Not all stories about the origin of mythical things have to be mythical, laborious and teach a lesson about effort. Sometimes they just happen. I’d like to tell you that RL Stine was a young idealist with a dream of making local kids shudder, boys, shudder when he created ‘Nightmares,’ his 62-book saga that later expanded into hundreds of other novels, movies, video games and, of course, TV series. But it’s not the truth.
How scary you are going to be
Robert Lawrence Stine was 49 years old and had a career forged from choose-your-own-adventure books, humor magazines and the ‘Street of Terror’ saga when, in 1992, Joan Waricha, the co-founder of Parachute Press, asked him to make a personal dream come true. The woman realized that there was no horror literature for children between the ages of 7 and 11: who better than Stine to take charge?
He, at first, was very clear: no interest in writing for children. He was doing well without the need to demean himself in this way, so he passed on the subject. His wife and publishers kept insisting but Stine kept refusing (what a financial genius, eh?) until one day, just to shut them up, he finally said yes and signed a six-book contract.
Of these, the first, ‘Welcome to the House of Death’, even now Stine himself thinks it is too terrifying for children, especially compared to the sacker he was later, with deplorable books like ‘Monster’s Blood IV’ or ‘The Lost Legend’. Stine started releasing a monthly book and Nightmaremania made him lots and lots of money. Millions and millions from a saga that he intended to abandon without even starting to write.
Time has passed, Stine is 79 years old… And he’s still writing ‘Nightmares’. Specifically, he’s now with a collection titled SlappyWorld, plus he has time to do new ‘Street of Terror’ novels. And at this point, it doesn’t look like Jovial Bob Stine, as he was originally known, is going to change his modus operandi. Fortunately.
