Early Influences

When I went to elementary school, none of the kids enjoyed reading, myself included. When I was about in second grade, or the end of first grade, we had a book fair. I bought a book based on the cover and that it was cool to buy things at the book fair. I didn't read the book until I did something bad and got punished from my tv. That book was the Spanish Kidnapping Disaster. I don't remember much about it, other than the two sisters get kidnapped. An hour or so into reading it, my parents announced that my punishment was over, but I opted to finish the book. I read the book over and over until I outgrew it.

 

Around the same time I started reading for fun, I started watching Ghost Writer. Ghost Writer was an educational show aimed at children. I remember watching it and thinking about how I would love to be a writer, or how I would love to have a friend like Ghost Writer. There was an episode where they wrote a scary story, and I decided that I wanted to be a horror writer, although my mother thought it wasn't good for a young girl to write horror stories. I wrote about vampires, werewolves, and anything else that I found scary at the time. I'm actually still writing about these "scary" monsters, but now I write them into an urban fantasy setting.

 

Then came the Goosebumps craze. I'm fairly sure that I was one of the only kids at my school who read the books. I also watched the tv show. I remembered the first show being introduced by the Crypt Keeper and R.L. Stine. I loved the series, and would try to read the books before their television counterparts aired. I was also reading the Babysitter's club and Sweet Valley Twins at the time, but nothing could compare to my love of Goosebumps. I'd still watch the tv show if they were still making new episodes. I joined the summer reading program at my library and had to use a piece of paper to add in more books then the space allowed. Most of those books were Goosebumps.

 

 

When I got too old for Goosebumps books, I found R.L. Stine's Fear Street series. I think I check out just about every Fear Street book that my library carried and I requested that they get more. Now that I'm an adult, I really should consider reading R.L. Stine's adult books. I think reading R.L. Stine's books made me even more interested in reading scary books, since that's all I would read in my teenage years.

 

 

 

Now the books I read range all over the place. I love urban fantasy, but I also love books like Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Carrie by Stephan King is one of my favorites. I also love the Fight Club. Reading the books I read when I was younger opened me up to trying out so many different books as an adult.