R.L. Stine Interview

“Don’t ask me about nonfiction. I never read it. I hate anything real.” ~ R.L. Stine.

Probably due to the new Goosebumps movie coming out, R.L. Stine has been more in the news lately. An interview he did with The New York Times gave me a chuckle, but also an insight into the mind of a brilliant writer.

See the article here, and find out for yourself how droll he is.

In it you’ll learn he hates nonfiction, adores Ray Bradbury, thinks horror is funny, and hasn’t yet read the “autobiography” about himself written by five other people.

Many of his questions are humorous, and it was interesting seeing him through his own eyes.

I’m not going to deny, I couldn’t read the Goosebumps books when I was a kid. Self-proclaimed scaredy-cat. They gave me nightmares. John is not at all like that. But I sure am.

Looking back, I know they weren’t nearly as scary as my adolescent mind made them to be, and I’m tempted to go and re-read them.

But the one quote that struck me above all the others was the one I posted at the beginning of this post. He hates anything real?

As a fiction writer, myself, I can understand the lure of escaping the real world, but there is so much to learn from history and current events. And many times, history is fictionalized and we end up reading about “real” life anyway.

What do you think? Do you like nonfiction? Fiction? What do you think of his opinion? (Unless it was sarcastic. I won’t know. Ask John. I’m a doof when it comes to sarcasm).

Toodles!

~ Amy

There’s Going to be a Goosebumps Movie

I repeat, there’s going to be a movie based on the bestselling series by R.L. Stine! I don’t know how I haven’t heard or read anything about this until they released the trailer for it. As soon as I started watching I realized that I no longer remember any of those books that I enjoyed so much as a kid. But it doesn’t matter because of how they decided to do the movie!

Here, I’ll just let you watch for yourself.

Isn’t that a really cool idea? I think so. And I’m excited. I won’t say that I’ll be seeing it in theaters because I probably won’t, but I still think this movie is a LONG time coming.

I also have a confession to make. On my About Me page I say that a book in the Crispin series was the first book I remember reading. And that’s a lie. Because I read so many books by R.L. Stine when I was younger that I couldn’t possibly come up with an exact number. I remember having stacks of those books lying all around the house. I remember ordering several of them at a time from book orders. Now that I really think about it, R.L Stine may be the author who helped me realize how much I enjoyed reading.

Maybe I will go see the movie after all that.

Are you looking forward to a Goosebumps movie? I am.

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On this day in 2014 I published Ask Your Reader.