Who is R.L. Stine

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A. Many adults will not have heard of him, but American Robert Lawrence Stine is, perhaps with the exception of J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books, the best-selling living author of children's books, with over 100 million sales in 20 languages under his belt, mostly in the horror genre.

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Q. What has he written
A. After working on comics - notably Bananas, a humour magazine for older children - for a number of years, he had his first book published in 1982, How to Be Funny. Tis was the first of more than 40 humour books for children. His first children's horror book, Blind Date, appeared in 1986. It was a huge success and kick-started his career as a horror writer. With The New Girl in 1989, he began a series called Fear Street and in 1992 he launched a new series for�eight to eleven-year-olds called Goosebumps. He wrote one 120-page book for each series�a month, each of which had sales of between 1 and 2 million copies: an astonishingly prolific author, with equally astonishing sales. Both these series spawned spin-offs with The Ghosts of Fear Street and Give Yourself Goosebumps, in which the reader chose their own storyline.

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Q. What else has he done
A. As well as moving into the adult horror market with Superstitious in 1995, he developed the Goosebumps Theater, a prime-time children's TV programme, and he is still writing as much as ever. Available in the UK are: Halloween Night, The Boyfriend, Cheerleaders: The New Evil, Call Waiting and Fear Street Superchillers: The Knife. You can find out more about R.L. Stine at http://www.scholastic.com/goosebumps/low/stine/index.htm
and there's an interview with him at http://homearts.com/depts/family/48stin11.htm
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Q. What does he say about himself
A. 'I'm writing more books than Stephen King, and no one over 14 has ever heard of me. I like that.'

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By Simon Smith