R.L. STINE HAS A NEW BOOK

Not completely resting on his laurels, R.L. Stein has authored a new horror novel aimed at young adults (and adults who grew up reading them the first time around). Judging from the cover, it does not appear to be a book in the Goosebumps series.

This article from USA TODAY includes the first chapter.

An everything bagel inspired R.L. Stine's new scary book.

By Clare Mulroy | Feb. 13, 2026 | usatoday.com

Between his own bibliography and a creepily decorated home office, R.L. Stine has enough spooky material for a lifetime of inspiration.

So why was it an everything bagel that led him to write his upcoming book, “Nightmare on Nightmare Street”? Like the delicious combination of salt, sesame seeds, onion and poppy seeds, Stine’s latest work has a little something for everyone – kids and adults alike. 

“What if I wrote an Everything Book?” Stine writes in the book's introduction. “What if I wrote one of my scary novels and put in all the different kinds of scares my readers tell me they like? Not just two kids trapped in a haunted house. Or a family battling an evil monster. Or an after-school vampire attack. Or a doll coming to life. What if I mixed into a book all kinds of horrors at once? What if I concocted a story with new versions of the horrors I’ve created before? An Everything Scary Story.”

USA TODAY is revealing an exclusive excerpt of the first chapter of “Nightmare on Nightmare Street,” which Stine hopes will keep readers “guessing until the very last chapter.”

Read the first chapter of ‘Nightmare on Nightmare Street’ by R.L. Stine

“Joe, you’ve seen too many scary movies,” Mr. Ferber said. “I know you’re a little freaked out your first night in this house.”

Joe rolled his eyes. “A little freaked out? Dad, don’t you hear the ghost children cackling on the 

stairway? What about the words go home sprayed in blood on the kitchen wall? The walls are dripping with evil.”

Joe’s dad sighed. He ran a hand back through his thinning brown hair. “I’m going to take away your Netflix. Really. You’ve got to forget about those creepy movies you and Sadie watch when your mom and I go out.”

“You’ll be okay, Joe,” Sadie said. “Dad already put a night-light in your room.”

“Shut up, Sadie,” Joe snapped. “A night-light isn’t going to protect me from the Headless Beast from Behind the Garage.”

“Is that really a movie?” Mr. Ferber said. “You know this is all in your head, Joe.”

Sadie laughed. “Joe’s head has been invaded by alien creatures who came to eat his brain.”

“Shut up,” Joe grumbled. “You’re way not funny. I know you’re just as scared as I am to be in this house.”

Sadie was thirteen. Joe was twelve. She stood a foot shorter than Joe, but she was tough. She gave him a hard shove that sent him tumbling back against the staircase banister. “Am not scared!”

“You are, too!” Joe shot back.

“Am not!” Sadie shook her fist at Joe. Her curly copper hair bounced on her head, as if ready for a fight. Mr. Ferber stepped between them. “Give me a break, okay? Let’s not fight over who’s more scared.” He pushed Sadie’s fist down and squeezed her hand.

“We’ve already been through this,” he said. “It’s a creaky old house. It’s old and run-down, okay? But the house isn’t haunted. It isn’t cursed with evil. No curse. No ghosts. Just some weak, rotting floorboards and walls that need to be painted.”

“I’ll turn on your night-light for you,” Sadie told Joe. “And if you want, little baby, I’ll hold your hand till you fall asleep.” She burst out laughing.

Joe scowled at her. He didn’t think she was funny. “Dad, tell her to stop.”

“Both of you, stop,” Mr. Ferber said. “You’ll feel a lot better after your first night here.”Mrs. Ferber came down the stairs, carrying an empty carton in front of her. “I unpacked some of your things,” she said. She set the carton down and blew a strand of dark hair off her forehead. “Your pajamas are in your top dresser drawer.”

“We can’t stay here,” Joe said.

His mom squinted at him. “This again? Haven’t we been over this before?”

“Mom, listen to me—” Joe started.

But Mrs. Ferber raised a hand to stop him. “Joe, there are two kinds of houses in this world,” she said. “Old houses and new houses. We couldn’t afford a new house. So we bought an old house. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just old.”

“Not true,” Joe insisted. He turned to Sadie. “Show Mom and Dad the doll we found in the closet upstairs.”

Sadie picked up a doll from the back of the stairwell and held it up to her parents. It was a soft rag doll with tangled red hair, wearing a stained smock, torn across the front. The doll’s round black eyes were fixed in an intense stare.

Mrs. Ferber took the doll from Sadie and studied it. Then she raised her eyes to Sadie. “So? What’s so interesting? Someone left a doll behind when they moved out.”

“No,” Joe said. He grabbed the doll and raised it in front of him. “Look at this doll. Look at it. This doll has been in a hundred movies.”

His mom and dad exchanged glances. “Seriously?”

“The doll is cursed!” Joe exclaimed. “It’s totally evil. Look at the eyes. Look at that evil stare.” Joe’s voice rose to a shrill cry.

Mr. Ferber placed a hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Calm down,” he said softly. “Take a breath.”

Their mom shook her head. “I swear,” she said. “How can you be scared of a beat-up old rag doll?”

“But—but—haven’t you seen the movies?” Joe sputtered.

His dad took the doll and tossed it into the empty carton. “Enough,” he said. “We can continue this in the morning. After you’ve had a good night’s sleep in your new home.”

“Go on up to your rooms,” Mrs. Ferber said, motioning to the stairs. “Stop being silly.”

“Your rooms are right across the hall from one another,” Mr. Ferber said. “You can keep an eye on each other.”

“No way. I’m locking my door,” Joe said.

“The doors don’t have locks yet,” their mother said.

Joe sighed. “I’m doomed. We’re all doomed.”

“Goodnight. Get upstairs,” Mr. Ferber said.

Sadie started up the stairs. But Joe didn’t move.

“Listen, you two,” he said to his parents. “Were you in the basement? Did you see the gravestones down there? People are buried down there! Buried in our basement!”

His dad patted Joe’s shoulder again. “Joe,” he said, “I told you this place is a fixer-upper."

R.L. STEIN'S ADVICE TO WRITERS

R.L. Stein is the most successful YA Horror author out there. Particularly noted for his GOOSEBUMPS series, he's published over 300 books and sold over 400 million copies worldwide.

This compilation from his past interviews reveals his simple formula for success and can apply to anyone interested in writing horror stories for a young adult audience and some of it can even be applied to writing for older readers.

Perhaps his most important words of wisdom about writing is: "Have fun!"

Always Know the Ending First

Stine doesn’t leave endings to fate. He believes in knowing how the story ends before writing the first sentence. “I always try to come up with the ending first because then I know how to keep the readers from guessing the ending,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

It also helps keep everything on track. Knowing the ending gives him a target to aim for, helping him avoid those dreaded middle-of-the-book meltdowns. The tension builds logically, the twists make sense, and nothing feels tacked on. Take Welcome to Dead House, for instance. The eerie payoff—that the entire town is full of ghosts—colors every creepy moment leading up to it.

Write Like You’re Running Out of Time

At his peak, R.L. Stine was cranking out a Goosebumps book every month. That’s not an exaggeration. “In two weeks, I can write a Goosebumps book. It's like factory work,” he said in a BuzzFeed interview.

But don’t mistake speed for sloppiness. Writing fast forced him to stay in the flow, avoid overthinking, and treat perfectionism like the monster it is. Fast drafting also keeps the momentum alive, especially important when you’re writing stories meant to grip young readers with short attention spans.

Stine recommends setting a daily word count. For him, it’s 2,000 words a day. For you, maybe it’s 500. The point is to build rhythm and complete the task. Because you can’t revise a blank page, but you can polish a messy one.

Scare Yourself First

Stine’s secret test for a good horror idea? It has to creep him out first. “I started writing stories when I was 9,” he wrote in The New York Times. “I’ve often thought that being such a fearful kid was one reason I enjoyed staying in my room all day, creating my own world. In that way, my fear was an enabler—allowing me to discover and pursue something I would love doing for the rest of my life.” It’s a smart litmus test. If your own concept doesn’t give you at least a tiny shiver, it probably won’t land with readers either.

That said, his books aren’t about trauma. They’re about fun scares. A possessed dummy? Terrifying. Losing your parents in a shopping mall? Too real. Interestingly, he believes horror and humor are closely linked. That makes sense. They’re both about building up tension and then releasing it. It’s why Goosebumps stories are packed with both screams and snickers.

Want to try his trick? Write down five things that scared you as a kid, then exaggerate them into something absurdly fun.

Outline Relentlessly—But Leave Room for Surprises

For all his speed, R.L. Stine doesn’t wing it. He outlines every book in detail before writing. “I do a very complete chapter-by-chapter outline,” he told Buzzfeed, “and that'll take four to five days, but then I've done all the thinking.”

These outlines are like roadmaps, with turns, fake-outs, and cliffhangers. But Stine also leaves room for little surprises. Maybe a new joke pops in. Maybe a side character grabs the spotlight. He follows the map, but lets the story breathe.

We can whip out a simple outline inspired by his method:

• Setup: A normal kid encounters something odd
• Escalation: The weirdness intensifies, and adults don’t believe them
• Twist: The threat becomes real
• Reversal: Kid tries to fix it, but makes it worse
• Climax: Face-off with the monster
• Twist Ending: One last creepy reveal (they were the monster all along?)

Kids Love Being Scared, but Not Traumatized

Stine walks a fine line: give kids a scare, but don’t send them running to therapy. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “Any real-life fears—fear of your parents breaking up, fear of being kidnapped—I would never do anything like that.”

That means no real-world horror. No abuse, no death of pets, no violence that lingers. Instead, he leans on the fantastical. Cursed masks, haunted amusement parks. The kind of fear that ends when you close the book. Take Night of the Living Dummy. The idea of a talking dummy is unnerving, but it’s also cartoonish enough not to cross any lines. The fear is safe, which makes it fun. That balance is why kids keep coming back.

Make Every Chapter End with a Hook

One of Stine’s most iconic tricks is ending every chapter on a “What just happened?” note. Whether it’s a ghostly whisper or someone screaming from the basement, you have to turn the page.

It works. Stine said in his MasterClass: “[My books are] like a roller coaster ride, really. … Kids know what to expect when they read a Goosebumps book. They know they're going to get on, it's going to be a very fast ride. There’s going to be a lot of turns, a lot of twists, a lot of turning around, and a lot of screaming. And then it's going to let them off okay.”

Even reluctant readers can’t resist. It’s like potato chips for the brain. Take a flat scene from your own story. End it with a jarring sentence—someone disappears, a door creaks open, the lights go out. Suddenly, the whole thing crackles with tension.

Don’t Worry About “Moralizing,” Just Tell a Good Story

Stine’s books won’t be dissected in grad school seminars, and he’s fine with that. In an interview for The Guardian, he said, “I don’t try to put any messages in these books: the only lesson is to run.”

This mindset liberates writers. You don’t have to be profound. You just have to be interesting. Stine prioritizes clear plots, fast pacing, and big emotions over flowery prose or a moral lesson. And guess what? That formula built an empire. Goosebumps didn’t succeed because it was literary or it gave valuable life lessons. It succeeded because it was fun. And fun is a perfectly valid literary goal.

Have Fun with It, or Why Bother?

R.L. Stine has been doing this since he was 9, and he’s still at it, not because he has to, but because he likes it. He told Writer’s Digest, “Don't listen to writers who say writing is hard. Writing isn't hard—it's fun.”

That sense of playfulness bleeds into every book. Even the scariest ones have a wink behind them. That’s part of the appeal for kids and writers. If you’re stuck, bored, or burnt out, try this: write a short story just for fun. No pressure, no edits, no ambition. Just play. That’s how Stine built a horror empire—by having a blast.

[SOURCE: Nofilmschool,com]

Stein offers a streaming "MasterClass" where he instructs writers on his techniques for YA Horror books.

In his online writing class, Bob teaches you about:

• Generating ideas

• Creating monsters

• Conquering writer’s block

• Outlining surprise endings and cliffhangers

• Outlining plot twists and tricks

• Writing for different age levels

• Dialogue and prose style

• Mixing horror and humor

• Creating middle-grade characters

• Creating YA characters

• Revising and getting feedback

• Developing a book series

• Writing as a career

See more posts about R.L. Stein HERE.

TOP 10 YA HORROR BOOKS

Okay, I admit it, I was in the mood for some light reading . . . very light reading. So, when I came across a boxed set of The Hardy Boys books at Costco, I was snared in a wave of nostalgia. I plowed my way through a ton of these as a youngster and I wondered if the magic might still be there. The box held the first 10 books of the series and for 30 bucks that made them only $3 apiece. They were still being printed in that familiar small-size hardback with vintage covers and interiors along with the large-size typeface.

I sat down and re-read the first book in the series, THE TOWER TREASURE, for the first time in decades. Does it work reading it as an adult? Yes and no; for light fare, it's a breezy, entertaining and I would add, wholesome story. First published in 1927 and written by Franklin W. Dixon it is firmly rooted in the time period, but the themes are timeless. Lacking any reference to more contemporary times is probably where it fails, but it's not the fault of the book. Taken in context, I did have fun reading it and will eventually find myself reading the rest of them as time goes by.

I did find my recent re-reading of 1964's The Three Investigators' "The Secret of Terror Castle" by Robert Arthur to be more my speed. The fact that it hints at supernatural goings-on and that it was written 40 years after The Hardy Boy certainly helped. Either would entertain an adult reader who is seeking an uncomplicated story with charming characters and plenty of action.

Each generation of young readers seems to benefit from a windfall of "spooky" books to read and kids of the 90's got a bumper crop. R.L. Stein's GOOSEBUMPS series led the pack and Christopher Pike and others provided plenty of scares.

The recent article below summarizes ten of these books as being some of the cream of the crop. It was originally published on Screenrant.com. It reminded me that I still need to read V.C. Andrews' infamous "Toys in the Attic" and a couple others I will keep on my radar.

I'll put my big-boy pants back on now.

Read my post for more about The Three Investigators and the YA horror books of my youth HERE.

10 Children's Horror Books That Gave '90s Kids Nightmares

By Alisha Grauso | Dec 23, 2024 | Screenrant.com

Undoubtedly, the '90s were the peak era of YA horror books, with scary kid lit for children and teens flooding the market and terrorizing '90s kids forever. Many of the best-loved classic kids' books of the '90s were coming-of-age tales, but plenty of others were pulpy thrillers and horror stories that dove into the dark side of human nature and the supernatural. The 1980s through 1990s saw a glut of horror books aimed at teen readers, but scary books for kids also exploded in popularity, driving a horror boom in books that had previously been reserved for adults.

Unlike today, most material aimed at children didn't pull punches out of fear of traumatizing children, and that included books. Much has been made of '80s kids' movies being incredibly dark, but while the new PG-13 rating put an end to it in that same decade, books continued to deliver horror, gore, and existential nightmares to a younger audience for a long time after. Not all the most memorable kids' horror books of the era are literary works of art, but the best ones shaped the nightmares of a generation of '90s kids.

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (1981)

By Alvin Schwartz & Stephen Gammell

Of all the books on this list, Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series is undoubtedly the most iconic vehicle of childhood trauma for kids of a certain generation. It's also the most memorable, thanks to being the most widely read, having sold millions of copies after the first book was so successful it spawned two sequels: More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984) and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991). Not a novel, but a collection of short stories taken from folklore and urban legends, reading Scary Stories is the closest a kid in the '90s got to sitting around a campfire or in a dark room during a sleepover and terrifying each other with ghost stories.

The stories themselves are truly creepy, though some are more funny than scary. But what really drove home the horror was Stephen Gammell's iconic original illustrations, which were pure, delightful nightmare fuel. Gammell's gory, striking charcoal-and-ink drawings haunted a generation, with the 2019 movie adaptation wisely ripping its creature designs straight from the pages. Over the years, various conservative parent groups have tried to get the books banned, to varying degrees of success. They never understood what Schwartz and Gammell did: kids are resilient and scary childhood stories form core memories that become great nostalgia in adulthood.

Thirteen: 13 Tales of Horror by 13 Masters of Horror

By Tonya Pines (Editor) & Various Authors

Another memorable collection that was aimed less at kids like Scary Stories, and more at teenagers and YA readers was the anthology Thirteen: 13 Tales of Horror by 13 Masters of Horror. The anthology featured some of the Point Horror imprint's most notable horror and thriller writers of the era, including Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine, Caroline B. Cooney, and others. They did not disappoint, bringing some of their best and most nightmarish one-off stories for the anthology.

Unlike children's horror, which largely dealt with straightforward monsters, ghouls, and ghosts, Thirteen introduced an element of existential horror in many of its tales, adding a new, horrific wrinkle for preteen and teenage minds to wrap themselves around. Particular nightmare fuel was Caroline B. Cooney's "Where the Deer Are," a story that got an entire generation of kids thinking twice before walking down forested roads and eyeballing every deer they saw. Falling forever in a dimension between worlds? No, thank you.

The New Girl (Fear Street #1) (1989)

By R.L. Stine

In the 1990s, there was arguably no bigger name in kids and YA horror than R.L. Stine. In fact, he was so big that he's on this list twice, as the next entry shows. Stine started out as a writer of children's stories and a producer of kids' TV shows, but he really hit his stride in 1989 when he released his first book in the formative YA horror-thriller series, Fear Street. The New Girl was book #1 in the Fear Street series and hit a generation of teenage girls like a tidal wave, ushering in a whole new world of thrills and chills.

R.L Stine's Fear Street books were all set in the fictional town of Shadyside, specifically on Fear Street, an element that influenced later YA genre offerings like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sunnyvale and other fictional towns full of supernatural events. Stine blended campy thriller narratives, serial killers, paranormal happenings, ghosts, murder, curses, witchcraft, twisted love stories, and more. The New Girl introduced readers to a pulpy tale of obsessive love and stolen identity at the hands of a teenage murderer. Immediately, it let readers know that in the Fear Street books, dark subject matter verboten in scary kids' books was no longer off-limits.

Welcome to Dead House (Goosebumps #1) (1991)

By R.L. Stine

R.L. Stine was a powerhouse, writing not one, but two iconic book series. Fear Street was his YA horror series aimed at teenage writers, but a few years later, he launched his Goosebumps series aimed at kids and preteens. Amazingly, it was even more successful than the already wildly successful Fear Street, selling over 400 million copies and becoming a bona fide franchise, spawning comic books, video games, TV adaptations, movies, and merchandise along with the books themselves.

Just as Fear Street didn't pull any punches when it came to spinning genuinely scary stories for teenagers, the Goosebumps series didn't pander or talk down to younger kids. Right out of the gate, Welcome to the Dead House introduced the living dead, and dead kid zombies that have to consume the blood of a newly-killed person to survive. While future Goosebumps books dabbled in more comedy and tongue-in-cheek scares, Dead House was pure horror: dead people, dead kids, dead pets, and plenty of gore. It set the tone moving forward that anything was possible in the books, even though they were for kids.

The Midnight Club (1994)

By Christopher Pike

If R.L. Stine was the #1 name in young adult and kids' horror in the '90s, then Christopher Pike would be considered 1A. Unlike Stine's long-running series, Pike had multiple shorter series, including Cheerleaders, Chain Letter, Final Friends, Remember Me, and The Last Vampire. However, it was Pike's standalone novels that won him greater acclaim, and with good reason, as they allowed him to explore different ideas and settings without being beholden to a specific place or narrative structure.

Of those standalone books, The Midnight Club was the greatest mindbender and existential trip. The subject matter itself was heavy, revolving around a group of hospice teenagers with terminal illnesses from cancer to AIDS who are staring mortality in the face, telling each other stories to cope. But it's the twist of them making a pact to contact the others from beyond the grave that introduces profound, haunting questions about what happens when we die, how to face one's death with grace, and whether life means anything if it's so short. There are supernatural elements, absolutely, but it's the horror of the great unknown and the unanswered questions that make The Midnight Club so impactful.

Wait Till Helen Comes (1986)

By Mary Downing Hahn

Not all terrifying YA and kids' books dealt with psycho serial killers or macabre monsters. Some of the most haunting books were about exactly that: hauntings. In the '80s and '90s, plenty of ghost stories for children and teenagers hit shelves, but few authors had cornered that market quite like Mary Downing Hahn, who specialized in tales involving ghosts. Of her books, the best-known and most influential is the tragic, gothic ghost tale Wait Till Helen Comes. Though it was published in 1986, it still continued to sell copies well into the '90s, a regular fixture school libraries.

Wait Till Helen Comes has its scary moments, but the real horror comes from the tragedy of the backstory and the Gothic elements that saturate the story, including the old graveyard, an isolated rural small town with secrets, and the ghost herself, Helen. The grief and guilt Helen carried with her into the afterlife turned her vengeful and desperate for company, leading to Wait Till Helen Comes' chilling climax and horribly sad revelation. Plenty of kids gave ponds a wide berth, their imaginations convinced they saw the ghostly figure of a girl lurking at the edge and waiting to pull them in. It's literally and figuratively haunting, sticking with a whole generation of kids.

The Face on the Milk Carton (1990)

By Caroline B. Cooney

While she never achieved the atmospheric heights of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine, as one of the smaller satellites of '90s YA horror thrillers, Caroline B. Cooney was in regular rotation for many teen readers, especially girls. Her books spanned multiple genres including romance, horror, suspense, and mystery, garnering multiple awards and nominations. Similar to Pike, she had a few shorter series, including The Vampire's Promise trilogy, the Time Travelers quartet, the Losing Christine trilogy, and the Janie Johnson series.

The first book in that last series is The Face on the Milk Carton, which introduced an existentially horrifying concept: What if your parents weren't actually your parents and you weren't actually who you thought you were? That's the nightmare 15-year-old Janie faces when she sees a picture of her younger self on a milk carton, labeled as a missing child. The milk carton practice was common through the '80s and '90s when "stranger danger" panic was a legit cultural phenomenon, and more than a few kids started paying closer attention to the missing children photos on the back of milk cartons after reading The Face on the Milk Carton, wondering if they'd see someone they knew and hoping it wouldn't be them.

The Curse of the Blue Figurine (Johnny Dixon #1) (1983)

By John Bellairs

John Bellairs was an unsung hero of kids' horror, spinning Gothic mysteries for children and preteens through the 1980s and '90s. While all of his book series involved that Gothic mystery element, his Lewis Barnavelt series is largely a junior mystery series, with some supernatural and dark fantasy elements. His Johnny Dixon and Anthony Monday series, though, were pure Gothic horror for children. With Anthony Monday only featuring in four books and Johnny Dixon in three times as many, it's the latter series that left a mark. It doesn't hurt that the series illustrator was none other than Edward Gorey.

The Johnny Dixon series kicked off with 1983's The Curse of the Blue Figurine, introducing kids to the series protagonist Johnny Dixon and his only friends, history professor Roderick Childermass and neighbor boy Fergie. The book was for children, but it didn't dumb things down. Bellairs layered the story into an oppressive creepiness, the atmosphere growing more cloying and dark to reflect Johnny's deteriorating mental state as a dark specter gains a foothold in his mind. The story taught kids a stark lesson: don't steal, especially not old artifacts - you never know what might be attached.

Stranger with My Face (1981)

By Lois Duncan

Lois Duncan was similar to Caroline B. Cooney in the '80s and '90s in the sense that her name may not have been the biggest name in horror, but young readers who were steeped in the world of YA thrillers and horror novels knew her well. Duncan was a prolific writer, penning dozens of novels, over a dozen picture and chapter books for children, a few books of poetry, multiple audiobooks, and editing a few anthologies. While her best-known work is I Know What You Did Last Summer, thanks to the movie adaptations and more recent TV series, Stranger With My Face remains the favorite of many readers.

Stranger With My Face introduced a whole generation to the concept of astral projection when protagonist Laurie learns she has a twin sister, Lia, who has been using astral projection to send her soul outside her body. It was a fascinating thing to contemplate until the story also stretched the concept to a dark outcome when Lia possessed Laurie's body, casting her soul out. With that twist, Stranger With My Face incorporated the concept of the malevolent doppelgänger. The idea of watching someone else steal your very face to live your life was a nightmarish scenario that lingered with more than a few readers.

Flowers In The Attic (1979)

By V.C. Andrews

A book so famous (or infamous, depending on how one looks at it) that it has been caricatured, satirized, and referenced in countless other pieces of pop culture, V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic is the best and worst of excessive Southern Gothic. V.C. Andrews published fewer than a dozen novels credited to her name in her lifetime (and two posthumously), but while all were fairly well-received, none had the impact of Flowers in the Attic – so much so that it continued to be read by teens in the '90s and resonated with them like it did kids in the late '70s thanks to its titillating storyline of sibling incest and overwrought family drama.

The incest between the two siblings locked away in the attic is, of course, the main thing people remember of the novel, but there was so much else going on in Flowers in the Attic to scandalize a young reader. It is, in short, a lot: child abuse and starvation, psychopathic religious zealotry, sibling incest, rape, slow poisoning, abusive guardians, lies, the death of a child, and more. It's not a particularly well-written book, but it's certainly memorable, with every horrifically problematic moment seared into the brains of an entire generation who were baptized by fire with the reading of this book and came out the other side traumatized.

A GOOSEBUMPS Cover Gallery (art by Tim Jacobus):

R.L. STEIN'S 'SAFE SCARES'

I was well into adulthood when author R.L. Stine launched his remarkable series of horror novels for young adults. Even when I was younger, I always sought out the "real deal" for my spooky books, so it's hard to tell if I would have taken the bait on these. Still, Stine's tales have enthralled generations of young readers looking for what he calls "safe scares", those that offer chills and thrills without overly-terrifying content.

In this interview in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, Stein takes a look back at his successful career scaring the pants off kids (and maybe a few adults, too).

Writer R.L. Stine Is a Master of ‘Safe Scares’

For 30 years, his bestselling Goosebumps novels have offered ‘rollercoaster’ thrills for readers under 12

By Emily Bobrow | Oct. 28, 2022 12:27 | wsj.com

Robert Lawrence Stine always knew he was a writer. He was nine years old when he dragged his family’s typewriter into his room, where he spent most afternoons banging away at stories and jokes. “My parents were kind of horrified,” he recalls over video from his home in Manhattan. “My father would say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Go outside and play! Stop typing!’ It was the worst advice I ever got.”

As one of the bestselling children’s authors in the world, Mr. Stine has had the last laugh—or ghoulish cackle. His scary stories for young readers—including the Goosebumps series, which turned 30 this year—have sold nearly 500 million copies in 24 languages and spawned many adaptations for the big and small screen, including a Disney+ Goosebumps series that started filming this month. At 79, he still publishes several books a year: “Stinetinglers,” a collection of spooky short stories, appeared in August, followed by the novel “Slappy, Beware!” in September.

Scaring kids is actually a second act for Mr. Stine, who spent the first two decades of his career writing joke books and a humor magazine.

“I don’t know why I still enjoy it so much,” Mr. Stine says of his indefatigable productivity. “I just came from three days at New York’s Comic Con, and there were all these people coming up to me saying, ‘I wouldn’t be a librarian today or a writer today if it wasn’t for you.’ It’s so touching.”

Scaring kids is actually a second act for Mr. Stine, who spent the first two decades of his career writing joke books and a humor magazine, under the name Jovial Bob Stine. His first young-adult horror novel, “Blind Date,” topped bestseller lists in 1986, and he never looked back. “The success was so exhilarating. I thought, forget the funny stuff, I’m going to be scary now,” he says.

He adds that it is a little easier to write scary because “everyone has a different sense of humor, but we all have the same fears. Kids are all afraid of the dark, afraid of being lost, afraid of being in a new place. Those fears never change.” He speaks from experience: “I was just scared of everything.” Growing up by the railroad tracks on the edge of a fancy suburb of Columbus, Ohio, he always imagined something was lurking in wait in the closet or garage: “It’s not a good way to be a kid, but remembering that feeling sure came in handy later.”

The adults in Mr. Stine’s novels tend to be oblivious or unhelpful. “Either they don’t believe the kids, or they’re not there, which makes it scarier because the kids are on their own,” he observes. Here, too, he says he is writing from what he knew. His father unloaded trucks in a warehouse and “never read a word I wrote,” Mr. Stine says. His mother “was one of those people who say, ‘Don’t climb that tree or you’ll break your leg, don’t go swimming or you’ll drown. Some of that sticks with you,” he says. “I was in junior high when I realized I was the adult, which was kind of liberating.”

Mr. Stine’s first love was comic books. “‘Tales from the Crypt,’ ‘Vault of Horror,’ those comics really influenced my writing,” he says. “The stories were gruesome, and they always had a funny twist ending, which is what I try to do.” A librarian nudged him toward the work of Ray Bradbury, “which turned me into a reader,” he says. “I went on to read science fiction and fantasy books. It was world-broadening.”

Years later, he got the chance to meet Bradbury at a book festival. “I was so nervous, I was shaking. I said, ‘Mr. Bradbury, you’re my hero.’ He turned around, shook my hand and said, ‘You’re a hero to a lot of people.’ You know how some moments are too nice? That was a too-nice moment. I was thrown.”

The first person in his family to go to college, Mr. Stine lived at home while studying English at Ohio State University, where he edited the humor magazine. He graduated in 1965 and moved to New York with dreams of writing comic novels for adults—“but of course no adult wants a humorous novel,” he says. At a party in Brooklyn he met his wife Jane, an editor and writer; they have been married for more than 50 years and have a son and two grandchildren. Mr. Stine says he still loves the city as much as he did when he first arrived: “When I take my dog for a walk, I see more people than anyone else sees in a month. As my wife always says, ‘In New York, the show is free.’”

To pay rent, Mr. Stine took any kind of writing job he could get, from inventing interviews for celebrity slicks to covering “flip-top cans and new syrups” at Soft Drink Industry magazine. In 1969 he answered a classified ad for a post at Scholastic Inc., where he spent the next 16 years writing and editing magazines, and ran a “very crazy” humor magazine for teenagers called “Bananas” for a decade until it folded. He also wrote adventure books and Bazooka Gum jokes and helped create the Nickelodeon children’s television series “Eureeka’s Castle,” which ran from 1989-91.

“I was at a point in my career where I didn’t say no to anything,” he says, which is how he found himself writing his first young-adult horror book at the request of a Scholastic publisher. At 43, Mr. Stine hadn’t read many scary books: “Don’t print this or anything, but I’m not really into horror,” he admits with a laugh. With some research, however, he sensed he could carve out a niche by making his books “simpler, cleaner and easier to read.”

Although his novels for teen readers contain plenty of blood—“people love it when you kill off teenagers,” he quips—they avoid real-world terrors like school shootings and divorce. For his Goosebumps novels, which are meant for readers under 12, he drops the body count to nil. The goal for these books is to create what Mr. Stine calls “safe scares”: “It’s like a roller coaster. Kids get on and know there will be thrills, but it’s going to let them off OK.” He once experimented with an unhappy ending, but “the mail was unbelievable,” he says. “So many kids wrote, ‘Dear R.L. Stine, you idiot! You moron! How could you write that?’ It haunted me, so I had to write a sequel to finish it.”

Hundreds of books into his horror-writing career, Mr. Stine still arrives at his desk at 10 a.m. most mornings and doesn’t get up until he has written 1,500 words. “It’s like factory work,” he insists. “I really enjoy it.” He notes that the real world is often a scary and complicated place, so his hours at his desk are often the best part of his day. The hardest part, he says, is coming up with cliffhanger chapter endings to keep the kids reading: “They have to read one more chapter, one more chapter. It’s a cheap gimmick, but it really works.”