Uncle Chip's Literary Quotes

 

Show me a good mouser and I'll show you a cat with bad breath ~ Garfield

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R.L. Stine and Ghostwriters

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Every now and again, I like to ponder the tough questions. Like what would happen if the teenage trolls who repeatedly go to Yahoo! Answers and ask whether libraries keep the bible in the fiction or non-fiction section  bothered to educate themselves about the dewey decimal system. But that would never happen. Anyway, another all-important question I've been pondering since I started writing this blog and revisiting a number of children's books is this. Did R.L. Stine use ghostwriters for his Goosebumps and Fear Street series? A little research (thanks, google) has brought up some mixed results. This article suggests that Stine did indeed write all 100+ novels on his own, with his wife acting as editor. See:  http://www.viterbo.edu/perspgs/faculty/GSmith/RLStine.html Meanwhile, other articles suggest that Stine used ghostwriters for his Goosebumps series, at least. See: http://www.flavorwire.com/274052/whodunit-10-famous-ghostwriting-collaborations?all=1 http://t
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Who Else Writes Like V.C. Andrews?

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Are there any other authors out there who write similar novels to V.C. Andrews? This is a question I see asked frequently in excellent fan run V.C. Andrews Facebook groups like Attic Secrets and The Dolls Club. In times gone by, The Complete V.C. Andrews webpage (which is no more, but the best bits are archived by Lorraine at the Attic Secrets blog,) had a comprehensive list. Today, I thought I would put forward a few of my own thoughts and recommendations. (Note: This will focus mainly on the series and novels written by the actual V.C. Andrews and not ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman, who has a distinctive writing style of his own.) The Classics This is probably the best place to start, as it is likely that some of these novels influenced V.C. Andrews herself. Andrews was a fan of Charles Dickens, mentioning the author in the prologue of her most famous novel Flowers in the Attic. I have yet to read all of Dickens novels (I've read about half,) but I can feel a slight V.C. Andrews vi
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