Hello, My name is Jason Getsepsion, and welcome back to x R endition of the podcast where we dive deep the dear favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture. Coming to you from My Heart podcast, but we're bringing you to action packed episodes a week Tuesdays and Thursdays. In today's episode, Rosie and I sit down with the prolific, iconic spooky master himself, R. Al Stein, the mind behind Goosebumps among many other spooky tones. So without further ado, here's our chat with the great R.
Al Stein.
Today we are joined by one of the most prolific horror writers in the world. He has more than four hundred million English language books in print. He is terrified and inspired many children with the Goosebump series and many Fair Street books. Today, we are so honored to have R. L Stein joining us on x ray Vision.
Thank you very much, Rosie, nice to be here.
Shark Knight tell us about Shark Knight.
Shark Knight, It's about sharks was originally called Shark Week. Oh at the Discovery channel k Shark Week. No one's allowed to use it, wow, So I had to change
the name to Shark Knight. Basically, it's a It's a middle grade scary, funny book like Goosebumps, only longer and with illustrations about a boy whose mother is making a documentary for the Danger Channel and she's doing a show called Shark Knight and her son Leo, ends up on the bottom of an enormous tank and they're about to lower a hammerhead shark into the tank, and he's supposed to interact with the shark for this Danger Channel show. But things. I don't want to spoil it here.
But no, no, no, you don't.
Go wrong, the wrong shark, the wrong everything. And then it gets very, very crazy once he's out of the tank and fleeing for his life.
I really enjoyed Shark Knight. I was lucky enough to read it, and I wanted to ask you. You know, you've built a career on telling stories for kids. You mentioned this is the middle grade story, So why do you think it's important to have horror stories that kids can read.
I just like to scare kids. You know, it's a living right good job. It's a good job. Hey, we all like scary stories, yeah, age, we all like it. You know it helps us. You want to be serious helps us face our fears realize we can overcome things. Kids like scary stories, I think largely because they know they're safe while they're reading them. They're having these creepy adventures. They're fighting ghosts and monsters, but they're in their room
reading at the same time. And I think that's one reason why my books have been so popular.
Where do these ideas come from? When do you you know, you're sitting around and then get this idea about a scary tower in London or a big shark and a tank. Where do these ideas come from? And then how do you know? Oh, that's that one.
That book actually came from the Tower of London. I was in the tower and the idea for doing that Goosebumps book A Night in Terror Tower came to me there. I don't know. You don't know your idea possible question to answer. Authors all have their pat answers about how they get ideas, but you can't really you don't know. One day I was, yeah, no, it's true. Or you sit down and you think, and you think and you
think until you have an idea. You don't know a lot of authors say, well, you start with the question, what if what if this happened? But that's garbage. You It's true. You don't start with a question what if. If you're asking what if, you already have to know what the answer is. One day, I was walking my dog in Riverside Park in New York and these words popped into my head, say cheese and die. Where'd that come from? Where? What? All of a sudden I got
these words in my head? And then you start thinking. Most of my books start with the title. Oh, yeah, I'm backwards for most authors, but what if there's an evil camera? What if the camera takes pictures of bad things that happen in the future. What if kids just you know? And that leads me. Having that title led me to the story of say Jee's and Die. Most authors come up with an idea for a story, and then they write, They write, and later on they think
of a title. But I have to start with the title. I always have to. Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story and I can't think of a good title, so I throw out the idea.
It's true, Well, that makes sense because all the Goosebump stories do have very catchy titles.
You're good, Yeah, they're a good title. That's my main talent.
So what was your origin story as a horror writer? When did that become something that you wanted to do because you started doing humor books, And when did you kind of get into the mindset that you're going to start scaring choice.
It's embarrassing. It's an embarrassing story. Now, it wasn't my idea. That's my idea to write scary books. Almost everything that's happened to me has been an accident in there, stumbled into it. All I cared about was being funny humor magazine for kids for ten years called Bananas. I wrote dozens of joke books, and I just, you know, that was my life's dream, having my own humor magazine because I was a huge, mad fan. And you know, when I was a kid, and after Bananas folded, I thought
I coast the rest of my life. I figured I'd done it. I had no idea what was in store. I'd always liked horror. When my brother and I were kids back in Ohio, we would go to this little movie theater every Saturday morning. They had a Tom and Jerry cartoon festival and a horror movie, so we saw all the great horror movies back then, The Brain that Wouldn't Die and Walks among Us, A Creature from the Black Lagoon and Taratal, all those films, and I'd always
enjoyed horror. I never planned to write it. And one day I was having lunch with my friend Jeane Fiwell, who was the pub editorial director at Scholastic, and she arrived at lunch angry and she said she'd had a conversation. She'd had a fight with someone who wrote te in horror, who show remained nameless. She said, I'm never working with him again. You could write a good teen horror novel, go home and write a book called blind Date, right. She even gave me the title, and I didn't know
what she was talking about. Had no what's a teen horror novel? I didn't know, but I was at that point in my career where you know, you say yes to everything, let me say no no. I ran into the bookstore and I bought books by Christopher Pike, and by Lois Duncan and Diane Howe and Richie Tankersley Cusick. They were all writing teen horror novels, and I read their books to find out what it was all about.
And then I tried to figure out what I could do a little different so I wouldn't be just like them. And I decided to be a little younger and cleaner and not have you know, they had like cocaine and things in their book, and I decided, you know, I'm from Ohio, right, I don't, And I wrote Blind Day. It took me three months. I can't imagine spending three months on a book. You handed it in and it was a number one best seller. That wait, what I
never read on the bestseller list. And then a year later, Gene Firewall asked me to do another one, and I wrote a book called Twisted and it was a number one bestseller and I thought, forget the funny stuff, forget that. And I've been scary ever since. But it's kind of embarrassing since it wasn't my idea.
Well, you know, sometimes you need you need a little direction to understand what it is that you're really really good at.
And I didn't know, you know, I went into schools and I'd say to kids, why do you like these books? And they all said, we like to be scared, we like to be scared. I didn't, you know, I just didn't know, and it was a great It was a great thing to find out, believe me.
Right, Oh, you're so amazingly prolific. And here you are with a new book, Shark Knight, just released earlier this month. What is your process like? How do you how do you manage to churn out so much material?
I'm just a machine. No, I just love it. I still love it. I've written book. I still it's the best part of my day every you know, I'm like a factor. I write every day from ten to one. Those are good hours, right, you'd kill hours ten to one? Sure, and I write, you know, I make sure. I used to write two thousand words a day, and it's like ten pages. I can't quite do that. I've slowed down. But I can do seven maybe, and just do it every day and not quit until I've done my pages
for the day. But as I say, it's the best part of my day. The rest of my life's pretty horrible. You can laugh, I'm being serious. You can laugh. But that's how I do it. And I wouldn't know what else to do all day. If I didn't write in the morning, what would I do? I wouldn't know. I've done it for so long. Yeah, that's how That's how I do it, and I just you know, I do it because I love it, And now that I'm really old, I do it to prove to myself that I can
still do it. I just signed on for six more Goosebumps books. There I'm going to be one hundred and twelve. I'll still be writing for ten year olds. The dam Yeah, I don't know where I'll be sending them from, but six more. And now I'm doing these books for Blackstone, my new publisher. Shark Knight is the second book I've done for them. I did one last year called Slime Doesn't Pay.
Still gonna have those titles, Yes, very good title. So something that's been I mean, is another unique part of your success with Goosebumps. In your book, You've gotten to see these things come to life in all these different formats. There's been movies and video games, and you yourself have gotten to write comic books. And what was that like, that transition from doing pros to comic books. Was that something you'd always wanted to do? Were you a fan
of comic books? Or was it just another step in the well got to keep writing?
No, I love it. When I was a kid, I was a comic book fanatic. People always ask me what my favorite children's books. When I was a kid, I didn't read books. I like comic books. And my friends and I would carry around big stacks of comics and we would read them under a tree in my front yard and trade. We're always training comics and carrying our comics around. And when I was a kid, there were these easy horror comics that I looked from the Crypt
and the Vault of Horror. I just I love those and I've always I didn't start reading books till I was like nine or ten. And I tell this story about my mom dropped me off at a little library on main Street in my town in Columbus, and the librarian was waiting for me and she said, Bobby, I know you like comics. I have something else here I think you will like. And she took me to a shelf of Ray Bradbury's stories, and that changed my life.
Those stories were so imaginative and so beautifully written, and all had great twist endings and great Bradbury really and that librarian really turned me into a reader. That's when I first started, you know, reading stuff, but now to be able. These people from Boom Studios came to me and we were talking, and for me, it's you know, I've always loved comics and be able to write them. I've been doing horror comics for adults. Oh you see horror comic type stuff called stuff of Nightmares, and it's
been it's just fun. And I'm doing a new series for them called The Graveyard Club, which is ya horror and that's that's coming out in September, the first one. So it's just fun. And comics are easier to write than books because you don't have to describe anything. I'm terrible a description. I have no writer's eye. I don't know flowers, I don't think these, I don't know anything. But when you're writing a comic book, you say he walked through the jungle. The artist has to do the jungle.
You don't have to describe the plants or what's going on in the jungle. The artist does it. And so it's kind of like writing a TV script or a script because mainly you write the dialogue and then the artist has to fill it all in. So it's fun.
We'll be back with more spooky conversations with ral Stein. A quick word from our sponsors. Do you remember what the first thing either you read or you saw that really scared you was.
Yeah, see, you're not gonna believe You're too young to believe this. I grew up with radio. See, you can't tell that to people now. You can't tell people, you know. I didn't have television until I was nine, and I would listen to all the dramas and horror stories and cowboy stories on the radio. I'm still to this day. I love radio. And I had this little radio by
my bed and I would listen at night. I'd have it on and then this voice would come on, this deep voice that I'd be lying there, I'm a little kid, and this voice would say, and now tale calculated to keep you in suspense, this horrible, frightening voice. And I turned the radio off and said, oh no, no, no, turn off and turn it off. That's the first time I was scared by something, that voice on the radio.
You mentioned your your two thousand words a day from ten to one again, wonderful better than bankers hours. Yes, How do you, as someone who is so prolific, how do you manage to not to just keep going. How do you manage to not stop and let me read that back?
And oh no?
And then and then how do you manage to keep pushing the plot forward?
And I don't read it back? Yeah, you don't go back. You keep going. I don't know. I you know. I. It's just you have to love it. You have to love it and keep going. And I love being prolific. I mean, I'm very proud of that. A lot of people take that as a criticism, but I love turning out. I worked in magazine when I was a scholastic. I worked in weekly magazine. I got used to that pace. And for me, the pace of getting a book out
is very slow. You know, a little Goosebumps book, right, one hundred and twenty page book takes some nine months to get it out.
Yeah, that's ridiculous, No, it is.
We did Shark Knight. This is why Shark Knight was a miracle, because they came to me at Anthony at Blackstone and he said, we'd like to do a second book with you, and we'll bring it out in twenty twenty five. I said, Anthony, I'm not sure I want to live that long. I have to live. Had long to see the book. Can't we bring it out in
twenty twenty four? And I, I mean, I don't know if you'll be impressed by this or not, but I handed the book in on April first, and the book came out on July second, which powerful.
Wow.
Yes, unbelievably fast. And look at it. It's fully illustrated. It's great. The covers. Fact, it's a great package, filled with illustrations. Used good paper, rare you don't get you know, you look, post Bumps is on toilet paper. I didn't say that, did I. No one's listening, right anyway, that's a miracle these days, well to July, and it shows that can be done. Books can be published. You don't need nine months to do a little well.
You can do more books. Speed it up and you could be even more prolific.
Yeah, right right.
You mentioned the cover for Shark Knight. I think one of the things, as an avid reader of Goosebumps, one of the very first things that attracted me to your books were the covers. Yeah, these really spooky covers, the wonderful lettering and the bumps and the bumps and the bumps. Of course it was and so what was that process like of developing that art style. How much of us, say, did you have and what would appear on the covers of your books?
They didn't. Tim Jacobis painted the first hundred Goosebumps covers. Wow, he's amazing, he's the best. He's just and you know the covers were much scarier than the books.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
Some kids told me they had to turn the book upside down at night so the cover show. You know, they wouldn't see the cover. But Tim and I actually didn't. They try to keep the author and the artist apart. And I didn't meet Tim for three years. We've been working Wow, three years. I finally met him. We're good
pals now and we actually do bookstore talks together. But the way it worked would be I would be writing a book and I would send him a little paragraph, say, this book is about it takes place in the Everglades in Florida, a kid suspects that one of the neighbors is a werewolf, and then he would paint the cover from that. We working side. That's all. You would have,
just a little thing. And he got it right every time, every except once, always got it right, and it was you know amazing, and Jim is the only Goosebumps artist we ever had cover art who got that it wasn't straight horror, that it was right for me, and his had the humor as well as the horror. We've had other good artists, and we have someone new now. You know,
Goosebumps is now called Goosebump's House of Shivers. Only once Tim didn't get it right, and that was in the book Say Cheese and I. It was about an evil camera taking these pictures, and his cover painting came in and it was a scene of skeletons barbecuing.
Yes, that's the one.
I reminder it so nothing to do with the book.
I thought the idea was like somebody had taken the picture. Yes, and then they saw that. I think once you read the book, it made said no.
Well I had no, it didn't and they couldn't ask him to change the painting right. So they called me up and said, Bob, can you add a scene of skeletons barbecuing in the book? Right? So I added a dream sequence that the boy goes to sleep and he dreams about skeleton's barbecuing. And that's how that's how we made all the other covers are fine.
What does R. L. Stein read? Now?
What are the things that I read? Most mysteries and thrillers mostly I'm in International Thriller Writers. Actually, I was on the board of the Thriller Writers for eleven years, and I got to hang out with the Lee Child and Michael Connolly and they're all friends of mine. Harlan Coben, those are the people I read, and I know them all now, which is really wonderful. I was talking. I was down on Saint Croix on the beach, and this
woman said, oh, what did you bring to read? And I said, well, I brought this Nero Wolf mystery, and I brought this old British mystery and I brought She said, oh, beach reading. I realized that's what I read all year. I read.
A Good Way to Live.
The best thing I read all summer is a book called Shanghai by an author named Joseph Cannon k A N O. N. He's just an amazing uh spy author, spy novelist, thriller writer. Now that the car has gone, Joseph is the best we have. I it's it's just you. It's hypnotic when you read it. It's an amazing book.
I just I just purchased it.
Get your commission, you get.
Well Back in a moment. More spooky talk with R. L.
Stein.
So you read thrillers, you read, you know, mysteries. Do you read any horror or is that more saved for what you write?
We're just talking between us, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not really into horror. I know. It's really true though, I mean, I don't really read I'm a big Stephen King. Yeah, maybe one out of every three Stephen King books. But I don't read other horror. It's not what I'm you know. I like detective novels, and you know, I like old mysteries, old British mysteries and that kind of thing. I don't really read much horror.
Yeah, just terrorize children with your own imagination.
But right now, it's no, It's true. Most people don't like horror.
I know.
Listen, this is strange. I mean, if you think about mystery writers on the bestseller list, there are dozens of them. People tell a lot of you know, right, thrillers, the Michael Connolly's and Karen Slaughter, But how many best selling horror writers can you name? They're only four. No, it's strange though, dozens of mystery writers that do well, but they're only four or five horror writers that do well, which is it's interesting to me. I don't know if
anyone is interested. But you know, once you get past Stephen King and Dean Koonts and King's son and maybe a couple other people, that's it. There's people don't read them.
You know what. What's the parallel I see between you and Stephen King, who you've been compared to in terms of your horror work. And the thing that I think drew me that I like about your both of your works is you take the simplest idea and then you just dedicate all of this wonderful talent and energy to bringing this very simple idea to life. When Stephen King, it will just be like Haunted Hotel, you know, with you,
it'll be Haunted amusement park. These are very very simple ideas, and yet you know, all of the creativity and talent and just bringing that, you know, just you know, building up that wonderfully simple idea is what makes it so accessible and scary. And I think that's the thing I appreciated both of you.
Funny you mentioned an amusement park that I only met Stephen King once and one he never comes down from Maine. I met him at the Eger Awards a few years ago and we had a really nice talk, and then he accused me of taking every amusement park plot and for anyone else. And you know, I said, I said, this was I said, Steve, you know a magazine once called me a literary training bra for you, which is true, and he said, yes.
I know.
Yeah.
I mean something as well that I think has always stuck with me about your work, is you managed to couch these kind of you know, it's a kid's horror book, but then at the end you will have a terrifying, existentially horrifying kind of twist. I think a lot about the kids who go to the films udio to try out the new theme park, and then at the end you learn that they are actually robots who were made to test the theme park that existentially terrified me as
a child. Oh yes, so do you kind of when you're telling the stories, do you always have that Ray Bradbury's style, Twilight Zone style kind of shocking twist that you want to leave the audience with. Is that a major part of what you try to do.
All I care about or twists, that's all I care about. There has to be one, And I think that's why kids like it so much so much. Olden's literature is so linear, goes in a straight line. You know where it's going to go. Yeah, I have to have one place or maybe two or three in every Goosebumps book where there's some twist, something shocking for the reader and they say, oh no, I had no idea that that's what was happening. Oh no, that changes everything really important
to me. That's like, you know, it's in the Goosebumps movie where Jack Black played me the first and Jack and I are like twins, right of course. Yes, And at the end of the film he's teaching a class as me and he says a line that I wish I had written because it's perfect, and I wish I had written it. Jack says, every story has a beginning, a middle, and a twist. Yeah, right, it's just perfect.
Before we let you go, what is the secret from the master? What's the what's the secret to a good twist? How do you set it up? How do you execute it?
Oh no, I knew the dog. The dog would answer that question. Yeah, hold on a minute.
That's the twist. That's the twist, the twisters.
Hey, he's too tall. Look, he's a dog that tall. You were good most of the time. Okay, that's all right, that's okay, that's all right.
He said your thirty minutes is up. It's time for a walk.
He's usually pretty good, but he's just too tall. What were we talking about?
Twists?
Oh?
Twt What makes a good twist?
This has to be planned very early in the book, very early. What what the twists are going to be? So that I can keep the kids from real guessing. So, I mean, those get they get planned very early. And you know, a good twist is when somebody turns out not to be who they said they were, that kind of thing, or you know, as you say, when the protagonist turns out to be a robot.
Curely terrifying.
I still think about it.
Well, r L.
Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a delight. Shark Knight is out now wherever you get books. Thank you so much for joining us.
Right, this was really I really had fun. It's great to talk. Thank you, Thank you so much.
So did we thank you so much.
On tomorrow's episode of Extra Division, I'll be joined by Danny Fernandez to break down the first four episodes of the Incredible Batman Cape Crusader on Amazon Prime Video. And next week we're grabbing onto your face and dropping four absolutely parasitic episodes covering the Aliad universe directly into your ear holes. Can't escape, you must give birth to these. That's it for the episode. X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production
of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi our disco moderata