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Rick Hautala (February 3, 1949 – March 21, 2013) was an American horror author from Maine. He had over 30 books published in his lifetime. His debut novel Moondeath was released in 1980 by Zebra books. The cover bore a quote from Stephen King; according to Hautala’s obituary, he and King were classmates at the University of Maine in Orono, where Hautala earned a Master’s Degree in English Literature in 1974.
Hautala wrote 12 novels for Zebra throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including his 1986 million-copy bestseller Night Stone, which was the first novel to feature a holographic image on the cover, a gimmick Zebra used on several other horror novels during that time. He went on to co-author the five-book Body of Evidence series with Christopher Golden for Pocket Books, and wrote several books published by Berkley under the pen name A.J. Matthews from 2001 to 2007. Hautala was also a prolific writer of short stories which appeared in many popular magazines and anthologies, including Cemetery Dance, Deathrealm, Stalkers, Masques IV, 999 and Night Visions 9 to name just a few. He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association in 2012. I had the pleasure of interviewing Rick Hautala in February 2013, focusing on his years writing for Zebra books; the interview was published in Cemetery Dance #72.
Many of Hautala’s books, including an autobiography, have been issued in electronic editions by Crossroads Press. Click here to see a list of what’s available.
These cover scans are from the library of author Christopher Fulbright.
