By Murray Dubin
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Web-posted June 29, 1996

NEW YORK - Bob Stine used to write the line at the bottom of each page of Mighty Mouse coloring books.

``Great job,'' he says. ``Someone had to write the words. Got $500 a book.''

One line, one page. Easy work. Anonymity. Those were the days.

Not that he's complaining, but life is very different now. Mr. Stine writes 15 to 20 pages a day, six days a week, seven if he's frantic. Finishes two books a month, 24 a year - more books in six months than most authors finish in six years.

And no one sells more books than Mr. Stine, who, at 52, resembles a taller, paunchless Jon Lovitz, the comic actor. Not Stephen King. Or Michael Crichton. Or Danielle Steele. No one's close to the 80 million, 90 million copies that he has sold since 1992.

Stine gives kids "Goosebumps"

Never heard of him?

Well, he now writes under the name R.L. Stine, and if that doesn't help, then you surely have no children ages 8 to 13. For that is Mr. Stine's audience, youngsters who devour the horror tales he writes in Goosebumps and Fear Street, the two series that bear his name. Each month, another Goosebumps and another Fear Street hit the shelves. A million of each. $3.99 apiece. And all of them sell out in two to three weeks.

Even if your children are not in that age range, Mr. Stine is becoming harder and harder to miss:

--The weekly Fox-TV show, Goosebumps, based on his books, has been a hit since it began in the fall and is the highest-rated show for children under 11. A one-hour Goosebumps special, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, was broadcast this month.

-- A Milton Bradley Goosebumps board game and a card game from Parker Brothers are selling well.

-- In the fall, school notebooks, folders, pencils and more will bear the Goosebumps imprint.

-- Movie deals are in the works. So is a CD-ROM game.

Coloring books one day, a gargantuan-selling author the next. Readers - children - send him 2,000 letters a month. David Letterman wanted him on TV. Time Magazine wanted an interview. No.

``Me, saying no to Letterman.'' The ``can you believe it'' is unspoken.

No time for television appearances. A book to finish, another to write. He never envisioned a life like this.

``It's very strange,'' he says, with the shrug and smile of a man who was behind a Brinks truck when the door flew open.

The children's chilling-book author writes in an Upper West Side home office with a little white dog sitting on the floor. Dog's name isn't Claws. The author of Say Cheese and Die, Return of the Mummy and Go Eat Worms! rubs the neck of Nadine, a King Charles spaniel. ``At least, that's what I paid for.''

A skeleton hangs in the office, and a knife and phony finger are prominent on a shelf, but they are a put-on, what horror writers are supposed to have in their offices. An old painting of three forlorn children and a dead rabbit hangs behind Mr. Stine's computer. ``Isn't that the saddest thing you ever saw?''

He wears a comfortable-looking green pullover, tan slacks, sneakers. Dark hair, combed back and thinning. Glasses. Takes Nadine for a walk on a leash in Central Park daily. The black Spiderman jacket helps, but he knows that the image is disappointing. Not ominous at all.

``I'm not interested in terrifying children. I'm interested in entertaining kids,'' he says. ``I see it all as funny. Maybe it's my twisted sense of humor, but at the end of every chapter is a cliffhanger line. I see it as a kind of punchline. I like writing jokes.''

Spook savant grew up normal

That's just what he used to do.

The savant of spook grew up in Bexley, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. ``It was the edge of Bexley, three houses from the railroad tracks.''

His father unloaded trucks in a warehouse. Mom stayed home to care for her three children, the oldest of whom was Bob. He remembers the horror films, The Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Beneath the Sea, but they were not the memories that shape a life.

He always wanted to write, but he preferred writing funny. And he wanted to write in New York. After college at nearby Ohio State, he did.

Started out in the big time, too, penning interviews with the Beatles and the Supremes for fan magazines in 1967. But he never talked to either group. ``Had to be fast, creative,'' he says now of those fan-mag days. ``Had Diana Ross leaving the Supremes in one magazine, staying with them in another.''

In time, he would write four Indiana Jones books, multiple-ending mystery books for kids, G.I. Joe books, too. Spent a year writing about bottle caps and flip-top-can intricacies for Soft Drink Industry magazine. Went to work in the children's publications business - kid lit - in 1969 for Scholastic.

His best job was editing Bananas, a humor magazine for children put out by Scholastic in 1975. Bananas folded in 1985.

``They had to fire me four times. I couldn't believe they wanted me to go home.''

But he persevered, slogging through any writing job he could get. If it required a pencil, he'd do it.

In 1985, a former colleague asked him to write a scary book for children called Blind Date. She gave him the title, that's all.

He had never read that sort of book before, but it was a writing job and he took it. He read the other books of that genre, by Christopher Pike and Joan Lowry Nixon and Lois Lunden. ``I tried to figure out what I could do different.''

Those books were for an older youth audience. Characters were 17 and 18. Sex and profanity were in some of the books. So he decided to go younger, cleaner and funnier.

``Blind Date took me three months. Three months! What a luxury that would be now.''

And it was a hit, best-seller No. 1. A year later, he was asked to do another. Again, a hit. ``But I couldn't make a living doing one book a year.''

So his wife, Jane, who was working in the production of children's books, suggested that he create a series of books with one title. That was Fear Street. Pocket Books bought the concept, and the first book came out in 1989. Another hit. Goosebumps, for a younger audience, began in 1992. Scholastic publishes them. The television show is theirs as well.

Mr. Stine isn't sure why he is successful and doesn't spend much time pondering it. But he has a clue: Boys.

``All these scary books are read by boys as well as girls. Fifty-fifty, if you look at the mail. I worked in kid lit for 23 years, and no one could get boys to read. It's accepted in the publishing world: Boys don't read. There are no huge series for boys. Nah, the Hardy Boys was years ago. I could tell you flop after flop that I've had trying to get boys to read.''

When he makes a public appearance, he's mobbed by screaming boys and girls, Frank Sinatra for the freckles set. Teachers and parents thank him for getting children to read, but he has never been able to get his son, Matthew, 15, to read any of his books.

The family is moving out of a three-bedroom apartment later this year to a larger spot three blocks away. They need more room. One bathroom with a teen-ager just wasn't working anymore.

``I'm getting a pool table,'' Mr. Stine says, delighted. ``Pool's a good game when you're getting old. Don't need special sneakers.''

The family travels, but has no particular expensive habits. He and his wife go to Lincoln Center, five minutes away, for ballet and opera. He's making more money than he knows what to do with, and says he has no time to spend it anyway. His one indulgence are first editions of his favorite author, British humorist P.G. Wodehouse.

He's now writing Goosebumps No. 44 and who-knows-what Fear Street. His writing style starts with a title. He cannot create a story unless he first has a title. ``I've thrown away story ideas if I couldn't think of a title.''

Then comes the story, and then an outline. ``I have to outline. These books have to make sense.''

Then he writes. He has no problems switching gears between the two series. Goosebumps is shorter and much less gory and violent than Fear Street, which is set in the mythical town of Shadyside. Lots of teens get killed there. ``I'd hate to see the school yearbook at Shadyside High.''

Last year, he wrote his first adult scary book, Superstitious. Critically panned, it sold 150,000 copies. ``Not bad for a first novel,'' Mr. Stine says. He did not want to write the book, but was made a financial offer he couldn't refuse. One million dollars. A movie deal is done.

One day, reader interest will fade and Fear Street and Goosebumps will be hot no longer. Mr. Stine insists that he's looking forward to it, because he doesn't think that he can keep cranking them out for more than another three years. ``I'm a machine. This isn't any way for a human to live.''

Maybe then he could write only three books a year. But for now, it's two a month and that means always thinking about stories and titles.

``I have this great title: `The Good, the Bad, the Itchy.' I'm looking for a story. I'll think of something.''