Rick Hautala received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Horror Writers of America’s Stoker Awards on March 31, 2012 (along with another worthy, Joe R. Lansdale, who wrote “Barney’s Bigfoot Museum” in 1991). And it’s an award well chosen, for Rick has penned 18 novels under his own name, five more with Christopher Golden and others under the pseudonym A. J. Matthews. Collections of his stories, screenplays, they all add up to a life spent tapping away at the terrors that lurk inside us. Of Rick’s many books, my favorite is probably The Mountain King (1996, Leisure Books), perhaps because it features a nasty version of Bigfoot. Or perhaps because it’s a thrilling horror ride that ends much too soon for me. (I’ve been bugging him to write a sequel.) Now I could lament that The Mountain King is out-of-print but I don’t have to because Cemetery Dance has just re-released a new ebook version.
Rick and I sat down (through the amazing medium of email) to discuss his novel:
G. W. THOMAS: First off, congrats on the Lifetime Achievement Award from HWA in March. Well deserved. Secondly, I’m glad to see Cemetery Dance has re-released The Mountain King as an ebook. Is this your first ebook?
RICK HAUTALA: Thanks. I was honored to be selected by HWA for the LAA. Honestly, I think there are plenty of writers who deserve it much more than I do, but I’ll take it …
The Mountain King is not my first e-book. I think Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers was … I’ve had quite a few e-books published, and pretty much everything I’ve written will be available soon. I’m getting requests and offers from so many people who want to publish my e-books that I’m confused and concerned that I don’t make promises to two or more people for the same book.
E-books are the Wild West of publishing. Everyone keeps saying “there’s gold in them thar hills,” but … we’ll see. In general, I like the idea of e-books if only from an ecological point of view. Think of all the trees we’re saving…and the gas and effort we’re conserving not transporting physical books. Of course, I love the look and feel of a “real” book, but if you want a story, an e-reader is a great delivery system. Also, e-books are the future. Anyone who avoids or ignores the future will be left behind.
GWT: The Mountain King features your own brand of shaggy ape-creatures. How did the legends of sasquatch or Bigfoot influence you? Had you read any classic stories or were you influenced more by TV and films?
RH: I can’t pinpoint any specific book or movie that inspired The Mountain King … just a general attraction to the whole Sasquatch/Bigfoot thing. And I got to wondering why the Himalayas and the Pacific Northwest Coast got to have all the fun. Why couldn’t I bring Bigfoot or a Yeti to Maine? Maybe it followed the Tran-Canadian Highway over to Maine. Another consideration was that I saw the book as a bit of a counterpart to my novel Little Brothers. If there can be “savage little creatures” in the Maine woods, why not BIG savage ones?
I always wondered, even as a kid, why the monsters were always alone. Wouldn’t there have to be a “Mrs. Nessie” or a “Mrs. Mothra,” for the species to continue? There would have to be a Sasquatch family for them to survive … and pass on their “skills.” So putting all of that together, I came up with my beastie. I played “In the Halls of the Mountain King” a lot when I was writing the book.
GWT: The obvious question for anyone writing about cryptids is: do you believe in sasquatch, etc? Do you have any thoughts on the possibilities of there being real ape humanoids? Did it influence how you approached the book?
RH: I remain skeptical. I like to think of myself as a hard-headed, practical person, but just as faith or religion can be a straitjacket to free thinking, so, too, can science hold back the possibilities. I love the possibilities of what may be out there that we still don’t know about. I deplore human ego-centrism that assumes we know (or can know) everything there is in this world and universe. There’s a lot out there, beyond our knowledge and experience, so I definitely hold open the possibility that Bigfoot is real … and I hope I never meet one while out hiking…
When you write a story, though, you have to believe in what you’re writing at least in the fictional world. It has to be real for you or else the reader will know it.
GWT: The pace of The Mountain King is breath-taking. It’s a real roller-coaster of a book. As a novel it is on the shorter side. Did this fast pace dictate a shorter book? Was there any push to lengthen it from Leisure? Does this leave any avenue for a sequel?
RH: I am sometimes accused of writing novels that are too long … that I “ruminate” too much in my books. That’s just me, but when I set out to write The Mountain King, I decided to make it a rip-snorting, brutal book. Fun and gruesome. And I wanted to not hold back at all. When people read the book, they’ll see that NO ONE is safe. I wanted the sense of jeopardy to be as high as possible, so I proved it by making some rather gruesome, brutal choices in who would live or die.
Leisure added those few short stories to fatten the book to reach their price point, but they never asked (much less pressured) me to lengthen it. It would have been padding the book, and I wouldn’t have done that. Every story has (and the writer soon discovers) its correct length. That may change through editing and rewriting, but the story has to live and breathe organically or else it’s not truly alive. I have never considered or even thought of doing a sequel or a “stand-beside” book or stories about the Mountain King. But now that you mention it … Hmmm …
GWT: After reading and viewing endless sasquatch stories I’ve noticed certain elements that always seem to be in them: a bottleneck, often a mountain or snowy place, a group of people (victims) who won’t fare well, and a big hairy beast. How were you able to make all this fresh? Why do fans keep going back to this scenario? (New Bigfoot movies keep showing up all the time!) Does the continuous stream of bad Bigfoot clunkers make a film adaptation unlikely?
RH: I knew that the genre of Bigfoot movies was dead when Harry and the Hendersons came out. I wanted to make my beastie a savage and smart hunter, not a senseless animal, who would purposely track his victims whether for revenge or to kill because he felt threatened …
To be honest, I wrote this book a while ago, and much of it has dissolved from my memory … I really just ignored what I had seen and read before and did my best to come up with interesting situations and solid characters who you would sympathize with … or want to see get munched up … Plain and simple, I set out to have some fun with the genre.
GWT: What’s next for Rick Hautala? Any new monster-filled treats coming our way?
RH: I have a ton of books coming out within the year or so: Indian Summer, a new “Little Brothers” novella, and two supernatural novels–Waiting and Chills–are coming from CD Publications. My four A.J. Matthews books-The White Room, Looking Glass, Unbroken, and Follow –as well as a “Best of” short story collection–The Edge Of Beyond–are coming from Dark Regions Press. Evil Jester recently published Moondeath, my first novel. It’s a rip-snorting werewolf tale–very “savage,” as a friend of mine called it. I wish to hell someone in Hollywood would make a movie of Moondeath, but my werewolves don’t sparkle … Finally, I’m co-writing a science fiction novel, Star Road, with Matt Costello.
Currently I’m working on a new novel, The Demon’s Wife, and a new script titled Evelyn. People can check my website www.rickhautala.com for updates.
Thanks for talking to me. It’s been fun. I’m glad you enjoyed The Mountain King and are helping spread the word.
