Happy Birthday Alex!

Since today is my nephew's birthday, it seems appropriate that I write something about R.L. Stine. I have had the good fortune of meeting Mr. Stine in person several times and listening to him talk about his travels on the road to becoming a much loved and pretty fabulous children's author. My nephew and I share the love of a good scare, especially one found between the pages of a book. He is a big R.L. Stine fan while I have graduated to more 'age-appropriate' scary book writers such as Joe Hill, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Peter Straub, and many others . (Okay, I admit to possessing and reading a variety of Goosebumps books even now.) His Wikipedia page is a cornucopia of output.

I first met Mr. Stine at one of the ThrillerFests I've attended since they began holding it in Manhattan (more about ThrillerFest in a future post). Someday I too would love to write scary stories for children, so when I first saw Mr. Stine listed as a participant on a panel discussion about writing for children I was eager to listen.

I was enchanted. He was funny, charming and inspirational. I saw him at subsequent ThrillerFests over the years, on various panel discussions or passing in the hallway or signing in the ThrillerFest bookstore.

Mr. Stine has won multiple awards for his works, both on the page and in the community. In 2007 Mr. Stine was honored by the International Thriller Writers (ITW) organization with their Silver Bullet Award, created (shamelessly stealing text from the ITW website) in conjunction with Reading is Fundamental (or RIF, an excellent organization, check them out) to recognize outstanding and meritorious achievement in the pursuit of literacy and the love of reading. In 2011 Mr. Stine was again honored by ITW as their ThrillerMaster, an award given to authors in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the thriller genre.   

I would like to recognize Mr. Stine as well. Last summer at a book signing event he graciously signed 14 of his Goosebumps books for my nephew, which were to be his birthday present. (No worries, I waited until everyone in line had gotten their books signed before I approached him!) He personalized every one of them to Alex with a smile, and the smiles they put on my nephew's face made me appreciate wonderful authors like R.L. Stine one hundred fold.

Cheers!

And Happy 11th Birthday Alex!