THE HORROR OF MY LIFE BY R.C. HAUSEN
23/10/2021
 BIO R.C. Hausen lives in Round Rock, Texas with his wife, two daughters, baby son, loyal hound Dobby, and his axolotl familiar Coyo. At night he retires to his garage, sits in front of his computer, puts on a playlist of Dark Synth, and grinds out tales of horror and dread until his spine hurts and his eyeballs burn. WEBSITE LINKS https://www.eye-write-at-night.com/ THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING It was The Dark Half by Stephen King. I was maybe thirteen at the time so needless to say it blew my hair back. Oddly enough the scenes I found the most disturbing were actually the story within a story parts. The excerpts from George Stark’s novels that gave us brief and bloody glimpses into the world of Alexis Machine. If I remember correctly there was a scene where he was torturing a member of a rival crime family and he popped their eyeball with a paperclip. I read that chapter repeatedly. In retrospect I think was trying to understand the gut-wrenching feeling it gave me. It was the cruelest scenario my mind had ever encountered, and it invoked a feeling of revulsion I had never known. THE FIRST HORROR MOVIE I REMEMBER WATCHING I don’t know that it was the first, but the one that really sticks with me in a profound way is Phantasm. My parents had recently gotten divorced. My mom enrolled in night school to get her GED, and my brother and I were a couple of early 90’s latch key kids. It was a Friday night in October, the days had grown short, and the world felt increasingly uncertain. We lived in a double-wide trailer out in the woods and the onset of night made the trees that surrounded us feel oppressive and sinister. I remember that part really freaked my brother out. He was younger and having a harder time with the absence of our dad. As an older brother I was pretty much duty bound to find a scary movie to watch right? So, we watched Phantasm and we loved it. It’s a weird movie that doesn’t try to make sense or offer anything in the way of exposition. The narrative feels like a hallucination, or a nightmare, and Angus Scrimm absolutely owns the Tall Man role. I mean you look at that character and you can practically smell the formaldehyde and sulfur coming off him. The flying spheres, the green blood, severed fingers turning into weird-ass hornets, and the deformed dwarf zombies running around all make for a surreal kind of horror that veers into dark sci-fi at times. THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME I was going to call this one a tie between Salem’s Lot and The Croning by Laird Barron, but then I thought about how many millions of readers King has and decided to go with the dark horse on this one. The Croning. It’s very modern in style, tone, and its brevity. He keeps you in that world just long enough to convey the story but not so long that you can acclimate to it. The sense of dread permeates the pages, the story is intriguing start to finish, and the reveal is such a profane gut punch. I listened to it on audiobook, and I remember I finished it at my writing desk out in my garage. It was back when I used to drink, so I was deep into my cups. The story ended and I just sat there staring at the wall, drunk and frightened, and just thinking “wow that was amazing.” That next month Mr. Barron was doing a Q&A book signing at a local bookstore, so I was lucky enough to pick-up the paperback and get it signed. I’ve read that copy a couple of times now. I imagine I’ll read it a few more times. THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME Halloween (1978). It’s classified as a slasher, but it has the atmosphere and slow-burning suspense of a gothic story. The cinematography is haunting, the story ensnares you, and the musical score stalks you throughout the film. It’s a cultural icon and at this point is just as much a part of the holiday as trick or treating itself. If I really sit and concentrate, I can maybe pull up little faded snippets of childhood Halloween memories. The smell of wax teeth or cheap make-up, the chill in the air and how it crept through my costume, and little chubby me trying to breathe through a mask while navigating the dark with a flashlight or a glow stick. These memories invoke a feeling, something fleeting as smoke but loaded with the weight of time. That movie invokes those feelings too, it’s like a magic spell, or at least as much magic as anything I’ve ever encountered. THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME Stephen King. He’s singular in talent and achievement. Most people might not love every book he writes, if they even have time to read them all, but most people will love at least one of them. THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME I struggled with whether to be honest or humble on this one. I decided to be honest. For me the best book cover of all time is the cover of my novel Cosmovorous. Don Noble at Rooster Republic Press did the art and I think it’s one the most beautifully bizarre images I’ve ever seen. It was a pre-made job also, I didn’t put any input into its creation. It just happened to be an uncannily appropriate visual representation for the story I was writing. THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME Alien. There’s a lot of psychological and maybe sub-conscious technique being used there. The weird egg suspended in a field of black, oozing that glowing green yolk, and below it an unrecognizable grid pattern that makes you think of a hive or a nest. The font is that sterile Helvetica Black with all that empty space between the letters. Because that is the scary part about the cosmos, all that empty space, and every centimeter of it lethal. That’s the part that freaks me out at least. Distances so vast they exceed our lifespans and defy any means of conveyance we’ve yet to engineer. Then, just in case all of that slipped by, they even put it right at the bottom, “In Space No one Can Hear You Scream.” THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN Cosmovorous. I spent over three years working on it and looking back I understand what a liminal experience writing that novel was for me. I learned a lot about myself in the process. I can truly say I know who I am, what I value, and that I wrote the story I wanted to read. Apparently, I wanted to read a dark, gritty cosmic horror story with a strong female protagonist, because that is what I wrote. THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN I have an entire cemetery of first acts that didn’t grow legs. I’m not afraid to get 10,000 words in, look at my creation, and then kill it. If it doesn’t excite me to write it, how could it possibly excite anyone to read it. Life is too short, and time is too precious. THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME Halloween III. I think if the internet had existed back in 1982 people would have received that one better, because Mr. Carpenter could have gotten the word out as to what he was doing. I really like the movie, but I could understand how if someone went into that theater expecting Michael Myers and all they got was Conal Cochran, there might be some disappointment. If you watch it for what it is, however, it’s a pretty cool movie. I mean the scale of what is at stake is so much larger than any threat Michael Myers ever posed and the only person who’s trying to stop it is Dr. Dan Challis, who happens to be a drunk and a lecher. It’s a pretty bleak scenario you’re up against. It also has all the awesome shots with the Silver Shamrock mask and that unapologetically synth wave soundtrack. THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME All of them. We should all read more. Me included. I mean I get it, it’s so much easier to scroll through videos on your smart phone, and I do it more than I wish I did. I just know on the days that I pick up a book instead I tend to be happier. THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME I think John Langan should have at least one work adapted to movie or television already. He has so many cool stories. THE BOOK / FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST As a child the movie was C.H.U.D. I caught that one on a UHF channel on a Saturday afternoon back in the 80’s. I couldn’t watch it, it scared the hell out of me. As an adult the book was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read that twice in one weekend and it got to me. I mean if you can read something at thirty years old, that gives you nightmares so intense that you wake up and lie there in bed scared, you know you are dealing with an exceptional piece of literature. THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT I’m two stories deep into a collection of cosmic horror stories. I’m writing each one towards an over arching theme that when new gods or new devils arise, they always think they are the only ones that exist, while the truth is there have been many before them and there will be many more after. Essentially the universe is older and vaster than even the gods can comprehend. I’m trying to approach the cosmic horror of each story from a different angle. I have a psychological horror story and a bizarro slasher story so far. I’m working on a dark sci-fi story and a small-town cryptid story also. I tend to write longer stories, so I’m thinking five stories between 10,000 to 12,000 words will be where I end up. I’m hoping to get this out by June 2022. Cosmovorous |
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