Rick Hautala - The Horror... The Horror: An Autobiography

THE HORROR THE HORROR

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

By Rick Hautala

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2013 / Rick Hautala

LICENSE NOTES

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If youre reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Meet the Author

U nder his own name, Rick Hautala wrote close to thirty novels, including the million-copy best seller Night Stone , as well as Winter Wake , The Mountain King , and Little Brothers . He published three short story collections: Bedbugs , Occasional Demons , and Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala . He had over sixty short stories published in a variety of national and international anthologies and magazines.

Writing as A. J. Matthews, his novels include the bestsellers The White Room , Looking Glass , Follow , and Unbroken .

His recent and forthcoming books include Indian Summer , a new Little Brothers novella, as well as two novels, Chills and Waiting . He recently sold The Star Road , a science fiction novel co-written with Matthew Costello, to Brendan Deneen at Thomas Dunne/St. Martins.

With Mark Steensland, he wrote several short films, including the multiple award-winning Peekers , based on the short story by Kealan Patrick Burke; The Ugly File , based on the short story by Ed Gorman; and Lovecrafts Pillow , inspired by a suggestion from Stephen King.

Born and raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, Rick was a graduate of the University of Maine in Orono with a Master of Arts in English Literature. He lived in southern Maine and is survived by his wife, author Holly Newstein.

In 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.

For more information, check out his website www.rickhautala.com .

Book List

Novels and Novellas

Beyond the Shroud

Cold River

Cold Whisper

Dark Silence

Dead Voices

Follow

Four Octobers

Ghost Light

Impulse

Little Brothers

Looking Glass

Moon Death

Moonbog

Moonwalker

Night Stone

Reunion

Shades of Night

The Mountain King

The White Room

The Wildman

Twilight Time

Unbroken

Winter Wake

The Body of Evidence Series (co-written with Christopher Golden)

Brain Trust

Burning Bones

Last Breath

Skin Deep

Throat Culture

Story Collections

Bedbugs

Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala

Occasional Demons

Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers

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THE HORROR THE HORROR

INTRODUCTION

In 1990, a young horror writer, and publisher of a magazine called The Tome stepped into another world. At NECON X I met rooms full of living legends. Robert McCammon, John Skipp, Craig Spector, Charlie Grant and F. Paul Wilson and a very friendly guy with an odd resemblance to Martin Mull Rick Hautala.

I'm not going to go into that experience in detail, but I am going to say that I was made to feel at home. I was drawn into conversations, treated as if I belonged. Rick, in particular, would talk to anyone. He always smiled, he had a million stories, and over the years, off-and-on, we remained friends.

He was one of the first authors who sat down and told me about the world of writing from the other side. Through successes, the problems when the mid-list crashed, his growing love of screenplays he was candid, helpful, and full of enthusiasm. He was one of the most self-effacing writers I've ever encountered, with one of the biggest hearts, and he left a huge mark on the horror genre.

We are extremely proud to be bringing his works out in digital and helping to preserve his legacy particularly with this short autobiography. Like that day I walked into NECON, you have a rare opportunity here. In these pages you'll meet one of the greats. Rick will be sorely missed, but his legacy lives on.

David Niall Wilson

Prologue

I Yam what I Yam

Y ou really want to read my autobiography?

I doubt it, but if you want a summary, the short version, all you have to do is read the following quote from one of the best writers ever. I used it as the epigram for my collection of novellas, Four Octobers . It bears repeating:

I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world, my proper sphere, my thing which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my life-time.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that something like two hundred years ago.

I especially like the when she fashioned me thus awry part.

So true for writers and artists in general, isnt it?

Everything that follows is mere commentary.

Chapter 1

First Terrors

Y ou would think that growing up Finnish would be terrifying enough, but as far as I can see, I had a completely normal (at least to outward appearances) childhood. No drunk parents, no violent abuse beyond the usual spankings I got whenever I screwed upwhich was often enough. I wasnt a wild kid, by any stretch of the imagination, but I crossed enough lines, and when I did and my folks found out, my father corrected mestrictly out of love, Im surenot like Jack Torrance in The Shining. When my father died, I was sad, and I miss both him and my mother on a daily basis. More on both of them later.

Although I was born in 1949 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and lived the first five years of my life in Rockport, we moved to the house my father built in Pigeon Cove, diagonally across the road from the house my grandmother and grandfather lived in. My father built the house pretty much by himself, evenings and weekends, over I have no idea how many years. He was an electrical engineer, but besides the wiring, he also did the framing, masonry, plumbing, finish workpretty much everything. One of my earliest memories (but certainly not the first more on that later, too) was mixing cement for the granite stone foundation. We have pictures of Little Ricky (Dont ever call me that!) mixing cement and carrying a hod full of bricks. Years later, after grad school, I worked as a masons tender for a while. I never liked the work.

As normal as my childhood was, it was a different story when it comes to my imagination. This is where we may begin to understand why I write what I write.

I grew up and remain scared.

Scared of what? (You may ask.)

The answer is simple enough: I was scared of both life and death.

In trying to figure out why I write horrorand not just horror since most of my novels are ghost storiesI wonder often why I feel so damned hauntedespecially because I came from a loving, warm home with loving (if strict) Finnish Lutheran parents, a kind sister two years older than I, and a bully of a brother one year my elder. Maybe hes the reason I turned out warped. More on that later (perhapsthis shouldnt be a therapy session).

Okay, so we can agree that, for better or worse, for whatever reasons, Im haunted.