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By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — On meeting Joe Hill, it's easy to see the resemblance — in the eyes and thick eyebrows — between him and his father, the master of literary horror, Stephen King.
For the first time since he began writing short stories a decade ago using a pen name, Hill is revealing his identity and discussing his biggest literary influence: his dad.
The occasion is the publication of Hill's debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box (William Morrow, $24.95), out Tuesday. It's a supernatural thriller with an avenging ghost and a fiftysomething heavy-metal musician whose hits include "Happy Little Lynch Mob." The rock star collects macabre items, and when he hears of a ghost for sale online, he buys it — or at least the dead man's suit.
Most reviews are good. The New York Times calls it "a wild, mesmerizing, perversely witty tale of horror."
The author's real name is Joseph Hillstrom King. But at 34, he says he never wanted to be introduced to agents, publishers or readers as "the son of Stephen King."
It was a secret that "I knew would get out eventually," he says at lunch in Manhattan. "But I wanted to come in under the radar as long as I could. … I didn't want to be treated as some famous guy's kid."
The list of children of writers who become writers is long. Novelist Martin Amis, who has upstaged his father, Kingsley Amis, says, "There's nothing more predictable than doing what your dad does."
But it's hard to think of anyone else who has hidden behind a pen name quite like Hill.
"Let's be realistic about him," says Christopher Golden, a friend of Hill's and co-author of The Complete Stephen King Universe. "How many writers in history have ever been as famous as Stephen King? He casts an awfully long shadow. Fortunately, Joe's work speaks for itself."
Hill has begun speaking about his father after years of not wanting "to give anyone a reason to be thinking about Joe Hill and Stephen King in the same sentence."
His mother, Tabitha King, who also is a novelist, "always understood completely," Hill says. His father "came around eventually, especially after I finally started to get some traction — to sell some stories and to write some stuff that was fun to read."
But it was hard for his father to keep "his mouth shut. My dad likes to boast on his kids, and isn't used to keeping quiet — about anything. … Secrecy is not his strong suit. But he did it."
Asked about his son's novel, King, 59, e-mailed USA TODAY: "I'm proud as hell of Joe, and how he did everything on his own hook. And it's a kick-ass novel."
The book's dedication reads: "For my dad, one of the good ones."
Heart-Shaped Box (the title of a Nirvana song) began as a short story, prompted by what Hill calls a "vigorous trade in occult and macabre items online." His interest was "not who's selling this stuff, but who's buying."
Hill says his main character, the rock star Judas Coyne (formerly Justin Cowzynski), "wouldn't stick to my script …. I became fascinated with Jude's other ghosts, his private ghosts, the ones that drove him to become this angry, isolated, successful guy." A 30-page story grew into a 374-page novel.
Same 'values,' different voice
Hill is resigned to inevitable comparisons with his father's novels. He says "we share the same storytelling values," but the voice and tone are different.
His friend Golden, who also is a fantasy writer, says Hill has a "melancholy lyricism that reminds me more of Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont than of his father."
Hill says his father and his wife, Leanora, remain his first readers. They often agree on what he should cut out. (At lunch, Hill says, "You may have noticed — I tend to go on.") He adds, "You know what they say about marrying your mother? I married my father."
When Hill asked his father how to write a cover letter to a publisher, King wrote a sample "that read something like 'HEY MR. BIG-SHOT EDITER. DO U WANT TO KNOW WHAT REAL TALAINT LOOKS LIKE???? WELL HEAR IT IS — IN YOU FACE!' And then he said, 'Make sure your cover letters don't look like that.' And I said, 'OK.' "
Tabitha King, who once rescued a draft of Carrie, her husband's first novel, from the trash when he was discouraged, encouraged her son early in his career.
"I spent three years writing this 900-page epic fantasy, and I was unable to sell it anywhere," he recalls. "When I reached the end of the string and knew there was nowhere left to go with it, I was crushed. And my mom just said it was time to begin the next book. That's what I needed to hear."
At lunch, Hill is outgoing and enthusiastic. "Wow, look at the size of that hamburger!" he exclaims, then is on to quoting Bernard Malamud's essay "Why Fantasy?"
He cautions readers not to read too much into his fiction about terrible fathers. Hill says his own father "loves me, I love him, and we talk every day. So I know I can write a bad father, and he'll just laugh. He won't see it as a stand-in for himself." When King had drug and drinking problems in the '80s, his son says, "he covered well," and that hasn't affected Hill's writing.
It's a mistake, Hill says, "to conflate an author's characters with the author himself." He describes a dream childhood in Bangor, Maine: "Both of my parents stuck around and stayed emotionally and intellectually involved with their kids, and I received a top-notch education, in spite of my efforts to sink straight to the bottom. I can't complain. If I do, someone please chuck a brick at me."
Hill grew up in a house in which books were dinnertime conversation. His older brother, Owen King, has published short stories and a novella under his own name. His younger sister, Naomi King, is a Unitarian minister.
Unlike most novelists, Hill isn't struggling for attention. After lunch, he's off to People for another interview. He has talked to The New York Times Magazine and makes his TV debut Thursday, on ABC's Good Morning America, and he's so nervous, he says, "I hope I don't throw up on Diane Sawyer."
In keeping with Hill's wishes, his publisher isn't mentioning King in the book or promotional materials, although a marketing e-mail teases, "Take a look at this photo (of Hill) and tell me if you can guess who his dad might be."
Variety broke the news that Hill was King's son in April, when the movie rights to Heart-Shaped Box were sold to Warner Bros. The article noted that when the deal was made, studio executives didn't know Hill had a famous father. Hill's agent and editor say they worked with him and admired his work before he told them who he was.
The son 'confesses'
Jennifer Brehl, an editor at Morrow, says Hill "confessed" after she acquired the novel, but before the deal was signed. She was torn between "the crass commercial part of me" that saw publicity benefits in revealing his identity and "my respect for him wanting to do it on his own terms."
No American publisher took a chance on Hill's story collection, 20th Century Ghosts. Published by PS, a British publisher, in 2005, it won awards and a cult following, but only 2,000 copies are in print. (The first printing for Heart-Shaped Box is 125,000.)
Hill's British publisher, Peter Crowther, says "the least significant or important thing about Joe is his parentage." But it has been the subject of chat room speculation. One blogger, fantasy writer Jeff VanderMeer, called it "the worst-kept secret in the history of secrets."
Others kept quiet or ignored hints. His friend Golden met Hill in 2004 at a party celebrating a story collection they contributed to, The Many Faces of Van Helsing.
Golden asked Hill, "Wow, you know who you look like?"
Another writer interjected, "Stephen King, right?"
"No," Golden said, "he looks like Chuck Lang," an artist he knew.
Later, in the introduction to Hill's 20th Century Ghosts, Golden wrote, "Where the hell did this guy come from, to just pop up fully formed like this?'
Now, Golden says, he feels "silly for not having sussed it out sooner. … But I denied, denied, denied. If Joe wanted to keep his identity a secret, then I was going to give him my complete support. I admired the hell out of him for wanting to be judged on his own merits."
Why the name 'Joe Hill'?
His mother named him after Joe Hillstrom, better known as Joe Hill, a union organizer and songwriter. That Joe Hill was executed in 1915 for a murder he may or may not have committed and inspired a folk song ("I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night/Alive as you and me") that Joan Baez sang at Woodstock.
The new Joe Hill adopted his pen name as he began collecting editors' rejection letters — "for all the right reasons" — after graduating from Vassar College in 1995.
As he begins his book tour, he's trying to keep his private life private. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and three sons but offers no details. He says he doesn't "want to be paranoid, but there may be a few Annie Wilkes out there," referring to the crazed fan in his father's novel Misery.
At the end of lunch and the interview, in a gesture that seems inherited from his father, Hill leans across the table, wild-eyed, and demands, "So, how'd I do?"
That, of course, will be up to readers — no matter how famous the writer's father may be.