- [Blonde Woman] Hello.
- [Host] Hi.
- I have an 8-year-old
daughter who,
due to your fantastic work with
Slappy the Dummy,
is terrified of
dolls (laughing).
And so I'm just curious
as to how you handled
your own children's fears
and things like that,
things that go
bump in the night.
What did you do?
- You have a son.
- I have a son.
And he was (laughs),
that's a, no one ever
asked me that question.
My son Matt, his claim
to fame is that he
never read one of my books.
(audience laughing)
No, he bragged about
it, he bragged about it.
- How old was your son
when you started writing
- He was 12.
- The Goosebumps books.
- 12, he was the right
age, he was good.
- [Host] He just didn't wanna,
he just didn't go there--
- No dad, his dad hasn't
had anything to say so far.
Why should he, he did it,
you know he did it
to make me crazy.
- Right.
- He'd bring them
into his friends--
- He's every son, ever.
- Yes, that's right.
- Yeah.
- So, I can't really
answer that question.
And he was a pretty
fearless kid.
Well he's a New York City kid.
- He never got afraid of the
dark or anything like that?
- [Bob] What?
- He was never afraid of the
dark or anything like that?
- No.
He's a city kid.
When you grow up in New
York city, you're tough.
- [Blonde Woman] Well, that's
true, we live in the country.
- I didn't really understand
the whole doll thing.
I write these Slappy
books, and I have to,
next year we're doing, I'm
doing four books called
Goosebumps Slappy World.
- [Blonde Woman] Oh God.
- 'Cause he was so,
yeah, tell him not to--
- So this is like the--
- [Blonde Woman] You
wrote 'em just for my kid.
- Like the cross-over
television series, right?
Merging the two.
- Right.
But, they grow out of it.
- [Blonde Woman]
Yeah, I hope so.
- My nephew Sam, he
was like nine I guess,
and he was terrified of
Goosebumps, terrified.
And I used to send him books.
And I'd say, Sam, I think
you'll like this one,
it's not too scary.
I picked one out, you
know, wasn't too scary.
And he called me up and he
said, "Bob, you know where
"this book is going,
right in the garbage."
(laughing)
Right.
- [Blonde Woman] All right,
well thank you very much.
- [Bob] Yes.
- Mam.
- Well, I just wanted
to say that I myself
have never liked anything
scary, always been terrified,
can't watch scary
movies to this day.
But I love your books,
and I don't know what it
is but they're amazing.
And, as a child,
it was just really,
was able to get into it.
But my question for you
is, what is your favorite?
Do you have a favorite of all
the books that you've written?
- Of all of them?
- Of all of them, yeah.
- You know it's
very hard, I guess
The Haunted Mask.
- With so many to pick from.
- The Haunted Mask, that's
my best Halloween story.
About Carly Beth who pulls
the mask down over her face
and it sticks to her
face and turns her evil.
I'm very proud of that
book, it's a good--
(audience laughing)
- Excellent, thank you.
- That's my favorite.
- Thank you.
- Nice.
- Good.
- Miss Lava.
- Thanks for coming
back to Austin.
It may not be necessary now,
but when you started
this whole direction,
did you find, or did
you even think about,
whether you were writing for
parents, for their children,
or were you writing
for the children?
- Very interesting.
Good question.
- Yeah that's good.
It turned out parents
enjoyed reading them
to their kids, which
was a lucky thing.
But no, I only thought
about the kids.
I didn't think, and you know,
parents in Goosebumps
are useless.
(audience laughing)
- [Miss Lava] That's true.
- The parents never
believe the kids, ever.
They never believe
what's going on,
and they're usually
totally absent.
The idea of a Goosebumps
book is that the kids
have these horrible,
terrifying problems,
and they have to solve
them on their own.
- That's kinda like Peanuts.
- They have to use their
own wits to solve them.
And their parents are no
help at all in these books.
- Right, have you ever
had parents complain about
the portrayal of
parents in these books?
- Not about that.
I have parents complain
about the subject matter.
The whole idea of
horror for kids.
Especially in the early days,
there were a lot of complaints.
Now--
- [Host] Less so now.
- Less so now.
- Sir, last question right here.
- Thank you so much
for coming to Austin.
I grew up in Calcutta, in India,
and book fairs were my
favorite time of the year
when I could save up money
and buy the Goosebump books.
- Oh nice.
- (muffled) are still
one of my favorite experiences.
- [Bob] Thank you.
- Have you ever thought of
like building scary characters
that span across multiple books
rather than having
the stand-alone books?
- Building a what?
- In other words
recurring characters,
book to book to book.
- I do everything
hard for myself.
I start over again
with every book.
We did a continuing story,
we did a thing called
Goosebumps HorrorLand.
Which was a 19-part story, and
which I find really
hard to do, continuing.
And it was the same characters.
But, I don't know, I like
the whole anthology approach,
sort of like The Twilight
Zone where every single story
is different.
It's harder I think, 'cause
I have to get a whole new
cast of characters every time.
But, I enjoy that more.
I haven't really thought
of doing a series,
continuing series.
- You could imagine though
that in the way that we now
have these episodic series,
we had somebody who
was on a show that's
on a streaming
service here before.
You could imagine some
kind of a series that
you created specifically
for one of these services
that indeed had characters
that recurred over a
finite number of--
- Yeah.
- That might be good.
- Yeah, that would
be interesting.
- But not something you're
thinkin' about doing?
- No.
- [Man Asking
Question] Thank you.
- Well there you go.
- I'm there with
Slappy the Dummy.
- Slappy the Dummy.
(audience laughing)
I think ending with
- That's my character.
- Slappy the Dummy is
a good one, don't you?
We're so fortunate to
have had R.L. Stine here.
Please give him a big hand.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
Thank you very much.