die. It Walks Among Us. The Creature From the Black Lagoon. So I saw all of those. And, you know, we loved them. But I never I never really I was always just funny. I never planned to be scary at all. I never planned to. I just always loved horror. When I was a kid, there were these great horror comics called Tales from the Crypt. And yeah, right in the vault of horror.

CHRIS BORRELLI: They're very funny.

R.L. STINE: They were yes, they were funny, too. They were gruesome, bloody comics, great artwork. And they all had a twist ending. And I just loved these comics. And they had a big stack of them at the barbershop. But one day I bought a couple and I brought them home and my mom stopped me at the door and she said, I'm sorry, you can't have these. They're trash. You can't have these. So this is a true story. Every Saturday I would go to the barbershop to read. I had less hair when I was a kid. I had less hair then than I do now because I would go get a haircut every week. So I could read these comic books. And they obviously were a very big influence on me.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So in terms of in terms of reading and writing, when you first started, before we came out, we were talking about Ray Bradbury. Was was he sort of a formative author for you?

R.L. STINE: He – here's I – people say, what what children's books did you like when you were a kid? I didn't read books. I only read comic books. And I just love comics. And one day, my mom dropped me off at the little library on Main Street in my neighborhood, and the librarian was waiting for me. And she said, Bobby, I know you like comic books. I have something else I think you'll like. And she took me to a shelf of Ray Bradbury stories, and those really changed my life.

CHRIS BORRELLI: What stories? Like what was.

R.L. STINE: I don't remember. You know that that was 112 years ago. Exactly. But no, they were just so imaginative and so creative, so brilliantly written. And they all had twist endings.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: And I just loved it. And it really turned me into a reader.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You know what I've always liked about Brad – what I like about Bradbury and to some extent what I like about your stuff as well is there's sort of the anticipation of something really bad about to happen and it kind of builds into something that there's something, something really horrible that's going to happen. I mean, there's kind of these little hints, you know, wind in the trees and things like that. The little details. Right.

R.L. STINE: Yes.

CHRIS BORRELLI: How important are those little details to you as opposed to, say, the the monster on the cover of the book? Because to me, it's like the whole book.

R.L. STINE: No, yeah. The trick to Goosebumps in most of my books is that they're all written first person and.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Oh they're all first person. Almost all.

R.L. STINE: The protagonists. Everything goes through the protagonist. So everything she sees, everything she smells, everything she hears. It's a very close point of view. And that's what makes it scarier. That's the whole secret to being scary is to have a very close point of view. I will tell you about Ray Bradbury.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah, yeah.

R.L. STINE: Before we go off, I many years later, many years, I was walking I was at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and there was Ray Bradbury in a booth eating a hotdog. And I looked and I, you know, I'd never met him or anything. He was like, so important to me. And my wife said, Go introduce yourself. I said, I couldn't. No, I can't do it. She said, Go ahead. He's so important to you. Go talk to him. I said, Oh no, no, I couldn't. I was so nervous. And I went over to Ray Bradbury and I was like a kid. And I went up and I said, I said, Mr. Bradbury, you're my hero. And he turned around and he shook hands. And he said, Well, you're a hero to a lot of other people.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Oh.

R.L. STINE: And I burst into tears.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Did you really?

R.L. STINE: I know it was embarrassing. It was like, you know, when something is too nice, it's just too nice, right? It was like this amazing moment. But what a wonderful thing. It's just one of my great memories.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So just to go back to one thing you just said, you never you've never used third person in a book.

R.L. STINE: I'm actually writing one right now that's third. But I, no I'm almost always first person just because I can make it scarier for kids, right?

CHRIS BORRELLI: It has.

R.L. STINE: Well, that's it. I mean, obviously, I like scaring kids, right?

CHRIS BORRELLI: You know, it has a kid ever died in a Goosebumps book? I did not read all of them.

R.L. STINE: No. Even the ghosts in Goosebumps, they died 100 years ago.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Okay.

R.L. STINE: No. No one ever dies in Goose – Fear Street is a different story.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Right. Right.

R.L. STINE: Fear Street. Thank you. Hey, thank you. You know, we have a new Fear Street movie coming next year. It's. It's already filmed. It's based on the Fear Street novel, The Prom Queen. It's already shot. Hey, we kill. We kill a lot of teenagers in Fear Street. Why is it why do people love it when you kill teenagers? I don't know why they like it so much.

CHRIS BORRELLI: How much do you want in terms of Goosebumps? How much do you want a kid to be scared? Like, I mean.

R.L. STINE: No – I – here's a serious answer. I hate it when parents say your book gave my kid nightmares. All right? And I hate that. They're supposed to just get the deep shudders. Right. Right. They're not you know, I don't really want to terrify kids. The whole idea is to get them reading. That's really the whole point. That's the point of Goosebumps. You know, I didn't know I was I wrote joke books and I did a humor magazine for ten years. And when I started writing scary books, I mean, I had no idea why they liked them or what. I was confused. And I would go into school seriously and I would say, Why do you like these books? And every time they said, We like to be scared. And, you know, after a while, I realize kids kids like to have these scary adventures. They like to be scared when they know they're safe. At the same time, when they know they're in their room reading, they're out fighting these monsters, but they know they're home safe and they know that every book has a happy ending. They all have, have they? You know, they have to have happy endings.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Is it true that they didn't really take off right away? The books themselves? They didn't the series didn't necessarily catch fire immediately. It took a little bit.

R.L. STINE: Goosebumps?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah. It took a little bit.

R.L. STINE: It sat there on the shelves. We put out 2 or 3 of them and they just sat there. I think today they would have been just taken away.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So word of mouth then, I suppose.

R.L. STINE: But after like 4 or 5 months –

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: Kids discovered them. Some secret kids network. I don't know. I don't know. We didn't advertise. No one knew me. Who? I don't know how. Somehow kids found them. They brought them into school and it was just word of mouth. And they just caught on all over the world. How lucky was that? Pretty lucky, right?

CHRIS BORRELLI: It was kind of it was sort of a radical idea at the time. Right? Like what was the first meeting on Goosebumps like when somebody came to you –

R.L. STINE: Well I didn't want to do Goosebumps.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: That's that's the kind of businessman I am. No, we were doing Fear Street. We were killing off teenagers every month, and it was Fear Street was doing very well. Teens for teens. And my two ed – and my wife and her partner had a company called Parachute Press. And they said, no one has ever done a scary series for 7 to 12 year olds. We should try it.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Which is which is why, by the way, I read this, this makes me laugh. You're you were somebody wrote about you that you were a training bra for Stephen King. Is that correct?

R.L. STINE: You didn't have to bring that up. What is that? I'm telling a story here. He's talking about training bras.

CHRIS BORRELLI: I'm sorry. I apologize.

R.L. STINE: I don't believe it. I no. Actually, I met I've only met Stephen King once at the Edgar Awards, the Mystery Writers Awards. And we had a nice talk. And I said, Steve, you know, a magazine once called me a training bra for you. And he said, Yes, I know. And then he accused me of taking all the amusement park plots and not leaving any for any other writer. Yeah. Anyway, I didn't want to do Goosebumps, and they kept after me. I said, I don't want to mess up Fear Street. We're doing great with Fear Street. And they kept after me. And I said, All right, if I can think of a good name for the series, maybe we can try 2 or 3. So I'm trying to think of a name for the book series. And one day I'm reading TV Guide, and in those days, TV Guide had all the TV listings in the middle of the magazine. Everything that was on. And I'm going through and there's a little ad at the bottom of a page and it says It's Goosebumps week on Channel 11. And I just stared at it. I stared and I said, That's perfect. We'll call it Channel 11. That's. Yeah. That's a really bad joke, right? Yeah.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: No, I know. I apologize.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You didn't debut that joke today.

R.L. STINE: I apologize for that. But listen. But that's where. That's where Goosebumps came from. That's where the name came from, from that little ad. And I said, okay, we'll try we'll try 2 or 3. And now, 32 years later, I just signed on to do six more. I don't know. I'm going to be 112 and I'm still writing for ten year olds.

CHRIS BORRELLI: When when you started writing them, was there a was there sort of a learning curve for you in terms of the the amount of horror to...

R.L. STINE: I always saw it as very.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Laughs.

R.L. STINE: Yes. The very first Goosebumps book, Welcome to Dead House, I think is. Thank you. But I think it's too scary for the series. I hadn't really –

CHRIS BORRELLI: Wouldn't write it today.

R.L. STINE: I well, I would add some humor now. I hadn't really got the balance of funniness and scariness in that first book. And I think that book is too scary for Goosebumps. But no one else thinks that. And it's fine. No one cares, right? But by the second one, Stay Out of the Basement, where the guy's turning into a plant. I caught on. I'd added humor. I did. Where I. Anytime you would get really intense, I'd put it in something funny. But yeah, that's one thing I learned.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: The other thing I learned is that kids are really smart and they know if they're ready for scary stuff or not. I had two nephews and they were both 7 or 8 years old and one nephew, Dan loved Goosebumps. He thought it was hilarious. And my nephew Sam was terrified. He didn't want any part of it. And every once in a while, I would mail Sam a book. I'd say, Sam, I think you'll like this one, it's not too scary. And he called me up and he said, Bob, you know where this book is going? Right in the garbage. The kids know. I mean, they know if they're right, you know, if they're right for it or not.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Was was Scholastic ever concerned about where the you know, where the horror line was there at all?

R.L. STINE: I, I think they might have been if it hadn't started selling so well. But then –

CHRIS BORRELLI: All went out the window.

R.L. STINE: Yeah. No, I you know, I mean, we were the black sheep of Scholastic, of course. But no, I think they were very pleased because I don't want to brag, but in the back in the day, I mean, at the height of Goosebumps back in the 90s, we sold 4 million books a month. It was amazing. It was such a lucky thing. So I think they were happy about that.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You know, conversely, though, I remember reading an interview with you this is a while ago where you said I might be getting this sort of wrong, but you said that you sort of found violence in in books, in movies, in TV shows for kids, you know, not a bad thing for kids necessarily to experience.

R.L. STINE: No, I think violence. I think violence is good for kids. And I do. No, I seriously because I'm talking about how smart they are. They know the difference between fictional violence and real violence. They're reading about a fight or something, some something going on, some violence in a book. And they go out on the street and see something violent happening. They know imme – and they know the difference. And kids need that kind of outlet, I think. You know, I think a lot of my readers identify with the monsters, these kids. Seriously. I think they you know, they feel anger. They feel pent up. They've got it. They want to roar. And I know I always thought violence was very good for kids.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You realize that's not a very popular argument, right?

R.L. STINE: Really?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah. Well, I've been trying to get my daughter to see the original Alien. She's eight. So there's.

R.L. STINE: No. I don't know. My grandson is ten, and he plays Fortnite. He kills people all day.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Exactly.

R.L. STINE: So, I don't know. I don't see anything bad.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You know, we should establish that you still write about, what, roughly about four books a year?

R.L. STINE: What am I doing these days? I'm doing three Goosebumps a year.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Okay.

R.L. STINE: And I'm doing my short story series, Stinetinglers, which the new one came as a good title right, that one came out. And I'm writing other books for another publisher. A new one is called Shark Night about a boy caught in a shark trap. And I'm writing comic books. I'm doing graphic novels.

CHRIS BORRELLI: What's the shark trap? I've never heard of a shark trap.

R.L. STINE: It's. No, it's a big water tank. It's a you know, it's a TV show, and they're supposed to lower an old shark, toothless shark down and the kids going there filming it. But they send the wrong shark down. That's how that's how it starts out. Now, I'm doing graphic novels. I'm for Boom Studios out in L.A. and my new book is called The Graveyard Club. And I'm having a lot of fun. I get now I'm writing comic books. I've come, like, full circle. I'm really having a good time with that. Thank you.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do you write every day? Yeah, I guess you have to.

R.L. STINE: Pretty much.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: But I have great hours. You'd kill for my hours. No, you would. I write from 10 to 1 every day. That's it. Then I'm done. Then I take the dog for a walk.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You –

R.L. STINE: No, it's good hours, right? 10 to 1.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do you set a number do you set a number words or anything like that?

R.L. STINE: Yeah, I set a limit at 2000 words a day, which is about ten pages.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Okay.

R.L. STINE: It's factory work. Right. And I have this game I play with myself. When I hit the 2,000th word, I just quit. No. No matter where I am. No matter. Yeah. Well, 2000, goodbye! And that's it.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You don't –

R.L. STINE:

I write at least six days a week.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm sure you get asked this, but you don't use any ghostwriters at all?

R.L. STINE: I'm too egotistical. I can't let somebody else do it.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Right. Right.

R.L. STINE: No, also, I love it. I don't know why. Why do I like it so much? I mean, I still look forward to it.

CHRIS BORRELLI: I mean –

R.L. STINE: I started I'm nine years old. I'm in this I'm in my room with a typewriter.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: Typing. Why? Why did I think it was so interesting? And I'd be you know, my parents didn't understand it at all. My mother would stand outside my door and she would say, What's wrong with you? Stop. Stop typing. Go outside and play. What? Worst advice I ever got. Right. Stop typing and go play. Yeah. But yeah I've been writing since I was nine years old.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do you think of the books to some extent as a as a formula? Do you see a formula in the books?

R.L. STINE: I wish there was a formula.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: Everyone always says, Oh you found the formula.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Right.

R.L. STINE: What's the for – what is it? Somebody tell me what the formula is. It would be. It would be a lot easier. No, it gets a lot harder. It's actually a lot harder for me. Mainly because I've done everything. And it's a, no, it's a real challenge not to repeat myself and not to, you know, to keep coming up with new things. I was talking I was on a TV news thing this morning and it was talking about Slappy the Dummy and everyone. Yeah, I know. That everyone. That's the biggest character I've created, most popular, at Halloween time thousands of kids go out as Slappy. That's really a thrill for me. But I Slappy is my favorite character and my least favorite character. He's my favorite character because people like him so much. He's my least favorite character because I'm sick of him. And I didn't tell you that either. No, I've had to write 15 books about a dummy that comes to life. Try – that's hard. And I. You know, I even killed him in one book. I wrote I wrote The Ghost of Slappy, but I had to bring him back. No, I mean, that's a lot of books. I did a talk like this in Toronto a few years ago at a big theater like this, and 40 people came dressed as Slappy, and I brought them all up on stage. It looked great, and I was looking at them and I thought I should be in the red bow tie business. Forget books. We should be selling red bow ties.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do do publishers ever reject a Goosebumps story?

R.L. STINE: Right now I've written one that my editor hates. It's seriously. Yeah. No, Because you've never read. I've had one. It was a cat book. I don't remember The Curse of – I don't know. I was, it's too many books. I can't remember.

CHRIS BORRELLI: What was –

R.L. STINE: I had to write it three times.

CHRIS BORRELLI: What's the one that that's hated right now?

R.L. STINE: That I'm writing now?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah. Yeah.

R.L. STINE: It's called the Last Sleepover, and it's for next year, and my editor just hated it.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Why?

R.L. STINE: Well, I haven't talked to her yet. I've been dreading it. I know. I have to deal with it when I get home. So I mean you see it doesn't get any easier.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: But I'm so lucky. I have really good editors.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Well, I just wonder what the threshold is for rejecting Goosebumps.

R.L. STINE: Yeah, well, they don't really reject them. But you know why? Because I have to do an I do an outline of every book first before I write it, and I submit the outline. So maybe they some if they don't want the book, they don't accept the outline. I outline every book I write first. People hate outlines, right? Everyone hates to outline, but I can't work without it now. And when I sit down to write the book, I know everything that's going to happen in the book. I've done like a 20 page outline for every Goosebumps book. It's got chapter one, chapter two, and I know that way I can. This is how I can write so fast because I do all the thinking first and then I can just enjoy the writing.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You're physically putting the outline. You see it while you're writing. Yeah.

R.L. STINE: Mmhmm, I have dialog in it and every chapter ending in the outline. I do all the work first, and then the writing is fun. Kids always say, What do you do about writer's block? But how can you how you can't have writer's block if you do it, have it all planned out first. You know where you're going.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do you. Do you ever steal ideas?

R.L. STINE: Do I? I can't hear you.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do you ever steal ideas?

R.L. STINE: Do I ever what?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Steal ideas?

R.L. STINE: Oh always.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: What do you mean? You ever read ever read Agatha Christie? Yeah. Ever look at the Twilight Zone?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Sure.

R.L. STINE: Yeah. Yeah.

CHRIS BORRELLI: I mean, there's.

R.L. STINE: Homage, homage, but it's not stealing.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Right? Right.

R.L. STINE: No, you no, authors get ideas from everywhere, and I get ideas from other writers all the time from reading. You know, I read a lot, other ideas and ideas for movies, things that, you know, you see it and then you think, What could I do different? And, you know, you build off that. But yeah, I do. I steal a lot.

CHRIS BORRELLI: But you're not a horror reader, though, right? You don't read horror novels either.

R.L. STINE: No one's listening. Right? I I'm not really into horror. I know. I know. No, I read mostly mysteries and thrillers. I was on the board of the international thriller writers for a long time, and I got to know all the writers that I read. Michael Connelly and Harlan Coben and Lee Child and all those people. They're all friends of mine. And that's that's mainly what I read.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You know, when you were growing up in Columbus, I got to ask, what was your childhood like? What were you afraid of?

R.L. STINE: I grew up in a suburb. Quiet suburb. Boring. It's mostly boring. Columbus was boring in those days.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: And. And a very normal childhood. I was a very fearful child and very shy. And I think that's why I liked staying in my room writing. And we were very poor. My family was very poor, and we lived right on the edge of a very wealthy community. The governor of Ohio, his the governor's mansion was two blocks away from us. And we were in this little brick house, tiny, the five of us. And I think it made me feel like an outsider. And I think that's maybe one reason why I became a writer. I'm giving you serious answers.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah, I know I'm listening.

R.L. STINE: Yeah I know what's going on here!

CHRIS BORRELLI: But what. What were some of the things you were afraid of? Were you afraid of just being an outcast? Were you, this is –

R.L. STINE: I, you know, I would ride my bike around the neighborhood in the evening, and then it would start to get dark and I'd bring my bike back up. And I always thought something was lurking in the garage. There was something waiting for me in the garage and I would just take my bike and heave it into the garage and every night and go running into the house.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah. What if –

R.L. STINE: This was lucky. I mean, it's a terrible way to be a kid. But when I started writing these scary books, I could bring back that feeling of panic. I could remember what that feeling was like. And I think it helped me a lot in the in the books.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You know, it's October, so I feel stupid if I didn't ask this, but what? What were your Halloween costumes like?

R.L. STINE: This I just I did a piece in the New York Times this week, and I told this story. Yes. Halloween was humiliating for me. Now, here's a true story. Okay. I wanted to I was like 8 or 9 and my family was so was very poor and I wanted to be something scary for Halloween. I wanted to be a vampire or a mummy or even a pirate. Something scary. And my parents went to the five and dime to buy a costume, and they came back and they gave me the box and I opened it up and it was a fuzzy yellow duck with a fuzzy white tail. And I had to be a duck for Halloween. My friends just thought it was hilarious. And, you know, we were very poor. I couldn't get a new costume every year.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So you had to be a duck every year.

R.L. STINE: I had to be a duck every year. So Halloween is painful for me.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You moved to New York at some point?

R.L. STINE: Yeah, right after I went to Ohio State.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Ohio State right. You ran the humor magazine.

R.L. STINE: I was editor of the humor – in those days, every college had a humor magazine. And I was editor of the humor magazine for three years. That's all I did in college. I never went to class. I just did this humor magazine. And it actually paid my way to New York City, and I moved to New York to be a writer. I thought in those days I thought you had to live in New York to be a writer. You couldn't live anywhere else. So I got an apartment in Greenwich Village and tried, you know, started getting jobs and things. Well, here's my very first job in New York.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: Okay. The answer to that, I, my very first job was making up interviews with the stars.

CHRIS BORRELLI: I was going to ask.

R.L. STINE: This is true. This is true. This woman had six movie magazines that she had to fill every month, and there were three of us who would come in every morning and she would say, do an interview with the Beatles, do do an interview with Diana Ross, do an interview. And I would just sit down and write an interview. And we we made up I just made up interviews with these people. No, it was a great job because, well, one thing I learned to write really fast and I learned to make up stuff, right?

CHRIS BORRELLI: What did you picture yourself as a writer, though, then, when you moved to New York?

R.L. STINE: Moved to New York to write funny novels for adults.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Ok.

R.L. STINE: And last thing and I never thought about writing for kids, never did. And I ended up I answered an ad and I got a job writing for Scholastic, doing writing history and geography for Junior Scholastic, and I wrote that. And after a while they gave me my own magazine at Scholastic. And then my wife started a kids magazine at Scholastic, which was huge at the time. It was called Dynamite. And this is the 70s and 80s.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah, and you. But you also started Bananas.

R.L. STINE: And then I started Bananas. Humor magazine. I did that for ten years.

CHRIS BORRELLI: These, Dynamite and Bananas were very important to me. But I guess from the reaction here, you can tell everybody's a bit younger than me.

R.L. STINE: No, No one remembers them. Not at all, no, no.

CHRIS BORRELLI: It was sort funny –

R.L. STINE: I actually yeah, that was my life's dream. To have my own humor magazine. Was really exciting. And then when it ended and I went home, I thought I would coast the rest of my life. I thought I could just cost. I had no idea what was going on. And then one day I was having this is true, it's this is an embarrassing story because I didn't it wasn't my idea to write scary books. I was having lunch with this woman, a publisher at Scholastic named Jean Feiwel, and she arrived at lunch angry, and she had a fight with another writer. And she said – who shall remain nameless – Chris Christopher Pike. And. She said, I'm never working with him again. You could write a good, scary novel for teenagers. Go home and write a book called Blind Date. And I didn't know what she was talking about. What's a scary book for teenagers? I didn't know.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Did she give you a plot?

R.L. STINE: In those days, you know I didn't say no to anything.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah. Yeah.

R.L. STINE: And I ran running to the bookstore. And I bought books by Christopher Pike and Lois Duncan and Richie Tankersley Cusick. They were all writing horror novels, Diane Hoh. They're all writing. And I bought all their books so I could see what it was about and then try to figure out what I could do a little differently. And this book, Blind Date came out. It was a number one bestseller. Thought wait, what? What? And I thought, yeah. And a year later, she asked me to write another one. I wrote one called Twisted and it was a number one bestseller. And I said, Forget the funny stuff. I've been scary ever since.

CHRIS BORRELLI: You're coming to kids where they are as opposed to trying to force some kind of moral on them, more or less or something.

R.L. STINE: Yeah people always people always say, well, what morals what's the moral of the Goosebumps book?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: What are you trying to teach them? And I say oh the only moral is run! Think, run. No, I don't really I this is the secret of Goosebumps, right? Don't try to teach them anything. I just want – they probably lose IQ points when they read it. Right? But I just want, you know, adults turn to books and we can read anything we want and just to be entertained. And I just want I think kids are entitled to pick up a book and just be entertained by it. If there used to be a rule in children's publishing that every character in a children's book had to learn and grow, and this was a strict rule, and I thought, why? Who needs that, who needs that? And so I you know, I don't do that. I mean, there is the thing about Goosebumps is that it's all normal kids. They're not special. They're not specially talented, they're not special. They're normal kids facing these horrible situations, facing this horror, and their parents are useless, right? The parents never believe them or they're not there. And they have to solve these problems with their own wits. And that's that's really what what Goosebumps is about and nothing else. Thank you.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So you never. You've never thought of them as even after the fact that, this is sort of a, I don't know, a metaphor for fear or for growing up or anything.

R.L. STINE: That's too deep for me. No, I don't. I don't think about that. I just. I think about just entertaining. Entertaining. You know, I, here's what I hate. I hate authors who come into schools and they have an assembly and they say, write what you know, write from your heart. Always write from your heart. Those kids will never write another word. Right?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: No, they won't. I've written I say I've written over 300 books. Not a single word from my heart. No, it's true. I just. Just to entertain. Just to entertain.

CHRIS BORRELLI: I mean, you wrote joke books for a while. Is that correct?

R.L. STINE: Yes. I wrote a lot of joke books. 101 School Cafeteria Jokes, 101 – here's my best dog joke. Okay. Now it's a kid's joke. All right. What do you get when you cross a dog with a frog? You get a dog that can lick himself from across the room. It's a kid's joke. Come on. That's one of my best jokes.

CHRIS BORRELLI: We've already established some of the horror inspirations. But what were the comedy inspirations or the joke inspirations?

R.L. STINE: I had a lot of people that I loved and early 50s, you know, I was a kid in the 50s and all kinds of TV people back then, Sid Sid Caesar and Steve Allen and Jackie Gleason and a whole bunch of comedians. I loved them all. I just was just drawn to comedy.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Did you want to be professional joke writer?

R.L. STINE: Very very early.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Did you want to write jokes for a living? I mean, you were, I guess.

R.L. STINE: Have I? I don't know. I've written I wrote three Garbage Pail Kids books last year, and that was just for fun. You know, funny, everyone. Not not to be scary. I did a book series for Harper called Rotten School. I did a whole bunch of a really rotten boarding school.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Do more boys read your books than girls?

R.L. STINE: No, this is.

CHRIS BORRELLI: But like what are what are the demos?

R.L. STINE: No this is the secret. Everyone thinks it's boys. The secret of Goosebumps is that it's equally girls and boys. And before. No, it's really true. It's really true. I started writing it for girls because everyone knew girls read and boys don't read. No. And then but then the mail started coming in and it was 50/50. And I realized that, you know, we'd we'd hit them both. That's the real secret of the series.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Right. Right. You know how you are. How old are you right now?

R.L. STINE: How old am I? Goodnight, everyone. I. Yes, I. Yesterday I turned 81. Yeah. No don't play no please don't clap for that, don't clap for that. That's my own horror story, no it's horrible. Trust. Trust me. You would hate it. You would hate it. Yes. Why did you ask?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Well.

R.L. STINE: What is that, what?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Well, I ask because I'm wondering, like you're to some extent, you're writing for kids. How do you still write for kids at 81 as well?

R.L. STINE: Yeah how can you?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah I mean.

R.L. STINE: And I'm I'm writing I'm going to write six more.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Kids are different now than they were 32 years ago.

R.L. STINE: Well, you know, I I'm lucky I'm my grandkids are the right age and I spy on them a lot. And I you know, I go I go to playgrounds in my raincoat, you know, and I spy on kids as part of, I have to keep up with them. Right? Yeah. And no I have to fight, I have to keep up with culture, with the music they like. I have to keep what what they're wearing, what technology, what they're using. That's a hard part of the job because you don't want to sound like an old man, you know, trying to be hip. But you have to be careful. I you know, the whole cell phones have ruined all books. They've ruined all mysteries. We used to do a plot for teenagers. Used to do, you know, five kids in a cabin in the woods, and one of them's a murderer, and they're trapped in the wood. Now they take their phone, they text somebody, they call for help, and the book is over. Right. You could, you know, the girl would be getting frightening phone calls. Terrible. Who's calling me? Who's doing? Now they look on the phone, they see, and that's it. So it's very hard. And you got to get rid of the cell phones right away or you can't you can't do a story.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Why so many amusement parks in your books?

R.L. STINE: Amusement parks?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: I don't know. I'm a big Disney fan. And I. I mean, I want to live in Disney. I want to live in the park. We had a Goosebumps attraction in Disneyland.

CHRIS BORRELLI: For like a year.

R.L. STINE: Back in the day, Goosebumps, Horrorland and Fright Show. I had my own land. It was no, I had an excuse to go there. It only lasted a year.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: And they took it down after a year because we didn't sell enough t shirts. No, really, that's all we cared about. We didn't sell enough shirts.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Wow. Wow.

R.L. STINE: But that was a thrill for me. And then I had this idea while long, you know, I would have to do a reverse Disney World to do, you know, Horrorland. What if there was a park where, you know. And I did a lot of books based on that. And that was fun.

CHRIS BORRELLI: So we'll have to wrap this up in a minute here to do Q&A with the audience. Let's finish this with.

R.L. STINE: Yeah.

CHRIS BORRELLI: What goes on your gravestone?

R.L. STINE: My tombstone?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: My tombstone.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Tombstone, sorry.

R.L. STINE: My tombstone is going to say "Check, please." You're surprised I had an answer.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah. I am.

R.L. STINE: Yeah, you are. Thank you. We'll answer some questions?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Mmhmm.

R.L. STINE: We’ll answer some questions.

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: What was your favorite Goosebumps book to write?

R.L. STINE: I think The Haunted Mask. Well, I think you know, I think I think that's my best Halloween story. That that's it's one of my real favorites. And I also I have to tell you, it's the only Goosebumps book, I think, that was inspired by something that happened in real life. You know, it's about Carly Beth, who wants to be scary at Halloween time. And she pulls a rubber mask down, a green rubber mask down over her face, and it sticks to her face and it becomes part of her. And the idea for this book came actually from my son, Matt. He was a little guy. It was Halloween time and he was like 4 or 5. He was down on the floor in the living room and he was pulling a green rubber Frankenstein mask down over his head. And then he couldn't get it off. And I'm watching from the doorway and he's watching him and he's, like, tugging and tugging. And I thought, what a great idea – I should have helped him, right? I should have helped. Instead, I said, great idea for a book. I started writing notes. The poor guy sitting there. And that's actually where that book came from.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Hi. So the PC game from the 90s Escape from Horrorland had a major, major impact on me as a person. I was wondering how much input you have in things like the PC games and the television shows.

R.L. STINE: Pretty much none. I know pretty you know, other people do that. And I like with the Goosebumps movies where Jack Black played me. They don't want the author around. They want to do their own thing. Did you see those movies? That Jack – Jack and I are like twins, right? We actually we had a great time. He's really a terrific guy. And my only input in those movies. I got them to take out a couple Stephen King jokes and that was it. But I got lucky because the movies were really good. Yeah, they didn't have to be, but I got lucky with that. No, usually I don't have a whole lot of input on other other Goosebumps products.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: In your Haunted Mask book, when when the little girl had her costume from her mom. Was that from your own experience?

R.L. STINE: And she gets a duck costume? Yeah, I took that from my life. Right. Right.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: How many things have you actually written?

R.L. STINE: How many books? How many books have I written? I think over 300, I think. That's crazy, right? It's pretty crazy. I got a letter from a boy last week. It said, Dear R.L. Stine: Have you written anything that I've read? That's a good one, right?

CHRIS BORRELLI: Yeah.

R.L. STINE: And a few weeks ago, I got a letter from a girl who wrote. Dear R.L. Stine: You are my second favorite author. That was the whole letter. That was it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: How do you make your books so suspenseful?

R.L. STINE: I think they're suspenseful because there's so many surprises. And I try to have, like, a big surprise in every book. And I think that's it. There's a line we're talking about Jack Black playing me in the Goosebumps movie. And there's a line that Jack says near the end of the movie that I wish I had written. It's perfect. He's teaching class. And he says every every story has a beginning, a middle, and a twist. And I think that's just perfect. That's I wish I thought of that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: So I still think of the needle and the lipstick from Fear Street: Silent Night every time I put lipstick on and and I wanted to ask, what draws you so much from writing from the female perspective?

R.L. STINE: I didn't hear the last part. I should be ashamed of that scene shouldn't I? I should be ashamed of that lipstick scene. That poor girl. I didn't actually hear the last part of your question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Yeah so what draws you so much to writing from the female perspective?

R.L. STINE: Well, starting out, we thought that the audience, would be mostly female. And now I try to mix it up. Actually deserve a better answer than that. But maybe some other night. No that's really a very good question. And I have something I should think about.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: We know that Jack Black portrayed you in the movie. Who would you like to portray you in a biopic?

R.L. STINE: No Jack was perfect. Jack was great. No, we were trying to figure out who should play me in the film. And I asked my son, Matt, I said, Who do you think should play me in the Goosebumps movie? And he said, Morgan Freeman. So that wasn't very helpful. And then, like, this is a terrible story. A lot of people said you should play yourself in the movie. Who knows you better than you. And I went to my wife, Jane, and I said, this is horrible. I said, Jane, a lot of people think I should play myself in the Goosebumps movie. And she said, You're too old to play yourself. Which is true. It's horrifying, right? To be too old to play yourself.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: You mentioned the Twilight Zone as an influence. Do you have any favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone?

R.L. STINE: I do. The one with Willoughby, "Stop Off At" – you know that? Where he gets off the train and he's back in the 1900s. He's an ad executive, and he's actually dead, but he doesn't know it. And the conductor's saying, "Willoughby, everyone out for Willoughby." That's my favorite. There's one you know, there's the Twilight Zone where a dummy where dummy comes to life. Yeah, there's one of that. Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 9: So you mentioned parents coming up to you asking you about the morals of your story. I guess. Have you ever had any kind of crazed parents come up to you with really negative responses to your books? My parents used to throw my books away in the trash, so I'm just curious.

R.L. STINE: Yeah, no. You know, you get a lot of negative talk from parents. And back in the 90s, there was a woman I'm trying to remember her name who made a living by attacking Goosebumps. And she would write articles and go on TV shows and say, Goosebumps is like pornography. And the kids the kids get a thrill, just like pornography and Goose – And people loved her. She was on she was around for a long time. Yeah, there was a lot you know, nobody had ever done a scary series for this age group before. Also, the covers are much scarier than the books. So they always and so they're back in the back in the day, there was a lot of criticism. There was. And it was one of the most banned books of the 90s. Yay. Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 10: What was your what was a book that you regret releasing or like your least favorite one?

R.L. STINE: What book did I regret? Listen, I wrote a Fear Street book with an unhappy ending. And the book ended with the good girl being accused of murder and taken off as a murderer and the murderer getting away with it. And I wrote it just fun for me. Just, you know, write this to try something with an unhappy ending. And kids hated that. They hated it. They turned on me immediately. No, I really. I know. I got mail immediately. Dear R.L. Stine: You moron. How could you do that? Dear R.L. Stine: You idiot. Are you going to finish the story? And I would the book haunted me. I would go to schools, and every time some kid would raise his hand and say, Why did you write that book? Why did you do that? And I actually had to write a sequel. I wrote a sequel to make it a happy ending. And I've never done another unhappy ending. They all end happy.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 11: A lot of your books have been recently adapted with kind of an amalgamation of a lot of them. When they came to you as an adaptation of the general idea of Goosebumps or the general idea of Fear Street. Did you have any issue with that? What was your opinion on that? Instead of doing a straight adaptation of, say, The Haunted Mask or the Fear Street Cheerleaders?

R.L. STINE: Yeah, I know the new Goosebumps TV series on Hulu and Disney+. I was kind of surprised by it. I'm not involved in it, but I was surprised because it's not for kids. It's very I, it's Goosebumps, but it's actually for teenagers, I think they're trying to do Stranger Things. And also, I think the new Slappy is very ugly. Okay. He's really ugly in the new the new version. But there's a new season starting the second season of the Goosebumps show starting January 10th. Eight more episodes. And, you know, I have mixed feelings about it since I don't really have have a hand in it. But I'm very pleased that they when they do so well and no, yeah, I mean, I really was shocked by the three Fear Street movies because they were really splatter movies. We really slicing up teenagers. And it was R–rated. And I've never done anything. Even my life isn't R–rated. I've never done anything before. And I was really shocked by those movies. And then all three of them were number one on Netflix. So I got to like them a lot. It's true. Hey, one more. One more question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 12: Would you ever write Fear Street Books again?

R.L. STINE: Probably. I . Yeah, I enjoy I enjoy writing them. I'm mostly doing middle grade books now and these graphic novels. But maybe someday I might. I might. But I'm enjoying. I'm very happy with the Fear Street movies coming out now. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, everyone. Thank you.

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ALISA ROSENTHAL: To learn more about R.L. Stine, plus links to his books and other fun resources, check the show notes or head to chicagohumanities.org.

Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the awesome staff at Chicago Humanities who are programming these live events and making them sound fantastic. If you like what you hear, leave us a rating, write a review, and share your favorite episode with a friend. We’ll be back in two weeks with brand new audio from another groundbreaking figure, this time: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in conversation with Valerie Jarrett, on her memoir Lovely One.

Thanks for listening. And as always, stay huuuuman.

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