R.L. Stine is best known for his groundbreaking book series: “Goosebumps”. Single-handedly, he created a genre on par with cheesy romance novels for the sex-starved. Each book follows an extremely specific guideline of at least several of the following:
1. The protagonist has a pesky brother/sister who is always playing pranks on them, which leads them to toss concerns about what’s going on around them to the wayside.
2. Recently they’ve moved to a new house/location, where things are not always what they seem (I feel a bunch of these plot lines seem to be a rip-off of the underrated cult show “Eerie, Indiana” but with less humor or originality.)
3. Someone buys a new object and realizes its true power. Eventually they are forced into a situation where they have to resist the evil or throw it out, which should’ve been fairly obvious from the get-go.
4. Mocked for far too long, they vow to get revenge but the revenge nearly engulfs them and those they care about most.
5. It is poorly written and succumbs to the idea that children are unable to comprehend complicated plots or sophisticated ideas.
6. One of the following has to be included: a werewolf, mummy, monster, blob, or vampire. More commonly, he has an ordinary item possessed with some demonic spirit. Among the other items that have been possessed, he includes: house, street, unincorporated village, headphones (from “Music can be Murder”), stapler, half-eaten can of Pringles (Tagline: Once you pop the death don’t stop), camera, watch (from “Time to Die” Tagline: Your Time is Up), fortune cookie, leftover bean dip, lamp (from “Turn off the Bright Light”), pint of ice cream (from “Ice Scream”), paper clip, condoms (from “Attack of the Killer Condoms” also his first book published in Germany), and Faberge egg (from: “Being Rich is a Bitch”) among others.
Having said all that, I’d like to offer a blurb from my upcoming contribution to R.L. Stine’s fine literary pantheon. Called “The Haunted Toilet” with the tagline: ‘It doesn’t want to take your shit anymore’ I’m sure it will become a best seller. Here’s a taste:
“Moving to Muttontown thrilled me. Finally my parents could afford to move to a town so obscenely wealthy. Now if I or my brother ever got in trouble, we knew our parents had more than enough money to pay off various law enforcement officials.
The house sat on the very top of a hill. An old house, my parents soon realized most of the house was a ‘fixer upper’. During the process of fixing it, my lame brother (Jeff the Jokester he likes to call himself) kept on playing pranks on me, making me think a mask could be haunted or something ridiculous like that. I didn’t believe in the supernatural then. I know better now.
When my parents got a new toilet installed, I grew worried. Going to the store with them, I met the creepy old man who sold it to them for a bargain price. At first I thought he was creepy because he sold toilets. I soon learned otherwise.
Each night I heard terrifying sounds coming from the bathroom, but I thought it might have been one of my parents passing a gall stone. Once I entered the bathroom late at night, I saw the toilet glowing green with weird chants coming out of it. After I told my parents about this, my dad simply laughed and said “That’s because I took such a huge dump.” No one in my family believes in unnecessarily flushing, since it saves water. My whole family started laughing at me. Jeff even went so far as to prank on me with no mercy.
Distraught, I went to bed early. I woke up in the middle of the night to see the toilet consuming my brother. Since I thought he was joking, I laughed at him. Looking into his eyes, I saw pure horror. I tried to save him by pulling on his arms, but it was too late.
Running out late at night, I found the place where we bought the toilet. Speaking to the creepy old man, I learned the toilet was made from human bones. We had desecrated it by not flushing properly, he told me. It usually ate people from the ass up, which is why my brother was in such pain. He said I could defeat it through the power of love, and that I needed to become more mature than my younger brother in order to save him.
By morning, I had saved him and we both went to sleep. I explained to him what had occurred before we slept in. Upon waking up the next morning, my brother and I were horrified to see my parents had just bought a bidet from the same store.”
If I could be a famous writer, I wouldn’t want to be Mark Twain. I’d want to be R.L. Stine. Not only did R.L. Stine have the foresight to properly manage his money (Mark Twain had serious money issues throughout his life) Stine is guaranteed money for the rest of his life. Plus, having written nothing even remotely of value (sometimes he wrote a book a month) means there’s no stress on having to meet anything remotely close to standards.
Certainly I hope to have this great book published someday.