You're listening to The Beautiful Mess Podcast, your cozy comfort listen.

This week we're sharing our stories about how we're changing career in our 30s and 40s,

what led us to this point, and the logistics of making it happen.

If you're in a similar position or dreaming about starting a new career, we hope that this

episode will be helpful and encouraging for you. Woo-hoo. Okay, let's start it off by talking about R. L. Stein. Because you know our favorite subject is R. L.L. Stein. Love R.L. Stein. Joveyobobob. He brings me so much joy. We've never met him, but boy, do we talk about him as if we have.

He's my grandpa. What are you talking about? I've met my own grandpa. Yeah. I just like go to his house in the Hamptons every summer. Yeah. Go down his giant water slides. It's for the grandkids. Yeah. So we've talked about this in the past.

So if you're bored, I'm sorry, but I don't care.

No one's bored.

No one's bored.

So if you go on the internet and you search Arl Stein videos, you can find. I don't know the name of this video, but he's giving some kind of interview at some kind of conference. And I randomly saw it. This was many, many years ago. And it just endlessly inspired me and I still think about it.

So he's given this interview and he's talking about how he started goosebumps and the second part of his career.

So in the first part of his career, he was more of a joke writer. So more of a comedy writer.

That's why she said jovial bob. That was his joke pin name. Yeah, that was kind of his, pin name or his name that he would use. You can still see the books on, like, Thrift Books and stuff if you look. He worked for Scholastic. I think it was, I think it was called bananas or something. Like, it's like a kind of like a kid's joke comic book type thing. So he did this for many years. In the interview, he talks about how, you know, he made money, but like his wife was really more the breadwinner and more the famous one. His wife is an editor. Yeah. Editor. I think she's also a writer. Okay. So they both were in publishing industry. So anyway, this is in his, I believe, around mid-40s. He's sort of retired, semi-retired.

And one day he was getting lunch with an editor friend, someone he knew in the industry.

And really, they were just getting lunch, it seemed like.

There was no goal.

Yeah, it was just catching up.

And the editor was mentioning that they were in this really difficult spot because

they were trying to get this middle grade horror series going, but the last author had dropped

out for whatever reason. And then the editor kind of turns to Bob and is like, oh, well, you're a

great writer. You know writing. You've written forever. You're not really doing much right now.

Why don't you do it? You could do it. And Bob was like, I don't know. I don't write horror. I have written for kids. But I think he kind of says in the interview, like, I wasn't really doing anything at the time. And, you know, as my friend, I thought, why not? I can do it. And that series became goosebumps, one of the most

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