September 19th, 2025
I love learning about who and what inspires the people who inspire me. Which is ironic, because it always makes me feel bad about my own inspirations.
I’ll read an article about a critically-beloved writer in NYC and they’ll say something like: “I grew up in an extremely cultured household. I had read all the classics by the time I was twelve years old. I have seen every arthouse film. I actually built art houses as a child with my father, who was a world-renowned architect, sculptor and whale biologist. I know thirty-five languages, seven of which are dead.”
Meanwhile, over here, I’m like: “I loved Goosebumps.”
I really did. It was a huge piece of a few years of my childhood, and it gave me a place to focus my storytelling energy. I knew how to write and I wrote a lot before I discovered R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series; those books, however, showed me what it would be like if writing was my job.
Can you imagine? Just writing books for a living? (I’m still trying to imagine it.) As I’m finishing up the most ambitious work of my (so-called) career, I’ve been thinking about all the things that got me here and made me want to get here. Goosebumps was, strangely, a big part of that.
I loved how the stories were designed. I loved the high concepts and how Stine was able to make them relevant in ways that felt personal to me. And I loved how the series was presented, visually, and I cannot overstate that.
I love branding. (No surprise coming from the graphic design major.) It’s one of the reasons I wanted to be Walt Disney when I was a kid; not just because I loved storytelling and animation, but because he had theme parks! And they were so beautifully, meticulously designed, and Disney’s branding was flawless across mediums to my young eyes.
Goosebumps had that desirable quality for me. So much so that it inspired me, at ten years old, to create my own series: Shivers. (Okay, so originality was not, like, my big thing at ten.) Now, not only did I start writing stories as part of a bigger concept, but I learned what it takes to create a brand: I designed a logo (that I stole as hard as the name of the series) and constructed my own covers and planned at least two years’ worth of books to release (of which I only wrote a few; I’m sure I still have fans waiting on Revenge of the Mutant Mushroom, Once Upon a UFO, Welcome to Camp Freakystreet, Night of the Living Laptop and Poisonous Pepto).
The series got me, a kid in a small town before the internet, who was obsessed with the library down the street, excited about reading and creating. I learned so much just from copying, studying and recreating the elements that made it so magical for me. That process and energy has stayed with me my entire life.
So I didn’t read every classic before I turned twelve years old. I’ve read a few of them since. I still think learning what everyone else finds inspiration in and gets inspiration from is extraordinarily inspirational in itself.
Somehow Goosebumps led me to Maple Island. I’m really grateful for that. And as the last days of the preorder window wind down (I’m closing them soon! Don’t miss your chance!), I’m really grateful to all of you who have supported me over all these years. The kid who created Shivers could only imagine.
The Den 