I am very excited to host R.L. Stine as today’s stop on the FaceOff blog tour!
Why did you decide to use Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy in FaceOff?
R.L. Stine: They [Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child] have a real character. They have this albino FBI agent, Agent Pendergast, who’s in all their books, and their books are huge sellers. And I do a different character every month. ‘Goosebumps’ never has the same character twice, pretty much My most popular character is Slappy, the evil dummy, from ‘Night of the Living Dummy,’ and I just thought, What would happen if we took Pendergast, who’s in the real world and put him in a weird R.L. Stine world where people tell him, ‘Well, you’re not even an FBI agent. We don’t know what you’re doing.’ And then I just threw in this evil ventriloquist dummy, just to be weird.
They said: ‘Why don’t you come up with the story? You come up with the plot, and then we’ll write it and then send it to you and you can rewrite what we did.’ And that was the whole process.
I’m always amazed by people who collaborate. I never collaborate with anybody. I don’t know how it’s done.
Click HERE to read R.L. Stine’s Summer Beach Reads: ‘FaceOff’ interview.
Title: FaceOff edited by David Baldacchi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Anthology, Short Stories, Mystery/Suspense
Length: 384
Summary:
Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci and including stories by Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, and more, this one-of-a-kind anthology pulls together the most beloved characters from the best and most popular thriller series today. Worlds collide!
In an unprecedented collaboration, twenty-three of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed thriller writers have paired their series characters—such as Harry Bosch, Jack Reacher, and Lincoln Rhyme—in an eleven-story anthology curated by the International Thriller Writers (ITW). All of the contributors to FaceOff are ITW members and the stories feature these dynamic duos:
· Patrick Kenzie vs. Harry Bosch in “Red Eye,” by Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly
· John Rebus vs. Roy Grace in “In the Nick of Time,” by Ian Rankin and Peter James
· Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy vs. Aloysius Pendergast in “Gaslighted,” by R.L. Stine, Douglas Preston, and Lincoln Child
· Malachai Samuels vs. D.D. Warren in “The Laughing Buddha,” by M.J. Rose and Lisa Gardner
· Paul Madriani vs. Alexandra Cooper in “Surfing the Panther,” by Steve Martini and Linda Fairstein
· Lincoln Rhyme vs. Lucas Davenport in “Rhymes With Prey,” by Jeffery Deaver and John Sandford
· Michael Quinn vs. Repairman Jack in “Infernal Night,” by Heather Graham and F. Paul Wilson
· Sean Reilly vs. Glen Garber in “Pit Stop,” by Raymond Khoury and Linwood Barclay
· Wyatt Hunt vs. Joe Trona in “Silent Hunt,” by John Lescroart and T. Jefferson Parker
· Cotton Malone vs. Gray Pierce in “The Devil’s Bones,” by Steve Berry and James Rollins
· Jack Reacher vs. Nick Heller in “Good and Valuable Consideration,” by Lee Child and Joseph Finder
So sit back and prepare for a rollicking ride as your favorite characters go head-to-head with some worthy opponents in FaceOff—it’s a thrill-a-minute read.
Interesting interview