It Came From Ohio! Read online

  One day, I was innocently working in my office on an issue of Bananas when the phone rang. As I picked up the receiver, I had no idea that this call would start me on a new career.

  My name is Ellen Rudin,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “I’m a children’s book editor at E. P. Dutton.”

  A children’s book editor? Why would a children’s book editor be calling me? I wondered.

  “I think your magazine is very funny,” she continued. “I’ll bet you could write funny children’s books.”

  “Huh? Children’s books?” I stammered. “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “Well, why don’t you think about it?” she replied. “If you come up with a good idea, I’d love to publish it.”

  People always ask me how I got started writing kids’ books. That phone call was how I got started.

  I spent several weeks thinking up ideas for funny books. And the book I came up with was called How to Be Funny. My very first book was a very silly guidebook.

  I wanted it to be a useful book, one that would help even the most serious kid be funny at the dinner table, at parties, at school, in the principal’s office.

  I was an expert on some of those topics.

  The book opened with a test …

  PART ONE: RECOGNIZING A JOKE

  Here are three items. Only one of them is a joke. Circle the number of the item you believe to be a joke.

  1. “Fire! Help! Fire!”

  2. “Help! Police! I’m being robbed!”

  3. “Boy, am I glad to come in out of the snoo.”

  “Snoo? What’s snoo?”

  “Nothing. What’s snoo with you?”

  The book was also filled with tips on how to be funny in school:

  THE 10-STEP CLASSROOM BUMBLING ENTRANCE

  As a special favor to the author of this book, Harrison Babble, 13, winner of 17 awards for classroom disruption, has agreed to set down for you here all 10 steps to his world-famous Clumsy Classroom Clown Entrance. Here is exactly how he performs it, in his own words:

  “I wait until they’re all in their seats. Then, just as the final bell rings, I step up to the doorway and I (1) bang my head on the door frame, which causes me to (2) drop my books. I (3) bend over to pick up my books and (4) all the change falls out of my shirt pocket. Then (5) leaning down to pick up the change, I (6) rip my pants, (7) stumble over my math book, and (8) break my glasses, causing me to (9) walk into the wall and (10) fall headfirst into the wastebasket.”

  Of course Babble’s ten-step entrance (which he hopes to someday turn into a feature-length movie) will go down in history as one of the great clumsy routines of all times. But as wonderful as it is, many of Babble’s classmates wish he wouldn’t do it every single morning.

  How to Be Funny was published in 1978.

  At that time, Jane’s sister, Amy, was working at the Doubleday bookstore on Fifth Avenue. She arranged for a book signing.

  It was a beautiful day in July. My family was there. My friends. The Doubleday clerk piled up several stacks of books. There were extra pens for all the autographs I’d be asked to sign.

  I slipped on my bunny ears and prepared to greet the crowds.

  Bunny ears?

  Bunny ears. Since I was being advertised as “Jovial Bob Stine,” I thought I ought to wear something other than the usual author outfit. The usual author outfit was a coat and tie. Why not wear something funny? Earlier, we had been joking about a sequel to How to Be Funny. My suggestion for a title was How to Be Bunny.

  That’s how I came to wear bunny ears to the book signing.

  The adults who came by stared at me. You’d think they’d never seen a writer wearing bunny ears before.

  Kids stared at me, too. None of them would come over. I don’t think they liked the idea of seeing a grown man in a bookstore wearing bunny ears.

  It turned into a very long afternoon. Guess how many books I autographed and sold?

  One.

  I decided that maybe next time I’d leave the bunny ears at home….

  At one Goosebumps book signing at a mall in Virginia, more than five thousand kids showed up. As I stared at the wonderful crowd, I thought about that first book signing and the one kid who bought a book.

  People have good days … and they have bad days, I decided.

  Next I’m going to tell you about June 7, 1980—and why it was one of the best days of my life.

  June 7, 1980, was the day our son, Matt, was born.

  I watched the whole birth. Matthew Daniel Stine came out looking a lot like Yoda from the Star Wars movies. (He’s much better looking now.)

  When Matt was growing up, the two of us were real pals. We explored New York City together. We watched old Laurel & Hardy movies and laughed our heads off. We hung out at the American Museum of Natural History, staring up at the enormous whale. And we played ball in the park … normal dad/son activities.

  People always asked Matt back then what it was like to have a famous father. Matt was very unimpressed. In fact, for a while, I think he was embarrassed by all the attention I was getting.

  One day when Matt was about eight years old, I visited his class to talk about writing and to answer kids’ questions. Matt hid in a corner, pressed against the wall, and pretended he didn’t know me!

  Of course, no one likes to have his dad come to school—for any reason!

  Matt did enjoy some parts of my career. He liked to go out on book signings with me—especially when people asked him for his autograph! And he enjoyed posing for a Fear Street cover. Yes—that’s Matt on the cover of The Perfect Date.

  He and I have always had fun together. If I have one complaint about him, it’s that he has NEVER read one of my books! Not one. Do you believe that?

  Matt is all grown-up now and married. His wife’s name is Liz Weinberg, and they have a son, Dylan. Yes, Jane and I are grandparents, and we love it. Dylan is still very young, so it will be a while before I see if he reads my books!

  As I said, Matt was very unimpressed with his old man. When Matt was twelve, his uncle Rich asked him: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And Matt replied: “I don’t want a job. I want to hang around the house like Dad!”

  A few years after Matt was born, I did start hanging around the house. Bananas magazine went out of business, and I went home to become a full-time writer of books for kids.

  Meanwhile, Jane and her friend Joan Waricha formed their own publishing company, which they called Parachute Press, Inc. Jane went off to the office every morning while I stayed home, the happy homemaker.

  But I didn’t have much time to home-make. I soon found myself swamped with all kinds of writing assignments. And I mean all kinds!

  Here are a few of the things I wrote during this part of my life:

  Eighty bubblegum cards for a funny card series called Zero Heroes.

  Two computer magazines for kids—even though I didn’t own a computer!

  Indiana Jones and James Bond “Find Your Fate” books, with twenty-five different endings in each book.

  G.I. Joe adventure novels, even though I didn’t know a rifle from a golf club!

  Mighty Mouse and Bullwinkle coloring books. Hey—somebody has to write the words at the bottom of the coloring book pages! I received five hundred dollars per coloring book, and I wrote two a day. Not bad!

  Many, many joke books!

  Perhaps my lowest achievement? A series of books I wrote about the Madballs—a bunch of rubber balls with faces!

  I finally switched to a computer in order to handle all of these writing assignments. I was having a wonderful time, writing everything that came my way, turning out book after book.

  Then, one day, I received a phone call that got me out of the apartment—and into TV!

  Kit Laybourne, the producer of a Nickelodeon show named Eureeka’s Castle, called to talk about it. He and I met and had a nice talk. We hit it off so well, Kit asked me to be head writer.

  Eure
eka’s Castle was a program for preschool kids, with puppets and stories and other features. It was a lot like Sesame Street—except that it didn’t teach kids anything! It was all just for fun.

  As head writer, I wrote all of the puppet segments for the program. Luckily, I had a staff of about ten writers to help out.

  I had never worked in television before. So this was an exciting new experience. When you write books, you sit alone at your keyboard and write. But TV writing is a group project. The producers, the directors, the writers, the performers—they all sit around a big table and discuss the scripts.

  Sometimes we would write a script seven times. We would revise it. Discuss it. Revise it. Discuss it. Finally, we would stop when we thought we had it right. Then the puppeteers would go onstage and say whatever they wanted!

  I learned a lot about television and about puppets. Being a puppeteer isn’t as easy as it looks.

  The temperature inside Magellan, the huge dragon, was so high that the puppeteer had a small electric fan strapped to his waist. The costume didn’t have eyeholes, so the puppeteer also strapped a TV monitor to his waist. This way he could see where he was and what he was doing.

  Loaded down with the huge dragon costume and electronics, the puppeteer used one hand to operate Magellan’s head and mouth, the other hand to manipulate one of the dragon’s hands. A second puppeteer worked Magellan’s tail. When Magellan needed to use both of his hands, a third puppeteer joined the team to work the other hand. Three people to work one puppet!

  The personality of Batly, the klutzy bat character, was based on my son, Matt. When Matt was a little guy, his hobby was falling down. And every time he fell, he jumped up and cried, “I meant to do that!”

  Batly was the same way. He’d fall down the castle steps, or fly into a stone wall. And he’d immediately jump up and declare, “I meant to do that!”

  We received a lot of mail from Eureeka’s Castle fans. One letter came from a mother who told us how much her nine-year-old daughter enjoyed the program. She never missed it. The mother wrote that the family was going to be in New York. She wondered if it would be all right if they visited the set. We said, “Come on down.”

  We were in the middle of production the morning they arrived. The puppeteers were rehearsing. They had their puppets on their arms.

  The girl came through the studio door first. Her mother and father were right behind. The girl looked over at the set. And then she burst into tears and cried for twenty minutes.

  Do you know why?

  Because she thought the characters were real. She didn’t know they were puppets.

  I guess that’s a compliment.

  At the end of the first season, we were paid another compliment. Eureeka’s Castle won an Ace Award for best children’s show. That’s cable TV’s highest honor.

  The writing staff and I wrote one hundred hours of scripts for Eureeka’s Castle. We also put together four half-hour specials.

  When we were all finished writing for Eureeka’s Castle, I returned home to my lonely keyboard. After writing for TV, it seemed awfully quiet at home.

  I had no idea that the most thrilling, amazing part of my life was just about to begin.

  One afternoon, I had lunch with my friend Jean Feiwel. Jean was the associate publisher at Scholastic at the time. Near the end of the lunch, she leaned across the table and asked, “Did you ever think of writing a YA horror novel?”

  “Huh? A what?” I replied.

  “A horror novel for teenagers,” she repeated.

  “Well … I’ve always liked horror,” I told her. “But I never thought of writing it.”

  “Well, why don’t you give it a try?” she suggested. “Go home and write a book called Blind Date.”

  “Sure! No problem!” I declared. “Blind Date. No problem. You’ve got it.”

  A young-adult horror novel? I didn’t really know what she was talking about. But I never said no to anyone in those days!

  After lunch I headed for the bookstore. There weren’t many scary books in the section for young readers. I picked up some books by Lois Duncan, Christopher Pike, and Joan Lowry Nixon, and went home to read them.

  “It must be nice to be able to lie around reading,” Jane teased me the next morning when she left for her office.

  “This is work,” I told her, turning the last page in a book. Maybe I ought to give scary books a try, I thought. I liked the books I had read. But I had some different ideas.

  I sat down and began an outline. It took me a month to outline the plot for Blind Date. And it took me three months to write the novel.

  One evening, I handed a rough draft of the book to Jane. “Read this,” I said. “It’s horrible.”

  “If it’s horrible, why do you want me to read it?” she demanded.

  I explained what I meant by horrible. Blind Date is about a boy who starts getting mysterious phone calls from a girl who claims to be his blind date. Only he finds out she’s been dead for three years!

  Jane liked the book. But, as always, she had many, many suggestions to improve it. I spent another month revising it.

  To my surprise, Blind Date was an instant bestseller.

  One year later, Scholastic asked me to write a second scary novel. This one I called Twisted. It was about a girl who joins a sorority. The sorority has a little secret—every year the girls all commit a murder.

  Twisted was followed by The Baby-sitter. All three books became bestsellers.

  I began to receive mail from my readers, asking for more scary books. I realized that after twenty-three years of writing, I had found something that readers really liked.

  As I read through all the fan mail, I began to think: Maybe I should try writing a series of scary books. I discussed this with Jane and her partner at Parachute Press, Joan Waricha, and they thought it was a great idea. But we needed a name.

  For as long as I’ve written books, I always start the same way—with a title. If I know the title of the story, coming up with the story itself isn’t hard for me.

  My new series needed a title.

  I grabbed a yellow legal pad from my desk. Rolling my chair over to the window, I prepared to sit there for as long as it took to come up with a title.

  As I settled back, the words Fear Street popped into my head.

  I don’t know where they came from, how it happened. One moment I was staring out the window. The next moment, I had my title. The words Fear Street were repeating in my mind.

  When Jane came home, I ran it past her.

  “Fear Street,” she said, then with hardly a pause, “where your worst nightmares live.”

  We had the title!

  Series books usually have a continuing cast of characters. I thought I might try something new, something different. Why not have all of the action take place in a single town?

  Or a street? An evil street …

  Jane and Joan brought Fear Street to editor Pat MacDonald at Pocket Books. She signed up three Fear Streets to start. Then three more.

  My new career as a scary person was under way. I had no idea just how scary things were going to get.

  Fear Street soon became the most popular young adult book series in the US. The very first one, The New Girl, published in 1989, got the series off to a good start. It was followed by The Surprise Party and The Overnight, all bestsellers. Soon, I was writing a new Fear Street every month.

  How did I feel about this?

  Surprised!

  I truly was amazed by how popular these scary books became. And I was shocked that boys enjoyed them as much as girls. And I have to admit that even over a hundred books later—I’m still a little in shock!

  I hadn’t written a new Fear Street book in a long time, but I’m back to writing them! The newer books are called Party Games and Don’t Stay Up Late.

  I was working on the first Fear Street Super Chiller when Joan Waricha called me in for a meeting. “Maybe younger kids would like to be scared, too,” Joan sug
gested. “Maybe you could write a series of scary books that are also funny. You know. Plenty of thrills and chills, without the gore and the blood.”

  It sounded like a good idea to me. But once again, I couldn’t start without a title.

  This time it didn’t come easy. I thought about titles for the new series day and night. But nothing came to mind.

  Then one morning I was reading the TV listings in TV Guide. (I read them every morning. I used to get a lot of good ideas for titles in them.) An ad caught my eye. The ad said Channel 11 was running a whole week of scary movies. What really held my attention was the headline in bold type. It read:

  “IT’S GOOSEBUMPS WEEK ON CHANNEL 11!”

  “Here it is!” I called out to Jane. “Come here! Quick!”

  Jane came running to see what the fuss was all about. I shoved the magazine into her hands and pointed to the ad. “The title for the new book series!” I cried. “We’ll call it Channel 11!”

  Just kidding. Of course we called it Goosebumps.

  I wrote Welcome to Dead House, the very first Goosebumps book, in a little over ten days.

  I wanted Goosebumps to have the same kind of feeling you get on a roller-coaster ride. Lots of thrills. Lots of wild twists and turns. And a feeling of being safe the whole time.

  I wanted each book to be as exciting as riding the fastest, scariest roller coaster. I thought of the time I rode The Beast at Paramount’s Kings Island near Cincinnati. Back then, The Beast was one of the longest, fastest roller coasters in the US.

  My son, Matt, and I were strapped into the front seat of the first car. Matt was loving every moment of it.

  “Put your arms up, Dad!” he screamed.

  I screamed, too. But for a different reason.

  What am I doing up here? I asked myself as we neared the crest of that monstrous first hill. Stop this thing! I want to get off!