Speaker 1: Hello, My name is Jason Getsepsion, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: x R endition of the podcast where we dive deep
Speaker 1: the dear favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture. Coming
Speaker 1: to you from My Heart podcast, but we're bringing you
Speaker 1: to action packed episodes a week Tuesdays and Thursdays. In
Speaker 1: today's episode, Rosie and I sit down with the prolific,
Speaker 1: iconic spooky master himself, R. Al Stein, the mind behind
Speaker 1: Goosebumps among many other spooky tones. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's our chat with the great R.
Speaker 2: Al Stein.
Speaker 3: Today we are joined by one of the most prolific
Speaker 3: horror writers in the world. He has more than four
Speaker 3: hundred million English language books in print. He is terrified
Speaker 3: and inspired many children with the Goosebump series and many
Speaker 3: Fair Street books. Today, we are so honored to have R.
Speaker 3: L Stein joining us on x ray Vision.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much, Rosie, nice to be here.
Speaker 1: Shark Knight tell us about Shark Knight.
Speaker 4: Shark Knight, It's about sharks was originally called Shark Week.
Speaker 4: Oh at the Discovery channel k Shark Week. No one's
Speaker 4: allowed to use it, wow, So I had to change
Speaker 4: the name to Shark Knight. Basically, it's a It's a
Speaker 4: middle grade scary, funny book like Goosebumps, only longer and
Speaker 4: with illustrations about a boy whose mother is making a
Speaker 4: documentary for the Danger Channel and she's doing a show
Speaker 4: called Shark Knight and her son Leo, ends up on
Speaker 4: the bottom of an enormous tank and they're about to
Speaker 4: lower a hammerhead shark into the tank, and he's supposed
Speaker 4: to interact with the shark for this Danger Channel show.
Speaker 4: But things. I don't want to spoil it here.
Speaker 1: But no, no, no, you don't.
Speaker 4: Go wrong, the wrong shark, the wrong everything. And then
Speaker 4: it gets very, very crazy once he's out of the
Speaker 4: tank and fleeing for his life.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed Shark Knight. I was lucky enough to
Speaker 3: read it, and I wanted to ask you. You know,
Speaker 3: you've built a career on telling stories for kids. You
Speaker 3: mentioned this is the middle grade story, So why do
Speaker 3: you think it's important to have horror stories that kids
Speaker 3: can read.
Speaker 4: I just like to scare kids. You know, it's a
Speaker 4: living right good job. It's a good job. Hey, we
Speaker 4: all like scary stories, yeah, age, we all like it.
Speaker 4: You know it helps us. You want to be serious
Speaker 4: helps us face our fears realize we can overcome things.
Speaker 4: Kids like scary stories, I think largely because they know
Speaker 4: they're safe while they're reading them. They're having these creepy adventures.
Speaker 4: They're fighting ghosts and monsters, but they're in their room
Speaker 4: reading at the same time. And I think that's one
Speaker 4: reason why my books have been so popular.
Speaker 1: Where do these ideas come from? When do you you know,
Speaker 1: you're sitting around and then get this idea about a
Speaker 1: scary tower in London or a big shark and a tank.
Speaker 1: Where do these ideas come from? And then how do
Speaker 1: you know? Oh, that's that one.
Speaker 4: That book actually came from the Tower of London. I
Speaker 4: was in the tower and the idea for doing that
Speaker 4: Goosebumps book A Night in Terror Tower came to me there.
Speaker 4: I don't know. You don't know your idea possible question
Speaker 4: to answer. Authors all have their pat answers about how
Speaker 4: they get ideas, but you can't really you don't know.
Speaker 4: One day I was, yeah, no, it's true. Or you
Speaker 4: sit down and you think, and you think and you
Speaker 4: think until you have an idea. You don't know a
Speaker 4: lot of authors say, well, you start with the question,
Speaker 4: what if what if this happened? But that's garbage. You
Speaker 4: It's true. You don't start with a question what if.
Speaker 4: If you're asking what if, you already have to know
Speaker 4: what the answer is. One day, I was walking my
Speaker 4: dog in Riverside Park in New York and these words
Speaker 4: popped into my head, say cheese and die. Where'd that
Speaker 4: come from? Where? What? All of a sudden I got
Speaker 4: these words in my head? And then you start thinking.
Speaker 4: Most of my books start with the title. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm backwards for most authors, but what if there's an
Speaker 4: evil camera? What if the camera takes pictures of bad
Speaker 4: things that happen in the future. What if kids just
Speaker 4: you know? And that leads me. Having that title led
Speaker 4: me to the story of say Jee's and Die. Most
Speaker 4: authors come up with an idea for a story, and
Speaker 4: then they write, They write, and later on they think
Speaker 4: of a title. But I have to start with the title.
Speaker 4: I always have to. Sometimes I'll have an idea for
Speaker 4: a story and I can't think of a good title,
Speaker 4: so I throw out the idea.
Speaker 3: It's true, Well, that makes sense because all the Goosebump
Speaker 3: stories do have very catchy titles.
Speaker 4: You're good, Yeah, they're a good title. That's my main talent.
Speaker 3: So what was your origin story as a horror writer?
Speaker 3: When did that become something that you wanted to do
Speaker 3: because you started doing humor books, And when did you
Speaker 3: kind of get into the mindset that you're going to
Speaker 3: start scaring choice.
Speaker 4: It's embarrassing. It's an embarrassing story. Now, it wasn't my idea.
Speaker 4: That's my idea to write scary books. Almost everything that's
Speaker 4: happened to me has been an accident in there, stumbled
Speaker 4: into it. All I cared about was being funny humor
Speaker 4: magazine for kids for ten years called Bananas. I wrote
Speaker 4: dozens of joke books, and I just, you know, that
Speaker 4: was my life's dream, having my own humor magazine because
Speaker 4: I was a huge, mad fan. And you know, when
Speaker 4: I was a kid, and after Bananas folded, I thought
Speaker 4: I coast the rest of my life. I figured I'd
Speaker 4: done it. I had no idea what was in store.
Speaker 4: I'd always liked horror. When my brother and I were
Speaker 4: kids back in Ohio, we would go to this little
Speaker 4: movie theater every Saturday morning. They had a Tom and
Speaker 4: Jerry cartoon festival and a horror movie, so we saw
Speaker 4: all the great horror movies back then, The Brain that
Speaker 4: Wouldn't Die and Walks among Us, A Creature from the
Speaker 4: Black Lagoon and Taratal, all those films, and I'd always
Speaker 4: enjoyed horror. I never planned to write it. And one
Speaker 4: day I was having lunch with my friend Jeane Fiwell,
Speaker 4: who was the pub editorial director at Scholastic, and she
Speaker 4: arrived at lunch angry and she said she'd had a conversation.
Speaker 4: She'd had a fight with someone who wrote te in horror,
Speaker 4: who show remained nameless. She said, I'm never working with
Speaker 4: him again. You could write a good teen horror novel,
Speaker 4: go home and write a book called blind Date, right.
Speaker 4: She even gave me the title, and I didn't know
Speaker 4: what she was talking about. Had no what's a teen
Speaker 4: horror novel? I didn't know, but I was at that
Speaker 4: point in my career where you know, you say yes
Speaker 4: to everything, let me say no no. I ran into
Speaker 4: the bookstore and I bought books by Christopher Pike, and
Speaker 4: by Lois Duncan and Diane Howe and Richie Tankersley Cusick.
Speaker 4: They were all writing teen horror novels, and I read
Speaker 4: their books to find out what it was all about.
Speaker 4: And then I tried to figure out what I could
Speaker 4: do a little different so I wouldn't be just like them.
Speaker 4: And I decided to be a little younger and cleaner
Speaker 4: and not have you know, they had like cocaine and
Speaker 4: things in their book, and I decided, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: from Ohio, right, I don't, And I wrote Blind Day.
Speaker 4: It took me three months. I can't imagine spending three
Speaker 4: months on a book. You handed it in and it
Speaker 4: was a number one best seller. That wait, what I
Speaker 4: never read on the bestseller list. And then a year later,
Speaker 4: Gene Firewall asked me to do another one, and I
Speaker 4: wrote a book called Twisted and it was a number
Speaker 4: one bestseller and I thought, forget the funny stuff, forget that.
Speaker 4: And I've been scary ever since. But it's kind of
Speaker 4: embarrassing since it wasn't my idea.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, sometimes you need you need a little
Speaker 1: direction to understand what it is that you're really really
Speaker 1: good at.
Speaker 4: And I didn't know, you know, I went into schools
Speaker 4: and I'd say to kids, why do you like these books?
Speaker 4: And they all said, we like to be scared, we
Speaker 4: like to be scared. I didn't, you know, I just
Speaker 4: didn't know, and it was a great It was a
Speaker 4: great thing to find out, believe me.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, you're so amazingly prolific. And here you are
Speaker 1: with a new book, Shark Knight, just released earlier this month.
Speaker 1: What is your process like? How do you how do
Speaker 1: you manage to churn out so much material?
Speaker 4: I'm just a machine. No, I just love it. I
Speaker 4: still love it. I've written book. I still it's the
Speaker 4: best part of my day every you know, I'm like
Speaker 4: a factor. I write every day from ten to one.
Speaker 4: Those are good hours, right, you'd kill hours ten to one? Sure,
Speaker 4: and I write, you know, I make sure. I used
Speaker 4: to write two thousand words a day, and it's like
Speaker 4: ten pages. I can't quite do that. I've slowed down.
Speaker 4: But I can do seven maybe, and just do it
Speaker 4: every day and not quit until I've done my pages
Speaker 4: for the day. But as I say, it's the best
Speaker 4: part of my day. The rest of my life's pretty horrible.
Speaker 4: You can laugh, I'm being serious. You can laugh. But
Speaker 4: that's how I do it. And I wouldn't know what
Speaker 4: else to do all day. If I didn't write in
Speaker 4: the morning, what would I do? I wouldn't know. I've
Speaker 4: done it for so long. Yeah, that's how That's how
Speaker 4: I do it, and I just you know, I do
Speaker 4: it because I love it, And now that I'm really old,
Speaker 4: I do it to prove to myself that I can
Speaker 4: still do it. I just signed on for six more
Speaker 4: Goosebumps books. There I'm going to be one hundred and twelve.
Speaker 4: I'll still be writing for ten year olds. The dam Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know where I'll be sending them from, but
Speaker 4: six more. And now I'm doing these books for Blackstone,
Speaker 4: my new publisher. Shark Knight is the second book I've
Speaker 4: done for them. I did one last year called Slime
Speaker 4: Doesn't Pay.
Speaker 3: Still gonna have those titles, Yes, very good title. So
Speaker 3: something that's been I mean, is another unique part of
Speaker 3: your success with Goosebumps. In your book, You've gotten to
Speaker 3: see these things come to life in all these different formats.
Speaker 3: There's been movies and video games, and you yourself have
Speaker 3: gotten to write comic books. And what was that like,
Speaker 3: that transition from doing pros to comic books. Was that
Speaker 3: something you'd always wanted to do? Were you a fan
Speaker 3: of comic books? Or was it just another step in
Speaker 3: the well got to keep writing?
Speaker 4: No, I love it. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 4: was a comic book fanatic. People always ask me what
Speaker 4: my favorite children's books. When I was a kid, I
Speaker 4: didn't read books. I like comic books. And my friends
Speaker 4: and I would carry around big stacks of comics and
Speaker 4: we would read them under a tree in my front
Speaker 4: yard and trade. We're always training comics and carrying our
Speaker 4: comics around. And when I was a kid, there were
Speaker 4: these easy horror comics that I looked from the Crypt
Speaker 4: and the Vault of Horror. I just I love those
Speaker 4: and I've always I didn't start reading books till I
Speaker 4: was like nine or ten. And I tell this story
Speaker 4: about my mom dropped me off at a little library
Speaker 4: on main Street in my town in Columbus, and the
Speaker 4: librarian was waiting for me and she said, Bobby, I
Speaker 4: know you like comics. I have something else here I
Speaker 4: think you will like. And she took me to a
Speaker 4: shelf of Ray Bradbury's stories, and that changed my life.
Speaker 4: Those stories were so imaginative and so beautifully written, and
Speaker 4: all had great twist endings and great Bradbury really and
Speaker 4: that librarian really turned me into a reader. That's when
Speaker 4: I first started, you know, reading stuff, but now to
Speaker 4: be able. These people from Boom Studios came to me
Speaker 4: and we were talking, and for me, it's you know,
Speaker 4: I've always loved comics and be able to write them.
Speaker 4: I've been doing horror comics for adults. Oh you see
Speaker 4: horror comic type stuff called stuff of Nightmares, and it's
Speaker 4: been it's just fun. And I'm doing a new series
Speaker 4: for them called The Graveyard Club, which is ya horror
Speaker 4: and that's that's coming out in September, the first one.
Speaker 4: So it's just fun. And comics are easier to write
Speaker 4: than books because you don't have to describe anything. I'm
Speaker 4: terrible a description. I have no writer's eye. I don't
Speaker 4: know flowers, I don't think these, I don't know anything.
Speaker 4: But when you're writing a comic book, you say he
Speaker 4: walked through the jungle. The artist has to do the jungle.
Speaker 4: You don't have to describe the plants or what's going
Speaker 4: on in the jungle. The artist does it. And so
Speaker 4: it's kind of like writing a TV script or a
Speaker 4: script because mainly you write the dialogue and then the
Speaker 4: artist has to fill it all in. So it's fun.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more spooky conversations with ral Stein.
Speaker 1: A quick word from our sponsors. Do you remember what
Speaker 1: the first thing either you read or you saw that
Speaker 1: really scared you was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, see, you're not gonna believe You're too young to
Speaker 4: believe this. I grew up with radio. See, you can't
Speaker 4: tell that to people now. You can't tell people, you know.
Speaker 4: I didn't have television until I was nine, and I
Speaker 4: would listen to all the dramas and horror stories and
Speaker 4: cowboy stories on the radio. I'm still to this day.
Speaker 4: I love radio. And I had this little radio by
Speaker 4: my bed and I would listen at night. I'd have
Speaker 4: it on and then this voice would come on, this
Speaker 4: deep voice that I'd be lying there, I'm a little kid,
Speaker 4: and this voice would say, and now tale calculated to
Speaker 4: keep you in suspense, this horrible, frightening voice. And I
Speaker 4: turned the radio off and said, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 4: turn off and turn it off. That's the first time
Speaker 4: I was scared by something, that voice on the radio.
Speaker 1: You mentioned your your two thousand words a day from
Speaker 1: ten to one again, wonderful better than bankers hours. Yes,
Speaker 1: How do you, as someone who is so prolific, how
Speaker 1: do you manage to not to just keep going. How
Speaker 1: do you manage to not stop and let me read
Speaker 1: that back?
Speaker 4: And oh no?
Speaker 1: And then and then how do you manage to keep
Speaker 1: pushing the plot forward?
Speaker 4: And I don't read it back? Yeah, you don't go back.
Speaker 4: You keep going. I don't know. I you know. I.
Speaker 4: It's just you have to love it. You have to
Speaker 4: love it and keep going. And I love being prolific.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm very proud of that. A lot of
Speaker 4: people take that as a criticism, but I love turning out.
Speaker 4: I worked in magazine when I was a scholastic. I
Speaker 4: worked in weekly magazine. I got used to that pace.
Speaker 4: And for me, the pace of getting a book out
Speaker 4: is very slow. You know, a little Goosebumps book, right,
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty page book takes some nine months
Speaker 4: to get it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's ridiculous, No, it is.
Speaker 4: We did Shark Knight. This is why Shark Knight was
Speaker 4: a miracle, because they came to me at Anthony at
Speaker 4: Blackstone and he said, we'd like to do a second
Speaker 4: book with you, and we'll bring it out in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five. I said, Anthony, I'm not sure I want
Speaker 4: to live that long. I have to live. Had long
Speaker 4: to see the book. Can't we bring it out in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four? And I, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 4: if you'll be impressed by this or not, but I
Speaker 4: handed the book in on April first, and the book
Speaker 4: came out on July second, which powerful.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yes, unbelievably fast. And look at it. It's fully illustrated.
Speaker 4: It's great. The covers. Fact, it's a great package, filled
Speaker 4: with illustrations. Used good paper, rare you don't get you know,
Speaker 4: you look, post Bumps is on toilet paper. I didn't
Speaker 4: say that, did I. No one's listening, right anyway, that's
Speaker 4: a miracle these days, well to July, and it shows
Speaker 4: that can be done. Books can be published. You don't
Speaker 4: need nine months to do a little well.
Speaker 3: You can do more books. Speed it up and you
Speaker 3: could be even more prolific.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right right.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the cover for Shark Knight. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things, as an avid reader of Goosebumps, one
Speaker 1: of the very first things that attracted me to your
Speaker 1: books were the covers. Yeah, these really spooky covers, the
Speaker 1: wonderful lettering and the bumps and the bumps and the bumps.
Speaker 1: Of course it was and so what was that process
Speaker 1: like of developing that art style. How much of us, say,
Speaker 1: did you have and what would appear on the covers
Speaker 1: of your books?
Speaker 4: They didn't. Tim Jacobis painted the first hundred Goosebumps covers. Wow,
Speaker 4: he's amazing, he's the best. He's just and you know
Speaker 4: the covers were much scarier than the books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: Some kids told me they had to turn the book
Speaker 4: upside down at night so the cover show. You know,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't see the cover. But Tim and I actually didn't.
Speaker 4: They try to keep the author and the artist apart.
Speaker 4: And I didn't meet Tim for three years. We've been
Speaker 4: working Wow, three years. I finally met him. We're good
Speaker 4: pals now and we actually do bookstore talks together. But
Speaker 4: the way it worked would be I would be writing
Speaker 4: a book and I would send him a little paragraph, say,
Speaker 4: this book is about it takes place in the Everglades
Speaker 4: in Florida, a kid suspects that one of the neighbors
Speaker 4: is a werewolf, and then he would paint the cover
Speaker 4: from that. We working side. That's all. You would have,
Speaker 4: just a little thing. And he got it right every time,
Speaker 4: every except once, always got it right, and it was
Speaker 4: you know amazing, and Jim is the only Goosebumps artist
Speaker 4: we ever had cover art who got that it wasn't
Speaker 4: straight horror, that it was right for me, and his
Speaker 4: had the humor as well as the horror. We've had
Speaker 4: other good artists, and we have someone new now. You know,
Speaker 4: Goosebumps is now called Goosebump's House of Shivers. Only once
Speaker 4: Tim didn't get it right, and that was in the
Speaker 4: book Say Cheese and I. It was about an evil
Speaker 4: camera taking these pictures, and his cover painting came in
Speaker 4: and it was a scene of skeletons barbecuing.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the one.
Speaker 4: I reminder it so nothing to do with the book.
Speaker 3: I thought the idea was like somebody had taken the picture. Yes,
Speaker 3: and then they saw that. I think once you read
Speaker 3: the book, it made said no.
Speaker 4: Well I had no, it didn't and they couldn't ask
Speaker 4: him to change the painting right. So they called me
Speaker 4: up and said, Bob, can you add a scene of
Speaker 4: skeletons barbecuing in the book? Right? So I added a
Speaker 4: dream sequence that the boy goes to sleep and he
Speaker 4: dreams about skeleton's barbecuing. And that's how that's how we
Speaker 4: made all the other covers are fine.
Speaker 1: What does R. L. Stein read? Now?
Speaker 4: What are the things that I read? Most mysteries and
Speaker 4: thrillers mostly I'm in International Thriller Writers. Actually, I was
Speaker 4: on the board of the Thriller Writers for eleven years,
Speaker 4: and I got to hang out with the Lee Child
Speaker 4: and Michael Connolly and they're all friends of mine. Harlan Coben,
Speaker 4: those are the people I read, and I know them
Speaker 4: all now, which is really wonderful. I was talking. I
Speaker 4: was down on Saint Croix on the beach, and this
Speaker 4: woman said, oh, what did you bring to read? And
Speaker 4: I said, well, I brought this Nero Wolf mystery, and
Speaker 4: I brought this old British mystery and I brought She said, oh,
Speaker 4: beach reading. I realized that's what I read all year.
Speaker 4: I read.
Speaker 1: A Good Way to Live.
Speaker 4: The best thing I read all summer is a book
Speaker 4: called Shanghai by an author named Joseph Cannon k A
Speaker 4: N O. N. He's just an amazing uh spy author,
Speaker 4: spy novelist, thriller writer. Now that the car has gone,
Speaker 4: Joseph is the best we have. I it's it's just you.
Speaker 4: It's hypnotic when you read it. It's an amazing book.
Speaker 1: I just I just purchased it.
Speaker 3: Get your commission, you get.
Speaker 1: Well Back in a moment. More spooky talk with R. L.
Speaker 2: Stein.
Speaker 3: So you read thrillers, you read, you know, mysteries. Do
Speaker 3: you read any horror or is that more saved for
Speaker 3: what you write?
Speaker 4: We're just talking between us, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: not really into horror. I know. It's really true though,
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't really read I'm a big Stephen King. Yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe one out of every three Stephen King books. But
Speaker 4: I don't read other horror. It's not what I'm you know.
Speaker 4: I like detective novels, and you know, I like old mysteries,
Speaker 4: old British mysteries and that kind of thing. I don't
Speaker 4: really read much horror.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just terrorize children with your own imagination.
Speaker 4: But right now, it's no, It's true. Most people don't
Speaker 4: like horror.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: Listen, this is strange. I mean, if you think about
Speaker 4: mystery writers on the bestseller list, there are dozens of them.
Speaker 4: People tell a lot of you know, right, thrillers, the
Speaker 4: Michael Connolly's and Karen Slaughter, But how many best selling
Speaker 4: horror writers can you name? They're only four. No, it's
Speaker 4: strange though, dozens of mystery writers that do well, but
Speaker 4: they're only four or five horror writers that do well,
Speaker 4: which is it's interesting to me. I don't know if
Speaker 4: anyone is interested. But you know, once you get past
Speaker 4: Stephen King and Dean Koonts and King's son and maybe
Speaker 4: a couple other people, that's it. There's people don't read them.
Speaker 1: You know what. What's the parallel I see between you
Speaker 1: and Stephen King, who you've been compared to in terms
Speaker 1: of your horror work. And the thing that I think
Speaker 1: drew me that I like about your both of your
Speaker 1: works is you take the simplest idea and then you
Speaker 1: just dedicate all of this wonderful talent and energy to
Speaker 1: bringing this very simple idea to life. When Stephen King,
Speaker 1: it will just be like Haunted Hotel, you know, with you,
Speaker 1: it'll be Haunted amusement park. These are very very simple ideas,
Speaker 1: and yet you know, all of the creativity and talent
Speaker 1: and just bringing that, you know, just you know, building
Speaker 1: up that wonderfully simple idea is what makes it so
Speaker 1: accessible and scary. And I think that's the thing I
Speaker 1: appreciated both of you.
Speaker 4: Funny you mentioned an amusement park that I only met
Speaker 4: Stephen King once and one he never comes down from Maine.
Speaker 4: I met him at the Eger Awards a few years
Speaker 4: ago and we had a really nice talk, and then
Speaker 4: he accused me of taking every amusement park plot and
Speaker 4: for anyone else. And you know, I said, I said,
Speaker 4: this was I said, Steve, you know a magazine once
Speaker 4: called me a literary training bra for you, which is true,
Speaker 4: and he said, yes.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean something as well that I think has always
Speaker 3: stuck with me about your work, is you managed to
Speaker 3: couch these kind of you know, it's a kid's horror book,
Speaker 3: but then at the end you will have a terrifying,
Speaker 3: existentially horrifying kind of twist. I think a lot about
Speaker 3: the kids who go to the films udio to try
Speaker 3: out the new theme park, and then at the end
Speaker 3: you learn that they are actually robots who were made
Speaker 3: to test the theme park that existentially terrified me as
Speaker 3: a child. Oh yes, so do you kind of when
Speaker 3: you're telling the stories, do you always have that Ray
Speaker 3: Bradbury's style, Twilight Zone style kind of shocking twist that
Speaker 3: you want to leave the audience with. Is that a
Speaker 3: major part of what you try to do.
Speaker 4: All I care about or twists, that's all I care about.
Speaker 4: There has to be one, And I think that's why
Speaker 4: kids like it so much so much. Olden's literature is
Speaker 4: so linear, goes in a straight line. You know where
Speaker 4: it's going to go. Yeah, I have to have one
Speaker 4: place or maybe two or three in every Goosebumps book
Speaker 4: where there's some twist, something shocking for the reader and
Speaker 4: they say, oh no, I had no idea that that's
Speaker 4: what was happening. Oh no, that changes everything really important
Speaker 4: to me. That's like, you know, it's in the Goosebumps
Speaker 4: movie where Jack Black played me the first and Jack
Speaker 4: and I are like twins, right of course. Yes, And
Speaker 4: at the end of the film he's teaching a class
Speaker 4: as me and he says a line that I wish
Speaker 4: I had written because it's perfect, and I wish I
Speaker 4: had written it. Jack says, every story has a beginning,
Speaker 4: a middle, and a twist. Yeah, right, it's just perfect.
Speaker 1: Before we let you go, what is the secret from
Speaker 1: the master? What's the what's the secret to a good twist?
Speaker 1: How do you set it up? How do you execute it?
Speaker 4: Oh no, I knew the dog. The dog would answer
Speaker 4: that question. Yeah, hold on a minute.
Speaker 1: That's the twist. That's the twist, the twisters.
Speaker 4: Hey, he's too tall. Look, he's a dog that tall.
Speaker 4: You were good most of the time. Okay, that's all right,
Speaker 4: that's okay, that's all right.
Speaker 3: He said your thirty minutes is up. It's time for
Speaker 3: a walk.
Speaker 4: He's usually pretty good, but he's just too tall. What
Speaker 4: were we talking about?
Speaker 3: Twists?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Twt What makes a good twist?
Speaker 4: This has to be planned very early in the book,
Speaker 4: very early. What what the twists are going to be?
Speaker 4: So that I can keep the kids from real guessing. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, those get they get planned very early. And
Speaker 4: you know, a good twist is when somebody turns out
Speaker 4: not to be who they said they were, that kind
Speaker 4: of thing, or you know, as you say, when the
Speaker 4: protagonist turns out to be a robot.
Speaker 1: Curely terrifying.
Speaker 3: I still think about it.
Speaker 4: Well, r L.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a delight.
Speaker 1: Shark Knight is out now wherever you get books. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Right, this was really I really had fun. It's great
Speaker 4: to talk. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: So did we thank you so much.
Speaker 1: On tomorrow's episode of Extra Division, I'll be joined by
Speaker 1: Danny Fernandez to break down the first four episodes of
Speaker 1: the Incredible Batman Cape Crusader on Amazon Prime Video. And
Speaker 1: next week we're grabbing onto your face and dropping four
Speaker 1: absolutely parasitic episodes covering the Aliad universe directly into your
Speaker 1: ear holes. Can't escape, you must give birth to these.
Speaker 1: That's it for the episode. X ray Vision is hosted
Speaker 1: by Jason Concepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song
Speaker 1: is by Brian Basquez.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman
Speaker 3: and Heidi our disco moderata