Welcome to Gaia! ::

...I was actually going to give The Second Short Life of Bree Tanner a chance to see if Meyer improved. Well, that plan went out the window...

Back to Stine. At least he can keep my attention and whet my literary appetite.

Also, KaNugget: the book is called The Haunted Mask. The Mask would be the movie with Jim Carrey and the lesser-known, far more adult comic book series it was based on.

There were Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and Revenge of the Mummy in the original series.

Oddly enough, Slappy was the second thing I remembered from the second book (someone always had the first one before I could get to it. >> I first read it about a year ago). I already mentioned this in my journal, but the mental image that actually sticks out most for me is this scene where Amy (his owner)'s sister, Sarah, screams bloody murder, and the whole family comes into her room to see "AMY AMY AMY AMY" written all over her walls in red paint, and then later in the book where she admits she saw Slappy do it, but let Amy take the blame because she didn't want to admit to herself that he could really move on his own.

As a character, though, I think Slappy holds the record of being the first book character to grab and keep my attention as a kid. The only other book character I can remember obsessing about was the Terrible Trivium from The Phantom Tollbooth. Disregard that both of them are bastards in dapper suits, and that this particular archetype is still one of N's favorites.

I do not think I have heard of this. I am intrigued.

I know Stine has a contract with Scholastic. Maybe some of his older stuff was published there? Nonetheless, new horror authors = N should really check this out and add to her growing well of new stories. <3 Thanks.

I never really read teen vampire novels (only a few come to mind: Shattered Mirror, Demon in My View, The Vampire's Beautiful Daughter, Vampire Kisses and Vampire High. ...And Twilight, but I pretend it does not count. Everything before that, however, had at least one thing I really liked in it). Most of my vampire reading came from folklore and short horror stories, and likely shaped my preference for the bloodthirsty killers.

I like folklore in general; a lot of it focuses more on suspense for terror instead of gore. Which, again, has shaped my tastes, and I believe is responsible for my love of children's horror. They cannot dump buckets of blood everywhere, and thus are forced to work with the constraints of suspense.

I read a book called The Forgetful Spider when I was really small. Later I read books like Mouse and the Motorcycle and lots of fantasy. Deltora Quest hell yes! : )