#dan poblocki

Welcome to 52 Fear Street, McNally Jackson’s month-long celebration of R.L. Stine. Join us on October 30th for an evening with Mr. Stine himself and his Fear Street editor Kat Brzozowski, and follow the #52FearSt tags on tumblr and Twitter to hear what authors, booksellers, and editors have to say about Fear Street and Goosebumps.

Today’s post comes from Dan Poblocki, the author of much fantastic and terrifying writing for young minds. His most recent book is The Book of Bad Things. 

One Last Fear Street Party 

When I was young, I judged books by their covers.

In fourth or fifth grade, I was drawn to the retro-gothic illustrations of John Bellairs’s spooky mysteries. His stories were filled with ghosts, witches, and evil wizards—highly addictive elements for a kid with a wild imagination and a penchant for scaring his friends with gruesome tales.
Bellairs soon became my favorite author. The frightening parts of his books were based in a reality and time-period that was removed from my own and just fantastical enough for me to sleep soundly.

Over the next few years, growing more desperate to feed my burgeoning horror addiction, I sought out books whose cover images reminded me of Bellairs: houses that looked like they’d come out of the Addams Family comics, or skulls with dark, glaring eye-sockets, or children wandering around in places they obviously shouldn’t be.
When I was eleven, my family moved to New Jersey from Rhode Island, and I entered the nebulous world of middle school. Those things that creeped me out at the age of nine still creeped me out, but in sixth and seventh grade, I discovered a whole new set of things to be worried about—mainly, the social structures and expectations of my new school. For a while, Lois Duncan’s and Joan Lowery Nixon’s thrillers filled a particular need that came with my family’s move. I saw my new world reflected in the tales of teenagers transgressing and paying dearly for their sins. Intense stuff, since the novels were stuffed with components that seemed like they could actually happen in my town.

Around this time, I discovered an R. L. Stine book in my school library: The Surprise Party, the second volume in what would become Stine’s epic Fear Street series. Sure enough, it was the cover that caught my eye. On the original paperback, a menacing male silhouette approaches a dark Chaz Addams-style house, a full moon rising over woods in the background. The font was colorful and creepy, and just so hip, in a late 1980’s way. The tagline read: “It was just another party— until the threats began …” I remember thinking, Who is this R. L. Stine? How does he or she know exactly what I want to read?

I devoured The Surprise Party. The wild plot, with its twists and turns and complicated backstory, was like an Agatha Christie mystery blended with the teen slasher movies I loved watching late at night during sleepovers with friends. In Fear Street, the monsters of Bellairs had been replaced with ordinary human killers, and the magic was now made of hormones and jealousy and angst. I knew this kind of magic. I recognized it in myself and my friends every day.

Of course, I wanted more. The books couldn’t come out fast enough. Really, they couldn’t. Of course, now Mr. Stine has an enormous backlist. Actually, enormous isn’t the right word. There is no word for how large his catalogue is. Imagine a time when you’d read all of them, when you had to wait for the next one! Crazy, I know.
In the years since Fear Street debuted, there have been several volumes that have incorporated “party” into the title and/ or story. Halloween Party. All-Night Party. Party Summer. Never mind the stories of prom nights, camping trips, and various other get-togethers. Partying is a teenage theme, but it’s also a Fear Street theme—possibly the Fear Street theme.

For some (okay, let’s be honest, for me), a party can be an event frought with anxiety—about love, about social missteps, about exposure to potential humiliation. When you’re young, a party feels like a rite of passage, and rightly so. You might wake up the next morning and find that you’ve done something you regret or something that feels like it may have changed your life. Fear Street takes these concerns and pushes them through an amplifier filled with blood.

When I learned that R. L. Stine was bringing back Fear Street with a new title, Party Games, I was beyond excited. He’s gone back to his roots! Not only will there be Fear Street for a new generation of horror addicts to discover, but the rest of us who grew up with these books can go back and remember the fun of being terrified by a master of the genre.

And this one’s got a great cover too—a shadowy figure stands atop a steep staircase sprinkled with colorful, yet ominous balloons. Pop! Surprise! An undeniable cause for celebration.