“Why are People Scared of Clowns?” R.L. Stine Talks Humor and Horror at His #BNAuthorEvent

I finished your latest Fear Street novel, Don’t Stay Up Late, last night, and it was very unsettling. It has this theme of not being understood, of feeling like an outsider, that I think is particularly scary to teens.
I always try to get a protagonist no one else is going to believe. I think the greatest thriller ever written was Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin, and that’s the same kind of situation. In fact, this book is kind of similar, in some ways; no one believes Rosemary, so I tried for the same kind of thing.
I kept going back and forth, is she right or is she not? She can’t be crazy!
Oh good, I’m glad. That’s exactly what I tried for. Is it all in her head? But that would be kind of cheesy, wouldn’t it?
Right—”It’s all a dream!”
Yeah, I’m not allowed to do that anymore. I did that so many times. I’m not allowed to have any dreams now—seriously. I did a couple of books where the kid gets hit in the head, and then gets up and the story goes on, but it turns out he was unconscious the whole time—but that’s the same as a dream.
So there are a couple of devices that you’re done with?
I can’t do them. I’m just not allowed.
You have written so many books. As I’m sure you know.
I know! That’s why I have to go take a nap. [laughs] I’ve written like 330 books! Why? How crazy is that?
Do you ever have parents tell you they don’t let their kids read your books, because they’re too scary?
I have kids, now grown, who read them back in the 90s, who said their parents wouldn’t let them read them, and they would sneak off somewhere and read them at a friend’s house. I don’t run into it very often, but I’ve had a few. A few people say, “Oh, it wasn’t allowed in our house,” that kind of thing.
How did you feel about that?
Some kids have tough childhoods, and in that way, it makes you feel bad that there were parents who wouldn’t let them read what they wanted to read. Like my son, who never read a Goosebumps book in his whole childhood. He was the right age and everything, and read only Garfield comics.
Which are also great, but…
He missed out on a lot of stuff, reading only Garfield, but we just let him, we’re not going to tell him he can’t read what he wants to read. He went off to college and he was an English major. [laughs] So, that makes you feel bad.
Did you ever try to write a book to appeal specifically to him?
He’s on the cover of a Fear Street—he’s embracing this girl, who actually was a friend; we used models on all the old Fear Street covers, and she has a knife in his back. And I wrote a Fear Street about him, it was called Goodnight Kiss, it was a vampire book, and in the very last scene in the book, he gets bitten in the neck. That was my revenge. He didn’t read that one, either.
Now he does my website, so he has to look at the stuff, at least.
Your website is great! I had so much fun on there.
Thanks. It’s a complicated website. Games, comics. My favorite thing on there is the old-time radio shows, Rainy Night Theater. I write those and then he produces them. There are five of them, very creepy, ten minutes each, fully acted out by New York actors.
Growing up I used to listen to Suspense, and some of the other old radio shows, on long car trips.
I still listen to that stuff. Well, I grew up with radio. I was this little kid and I had this little radio by my bed, and I would listen to all the comedy shows at night, and then, it must have been like 9 o’clock, this voice would come on and say, “And now…tales calculated…to keep you in….SUSPENSE.” I’d go, Oh no! No! No! I’d turn it off; I was scared.
Did you turn it off, really?
Yes, I was scared to death!
That would be scary, listening in your room, alone, as a kid.
I was a little tiny kid! [laughs] It was just that voice.
The covers of your books are iconic. The original one for Night of the Living Dummy; I feel like every kid my age had that image etched into their nightmares, it was so creepy.
They’re reissuing 40 of them, with all new covers, in conjunction with the Goosebumps movie, which is coming out this fall, so they’re bringing out all new covers.
But a really wonderful guy, Tim Jacobus, did the first 62 cover paintings, every month. He was great because they were scary, but he caught the humor of it, too, which is really hard to do, and they were funny at the same time.
The titles, too, are so funny. I went through them and tried to pick my favorite title, and I couldn’t. I mean, Secret Agent Grandma? Alone in Snakebite Canyon? Say Cheese and Die!? They’re so good.
Say Cheese and Die!, yes. Once I was in a Barnes & Noble in midtown, in the kid’s department, and somewhere across the floor, I heard a high little girl’s voice going, “Say Cheese and Die! Say Cheese and Die!” [laughs] I thought, “What’s going on? What’s her problem?”
Do you think of the title and then you write the book?
Yeah. People say, “Where do you get your ideas?” but I don’t try to get ideas. I never try to think up ideas. I only think of titles.
Really?
Yeah, I’m weird. Most authors try to think of an idea, and get the title later. But every book starts with the title, and then that leads me. I was walking my dog in Riverside Park, and these words flashed into my mind, “little shop of hamsters.” Well, where did that come from? Where? And I thought, what a great title, that’s great. And then you have to start thinking, how am I going to make hamsters scary? How am I going to do that? Say Cheese and Die! started with the title, and you think, what if there’s an evil camera? I work backwards, I think.
A few times I’ve gotten ideas for stories, and I couldn’t think of a good title—I threw out the idea.
You originally wrote a lot of humor.
That’s what I started out doing, writing joke books for kids, and I did a humor magazine for 10 years. I only wanted to be funny; I never planned to be scary. Never.
I feel like they’re closer than you might think.

I think humor and horror are very close—the same kind of visceral reaction.
The shock value.
When you say “BOO!” to someone, you jump out at them, you know, they’re shocked, and then they laugh. It’s all the same, I think. And for me, writing these books, the chapter endings are all like writing punchlines.
You also wrote for television.
Well, I had a short TV career. I was very proud of Eureka’s Castle, it was a great show. With puppeteers, all trained by Henson. Those puppeteers were so brilliant. I would do 7 versions of a script, and they would get out there and just say whatever they wanted, and I took full credit. They were wonderful!
You remember Batly the bat? He’d come flying into a scene and he’d fall down and he’d get up and say, “I meant to do that.” That was my son; I stole that from him. He used to run into a room, fall down, and say, “I meant to do that.” So I just took it from him.
Would you ever write for television again?
Well, no one’s ever asked me. And my show The Haunting Hour just won its 3rd Emmy in a row for best children’s series. And it’s been cancelled, and it’s off the air.
It’s too much collaborating for me, television. I’m used to just being in my room at home, typing, and this was total collaboration all the time. It was a very hard adjustment for me.
Your wife is a writer and editor as well.
She’s my editor actually—on these Fear Street books. She’s the first editor, before it goes over to St. Martin’s. She’s a very tough editor, too. How would you like to be married to your editor? It’s a nightmare. A nightmare. [laughs] That’s the only thing we fight about, are the plots, that’s it.
How do you decide what to read next?
I have just a ton of favorite authors, so I usually go by either friends of mine, or authors I really like. I always fall for reviews in the New York Times Book Review. I always fall for the reviews, and I’m always sorry. There was once a wonderful cartoon, back when Janet Maslin was reviewing movies and not books, of this disgruntled middle-aged couple, coming out of a movie theater, and the wife says, “Live by Janet Maslin, die by Janet Maslin.”
But I read mostly mysteries and thrillers—I read only fiction, I don’t like anything real. I was down at the beach and this woman said, “What did you bring to read,” and I said, “Well, I have this old Nero Wolfe, and this Ruth Rendell,” and she said, “Oh, beach reading.” And I thought, “That’s what I read all year. What? I read beach reading?”
I think beach reading is anything you take to the beach.
Yeah, right.
You’ve worked with nice puppets on television, and there are evil puppets in your books. Which do you think are scarier? Puppets or clowns?
Well, let me just say this. I know some clowns. Some Big Apple Circus clowns; I know Grandma, he’s a good friend of mine, and they are the sweetest people on earth. Why are people scared of clowns? I write it, I do it; you know the new Goosebumps is called A Nightmare on Clown Street, but why, why are people scared of clowns?
That’s a lovely vote for clowns. I have one final question: Let’s say a huge rambling Victorian house comes up for sale on Fear Street, for really really cheap. Would you take the plunge?
I would rather live on Happy Street. [laughs] I never understand why people on Fear Street don’t move to Happy Street.

I know—in the first of your new Fear Street books, Party Games, the narrator says, “I’ve been invited to a party on Fear Island,” and I thought, “What? Don’t go to Fear Island!”
[laughs] Everyone’s telling her, “Don’t go! Don’t go!”
There will be other parties!
Wait ’til the next Fear Street, I really hit my stride with the next one, it’s called The Lost Girl, and it has the most gruesome scene I’ve ever written in it.
Oh my gosh.
I’m so proud of it. Can you see, I’m talking about it already; I just finished writing it. It took me awhile to get back—you know, I didn’t write any Fear Street for 20 years.
Was it weird jumping back in?
Yeah, it was. I had to get out my map of Shadyside.
The second book in an all-new series of Fear Street novels by R.L. Stine, Don’t Stay Up Late, is in stores now.