R.L. Stine

Robert Lawrence Stine, known as R.L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer born October 8, 1943, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called The Stephen King of children's Horror and Literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas. Stine's books are read all over the world. So far, he has sold over 400 million books, making him one of the best-selling children's authors in history.

R.L. Stine was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1943. He was the son of Anne and Lewis Stine. He would eventually have a younger brother and sister, respectively Harlan Williams Stine (also known as Bill) and Pamela Stine. No one in his family ever called him R.L. Everyone calls him Bob. He decided to call himself R.L. Stine when he started publishing horror novels because he wanted people to think he was a female.

When Bob was nine, he found an old typewriter up in the attic. That discovery changed his life. He carried it down to his room and started typing stories and little joke books. His mother begged him to go outside and play, but Bob always said it was too boring outside. He stayed in his room typing away — and he has been writing ever since. In school, Bob was not a great student; he got mostly B's, but he never studied very hard. He spent most of his time writing stories and joke magazines to become more popular, as he was a very quiet and reserved student. He was terrible in math and he hated gym class, the only sport he was ever good at was ping pong!

After graduating from Ohio State University in 1965, Bob headed to New York City to become a writer. He wrote dozens of joke books and humor books for children. He also created Bananas, a zany humor magazine which he did for ten years. In those days, he wrote under the name Jovial Bob Stine. He married Jane Waldhorn on June 22, 1969 and had a son called Matthew, who was born on June 7, 1980. Jane became an editor and writer, and they worked together on several children's books. Later, Jane and her partner formed their own publishing company, Parachute Press, and helped create all of Stine's most popular book series.

Stine currently resides in New York City, with his wife Jane and his dogs Minnie and Nadine. His son Matthew is a composer, musician, and sound designer. Matt was married in 2014, and had a son, making Stine a grandparent.

In the early decade of 1990, R.L. Stine was writing the Fear Street books, horror novels aimed at teenagers. His wife and his editor at the time suggested he should try doing a horror book series for 7 to 12-year-old kids, as it was an untapped market. Stine didn't want to do it at first, as he thought it would "screw up" Fear Street. He thought the audience for Fear Street would think it wouldn't be as cool due to it being aimed at a younger audience. However, he ended up agreeing to do it anyway.

Stine needed a name for this new series. He was reading a TV Guide, when he saw an ad at the bottom of the page that said, "It’s goosebumps week on channel 11." Stine thought it would be the perfect name for this new series. He was contracted to do four books for the Goosebumps series, those being Welcome to Dead House, Stay Out of the Basement, Monster Blood, and Say Cheese and Die! The first three Goosebumps books were released simultaneously in July 1992. Sales for the series were initially very slow. However, within a few months, the sales of the books exploded. That's when Scholastic decided to extend Stine's contract for six more books. Sales increased even more, and the contract was extended to one book a month.

Stine claims it took eight days to write a Goosebumps book. Before he would start writing, he would spend two to three days outlining the book. He said the books about summer camp were the hardest to write, since he never went to summer camp.