Hunter Shea's Blog, page 27

Latest Giveaway - The Dover Demon

Goodreads is running a giveaway for my latest cryptid horror novel, THE DOVER DEMON. Everyone on Goodreads has until October 13th (I wish it was a Friday) to enter. 2 winners will be announced next week.

About the book -

The Dover Demon is real…and it has returned.

In 1977, Sam Brogna and his friends came upon a terrifying, alien creature on a deserted country road. What they witnessed was so bizarre, so chilling, they swore their silence. But their lives were changed forever.

Decades later, the town of Dover has been hit by a massive blizzard. Sam’s son, Nicky, is drawn to search for the infamous cryptid, only to disappear into the bowels of a secret underground lair. The Dover Demon is far deadlier than anyone could have believed. And there are many of them. Can Sam and his reunited friends rescue Nicky and battle a race of creatures so powerful, so sinister, that history itself has been shaped by their secretive presence?

THE DOVER DEMON Raises His Round, Little Head – Cryptid Novel Release Day!

Oh yes, the day is finally here. My latest foray into the world of cryptozoology horror – THE DOVER DEMON – takes one of the lesser known but strangest of all cryptids on a wild adventure that has thoroughly creeped out advance readers and reviewers. Having faced Bigfoot in SWAMP MONSTER MASSACRE and delved into the mystery of THE MONTAUK MONSTER, I wanted to tackle a cryptid that hasn’t had as much public recognition. A trip to the International Cryptozoology Museum 2 years ago sparked the idea for THE DOVER DEMON.

While I was there, I was lucky enough to meet famed cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman. We got to talking about creatures he’s personally investigated. Turns out, he was the man on the scene in Dover, MA in the late 70s when the uber strange biped was spotted by several people over the course of two nights in April. He also gave it its name, the Dover Demon. As a lover of monsters and aliens, I couldn’t resist. I mean, look at that mug!

Believe it or not, to this day, people still aren’t sure what they saw. Yes, today most people would see the image and think it’s an alien from a visiting UFO. But here’s where it gets interesting. The witness who drew the first image did it before the ‘gray alien’ became an internationally recognized icon! This was before the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and years prior to Whitley Strieber’s Communion.

I was so fortunate to have an early release event at the I.C.M. in August. I got to spend some quality time with Loren Coleman and meet people just like myself who are fascinated by the wondrous creatures that have been spotted around the world. Cryptid fans from out of state made the drive to get some Dover Demon love!

At the time it was spotted, it was treated as a terrestrial creature, though the high strangeness of the event brought MUFON to the town as well. No one could figure out what came to visit Dover, and the story hasn’t been recanted by the witnesses even 30+ years later. So, the mystery continues.

My novel takes on several questions:

What if other people saw the creature that night but never reported it because their run in with the creature was as terrifying as it was strange?
What if the Dover Demon makes a return in 2015? What would it, or they, want?
What if it isn’t anything that people have theorized it to be?
Here’s the official blurb for the book –

In 1977, Sam Brogna and his friends came upon a terrifying, alien creature on a deserted country road. What they witnessed was so bizarre, so chilling, they swore their silence. But their lives were changed forever.

Decades later, the town of Dover has been hit by a massive blizzard. Sam’s son, Nicky, is drawn to search for the infamous cryptid, only to disappear into the bowels of a secret underground lair. The Dover Demon is far deadlier than anyone could have believed. And there are many of them. Can Sam and his reunited friends rescue Nicky and battle a race of creatures so powerful, so sinister, that history itself has been shaped by their secretive presence?

I lovingly wrote this for all the monster/cryptid/horror lovers out there. So take my hand and let’s walk the moonlit paths of Dover. You never know what you’re going to find.

Happy Apocalypse! TORTURES OF THE DAMNED Drops Today

When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about what I would do in a post-apocalyptic world, thanks in large part to the movie, DAWN OF THE DEAD. I’m talking the original, not the remake that was kinda cool, but still can’t hold a candle to Ken Foree kicking undead ass. Everywhere I went, I would check out my surroundings and look for escape routes or places where I could burrow inside to ride out the worst. And the end of the world didn’t need to have zombies (like everyone thinks today). I wanted to be Charlton Heston in THE OMEGA MAN (version #2 of Richard Matheson’s classic, I AM LEGEND), tooling around in a sports car, watching movies in a theater all by myself, having all kinds of guns at my disposal and knocking back scotch like a real man.

All those years of wondering, what if, have finally come to fruition with my latest paperback out with Pinnacle books today, TORTURES OF THE DAMNED.

The more I read about the various weapons floating around on the black market for any crackpot with a grudge to buy and unleash on innocent people, the more I want to slip away to some out of the way place, honing my doomsday prepping skills. In TORTURES OF THE DAMNED, I was able to live out my darkest fears, pitting an average family against impossible odds. Imagine going about your day only to see the sky erupt with strange explosions. First, everything electronic stops working. Communications are lost, planes fall out of the sky, cars careen headlong into one another. Then come dark clouds roiling with chemicals that can kill on contact. What do you do? Where do you run? And what depths would you sink to in order to survive?

The world the Padilla family finds themselves in is stark, bewildering and terrifying. It’s amazing to think how little it would take to throw civilization into the stone age.

So take my hand and let’s face the apocalypse together. I promise I won’t let go.

Some very early reviews :

“Everybody ought to read TORTURES OF THE DAMNED. It’s all too realistic, and far too plausible. 5 stars” – Mallory Heart Reviews

“Resoundingly exciting, punchy, and more than a little brutal. 4 stars” – Michael Patrick Hicks

“I couldn’t turn the pages of TORTURES OF THE DAMNED fast enough! 4 stars” – ck2s Kwips and Kritiques

Looking for Reviewers for The Dover Demon

My latest cryptid novel, The Dover Demon, is set to be released September 1st. Right now, I'm looking for reviewers who love horror and monsters and would like a free e-copy in exchange for a review.

Here's a little about the book :

The Dover Demon is real…and it has returned.

In 1977, Sam Brogna and his friends came upon a terrifying, alien creature on a deserted country road. What they witnessed was so bizarre, so chilling, they swore their silence. But their lives were changed forever.

Decades later, the town of Dover has been hit by a massive blizzard. Sam’s son, Nicky, is drawn to search for the infamous cryptid, only to disappear into the bowels of a secret underground lair. The Dover Demon is far deadlier than anyone could have believed. And there are many of them. Can Sam and his reunited friends rescue Nicky and battle a race of creatures so powerful, so sinister, that history itself has been shaped by their secretive presence?

-------------------------------
If this sounds like something up your dark alley, let me know and I'll send you a copy.

Sign Up For The Dark Hunter Newsletter - You Could Win a $20 Amazon Gift Card

I'm just a week and change away from unveiling the first issue of the Dark Hunter Newsletter. Whole lot of insider info is going to be packed in there because there's a ton of monstrous stuff coming this summer and fall.

If you want to be in on all the latest, sign up today. To sweeten the pot, anyone who signs up between now and July 4th is eligible to win a $20 Amazon gift card. The winner will be announced in the newsletter.

So, go to http://www.huntershea.com/newsletter to join the mad monster party. The insanity dials up to 11 very, very soon...

The Importance of Taking a Break From Writing

This blog post is the first thing I’ve actually written, aside from emails, in a week. I’m in the middle of a two week break. And despite having deadlines to meet this year, both hard and soft, I don’t feel an ounce of guilt. In fact, I’m sitting on the patio of my windy side yard on a sunny day, listening to three hawks terrorize every bird on the block. If it were just a tad warmer, I would probably be at the beach with my girls, getting sun, listening to the waves and reading a battered paperback. Oh, and waiting for the guy to come by selling coconut ice.

Lately, I’ve been listening to podcasts and reading posts by other writers who seem to never stop. Once they finish one manuscript, they set it aside and dive right into the next, maybe taking the time to drink a Coke before moving on.

Not me. I need time off. As much as writing has been both my life’s dream and a way to get away from my daily problems, I have to give my brain a rest every now and then. The break I’m on right now is already paying dividends. As I wait for my first readers to deliver their feedback on the book I gave them last week, I’ve done a lot of reading. (I’m going through some of Stephen King’s suggested reading list from his book, On Writing. Just this morning I finished Anne Tyler’s A Patchwork Planet – a book I would have never read if I hadn’t plucked it from his list. Thanks SK!). I’ve spent more time with my family – three of the four of us dealing with health issues. Netflix has gotten a workout. My wife and I anxiously awaited the latest B movie presented by Svengoolie on Saturday night and werent’ disappointed. I love creature features, even the awful ones. I’ve caught up on correspondence and even worked with my graphics main man to create some cool stuff like banners, bookmarks and my newsletter logo.

I decided two days ago to completely revamp a short story I wrote, expanding on it and publishing it on October 1st, just in time for Halloween. I’m also doing some research on the next book I start writing over the summer, as well as one I plan to write in the fall. While all this is going on, my subconscious is gearing up for the last round of edits on my next cryptid book. So even if it looks like I’m dozing in my chair, there’s actual work going on, I promise.

With time away from my laptop comes insights I would have missed if I hadn’t taken the time to just walk away for a spell. The last thing I want is for writing to feel like a job. I already have one of them. I don’t want two.

Learning meditation years ago has helped me immeasurably. When you calm your mind, the thoughts that have been bouncing around become much clearer. Even if I don’t meditate, I’ve learned the value of silence.

So if you’re feeling stuck or tired or in need of fresh ideas, just stop, kick back and relax. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it can only make your writing stronger. Brains, like batteries, need recharging every now and then. And boy, mine was running awfully low.

Now, I’m off to take my daughters out driving, armed with their permits and my father’s spirit urging me to stay calm, just as he did when he taught me.

Writing Your Book – The Thousand Word March

I’m about to let you in on a secret that will help your write that book that’s been dying to get out. The best part is, you can do it without having an existential crisis.

It’s been too long since I’ve posted anything about writing in the trenches in this genre I love so much. Back when I was locking myself away in my room, tapping out words and getting nothing but rejection or worse, silence, I never dreamed I’d be in the position I’m in today. Sure, I did it with the goal of legitimate publication (whatever your own definition of that may be), but I just never thought I’d have a year like this one with three books coming out and writing four more for three different publishers for next year.

I’m not a full time writer. Writing doesn’t have health benefits, and if you’ve stopped by the blog and chain, you know I need them for my wife, who is the queen of auto-immune diseases. So I have a full time job that is more than that – it’s a solid career that can’t be ignored or pushed to the side. I have two amazing kids – teens now –the same number of cats, old friends, new friends, things to do and places to see every day.

The question everyone asks me is, ‘How in the world can you manage to write several books a year? Do you sleep? When’s the last time your family saw you? Or you saw the sun?’

My answer is usually that I just sit down and write because I truly enjoy the process. And yes, that is part of it. But what is the process?

Basically, what works for me is something I’ve called The Thousand Word March – or TTWM if I’m too lazy to say or spell it out. When I started working with editors, I quickly found out that they think and talk in terms of thousands. Discussing the length of your work in progress, whether it’s a story, novella or novel, it’s all about word count, not the number of pages or file size of your Word document.

They’ll say, “I’d love it if you could get me that novel under 95,000 words, but no less than 90,000.” Or if you’re pitching a novella, they might say, “Anything between 28,000 and 50,000 words will do it.”

So, if they’re thinking in thousands, I had to rethink the way I worked and made my own projections. My first horror novel, Forest of Shadows, was a true labor of love. I worked on it for almost five years. When people asked about my progress, I’d tell them I was 185 pages in and so on. Come time to pitch it to the sole publisher I sent it to (fodder for a later post), I proudly stated it was 550 pages.

But to an editor, 550 pages does not translate. The number of pages I write will never equal the print pages in a book because of font and paper size, spacing, etc. It turned out my 550 pages equaled over 100,000 words, which was a little more than Samhain wanted at the time. So, I had to do some editing to get it under 95,000.

When it came time to write my next book, I came up with The Thousand Word March to wrap my head around the best way to proceed. Knowing that my editor would like something between 85,000 and 90,000, I looked at the calendar to see how long it would take me to get the first draft done. Since my editor also hinted that he’d like me to write two books a year for him, I knew I couldn’t just cruise along at my own speed. That’s a good thing. It prevents procrastination from rearing its ugly head. Nothing works better than a fire under one’s posterior.

Staring at the calendar, I thought, if I just did 1,000 words a day, I’d have a 90,000 word book completed in three months. Hmmm. A thousand words a day. I could do that. I don’t have tons of free time, but I almost always have time to write 1,000 words. In fact, as I started working on that book, I realized that even on a day when the words were hard to find, I could accomplish my mission within an hour. So, if I set aside an hour and a half each weeknight, I could hit my writing goal, that extra half hour spent doing all the other things a working writer has to do, like marketing, responding to emails and maybe tooling around with a short story.

On weekends, I shoot for 2,000 – 3,000 words a day. This way, I can finish ahead of schedule, giving me more time for editing later on. I know it sounds like a lot, but when you work at it all the time and get into a rhythm, it’s really not so bad. In fact, I’ve found that by writing on Saturday and Sunday mornings, before the day drains my brain, I can write far more in less time. The key is to get at least 7,000 words in a week so I can meet my goal of a full novel in three months.

Weekends are also a good time to catch up on days you might have missed during the week. Look, we all have lives to live and you can’t always find the time to write. Here’s what my past week looked like :

Monday – 1,900 words (I doubled up knowing that Tuesday was my day off, so to speak.)

Tuesday – nothing (It was St. Patrick’s Day and I’m Irish. ‘Nuff said.)

Wednesday – 1,100 words

Thursday – 1,000 words

Friday – 1,000 words

Saturday – 2,300 words

Sunday – 2,500 words

So, if my goal is 7,000 words a week, even taking a day off, I was able to write 9,800 words, putting me ahead of the game. Total time spent writing, marketing and other stuff – 10 hours. When you think of it, that’s not bad at all. I still had time to work, cook meals, watch movies, spend time with my family and friends and read. I read at least two books a week. I can’t function without my books.

Where do you find 10 hours? Look no further than your TV or YouTube or any other time suck. Turn ‘em off for a while. I promise, they’ll be there when you’re finished. Think of it as a reward for a job well done. What’s more important, watching housewife cat fights or creating your own work of art?

Some weeks are going to be far more productive than others. If you lock your mind on The Thousand Word March, you’ll always know exactly where you stand and what you need to do to accomplish your goals – all without having to become a crazed recluse.

Look, I know there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to writing. Everyone has to find their own way, just as they find their own voice. This is what works for me. If you’re struggling or feel intimidated by the blank page, give it a shot. The Thousand Word March can take you to some pretty amazing places.

Limited Discount on FOREST OF SHADOWS and SINISTER ENTITY - Only 99 cents until March 15th!

To celebrate the coming Friday the 13th, everyone who loves a chilling ghost story can pick up FOREST OF SHADOWS and SINSITER ENTITY for only 99 cents everywhere books are sold.

Find out what happened to Jessica Backman's ghost hunting father. How did she take up the family business, knowing the possible dire consequences? And what do you do when you come face to face with a doppelganger?

Enjoy both books for this very limited special price. Then explore the latest ghost exploits in ISLAND OF THE FORBIDDEN!

You can buy FOREST OF SHADOWS at Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/Forest-Shadows-...

And get Sinister Entity there as well : http://www.amazon.com/Sinister-Entity...

Sleeping with the light on it optional.

Win a copy of Island of the Forbidden

Hey everyone, Goodreads just approved my latest giveaway for my new ghost story, Island of the Forbidden. I'll be giving away 2 signed copies of the book. Simply visit the giveaway paqe on the link below to be in it to win it.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

Good luck!

The Real People Behind The Character – Jessica Backman Revealed

With only 5 days until the release of my next book, ISLAND OF THE FORBIDDEN, I thought it was time to talk a little about my brave ghost warrior, Jessica Backman. This is her third book and it’s strange how life is starting to imitate art, years after art was created to imitate life.

It all started with my very first book, FOREST OF SHADOWS. When I wrote FOS, my two girls were toddlers. My oldest was just about the same age as Jessica in the book, 6. Naturally, characteristic traits of both girls were woven into the fiber of Jessica – curious, precocious, at times braves, other times unsure and afraid. My wife and I back then talked about having 4 kids, all girls if possible. Jessica had long been a frontrunner on our list of baby names. When my wife’s sister had a baby and named her Jessica, even before she knew I was writing about a little girl with the same name, well, it kind of seemed as if this little character had come to life and joined the family. I ended FOS on a pretty definitive note and thought, that’s that. Ain’t it cool that we now have an actual little Jessica in the family?

The book was done, years later it was published and I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about Jessica. What would become of a little girl who’d seen so much? Where was she now? How would she look? How does she hide her scars? (and I was quietly happy that my niece Jessica had led a normal, uneventful life) When my editor asked me for my next project, I said I was going to write one where Jessica was the main character. I moved the story ahead 13 years so she was now 19, smart, witty, foul mouthed and following in her deceased father’s ghost (or as she says, EB) hunting footsteps. A person could go two ways after experiencing what she had in Alaska. They could never think or speak of the supernatural again, or they could press on, armed with the feeling that lightning never strikes twice. In SINISTER ENTITY, Jessica is pretty much a know-it-all badass with proof that there’s a whole new life after death and she isn’t afraid to chase down its secrets. And like all teens, she doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does. Staring into the abyss without hesitation, something glares right back and it rocks her.

When I wrote SE, I had one girl in her teens and the other right behind her. My youngest was starting to gain an interest in the paranormal, just like Jessica. Both were unafraid of ghosts, mainly because we live with one. I don’t presume to know what it behind the unofficial fifth member of our family, but he’s here, just the same. As Jessica grew, so did they, and their personalities had started to meld.

With more tales to tell, I’ve brought Jessica back in ISLAND OF THE FORBIDDEN. Now in her early 20’s, she’s scared of herself and for the first time is afraid of both the worlds of the living and the dead. A grown woman now, she can’t just plow forward without thinking of the consequences. Once youth is lost, there is no getting it back. With that loss comes the flowering of fear.

And with age comes the complications of relationships with family, friends and for Jessica, a man. I see those girl-boy complications all the times with my girls. It makes me glad I’m not single!

In a strange way, Jessica has become a third daughter to us – albeit one who doesn’t need new clothes every season or leaves dirty dishes all around the house. She’s growing right along with my kids, though a little faster. I may have to slow her down so they call catch up. The best and most complicated parts of Jessica come from my own girls. And I do see them adopting some of her traits, even though they haven’t read the books (saving that for a couple of years from now). It’s fascinating to witness, and an honor to write. These 3 particular books have been the most personal to me. Art always intersects with life in some fashion. I’m excited to see where the family goes next.