Summer Beach Reads: 'FaceOff'

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- "FaceOff" features 23 famous thriller writers collaborating on 11 short stories in which their well-known characters oppose or help each other.

Collaborating was uncharted territory for author R.L. Stine, who co-wrote the short story "Gaslight" for the book.

"I never collaborate with anybody," the "Goosebumps" writer told WCBS 880's Brigitte Quinn. "I don't know how it's done, but I did the short story in 'FaceOff' with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I'm a huge fan of their work, so it was really a thrill for me. And we just worked it out.

"They said: 'Why don't you come up with the story? You come up with the plot, and then we'll write it and then send it to you and you can rewrite what we did.' And that was the whole process."

In "Gaslight," Stine brings back his character, Slappy, a vetriloquist dummy.

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Preston and Child "have this albino FBI agent, Agent Pendergast, who's in all their books, and their books are huge sellers," Stine said. "And I do a different character every month. 'Goosebumps' never has the same character twice, pretty much. My most popular character is Slappy, the evil dummy, from 'Night of the Living Dummy,' and I just thought, What would happen if we took Pendergast, who's in the real world and put him in a weird R.L. Stine world where people tell him, 'Well, you're not even an FBI agent. We don't know what you're doing.' And then I just threw in this evil ventriloquist dummy, just to be weird."

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