Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 13
July 10, 2018
Review: Suspended in Dusk II, edited by Simon Dewar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In his foreword, Simon Dewar discusses the themes behind the period of dusk, noting that this is a moment of change, a "time between times", when light turns dark, when good can turn bad. It's a flashpoint for life and death, an instant where the inevitable can turn on a dime, where one's greatest fears or greatest hopes can be realized, a time when people are forever altered and either ruined or reborn. Collected in Suspended in Dusk II are 17 stories that realize these instances of change, to varying degrees. Some are poignant, others are subtle, and all work together to make this a seriously strong anthology of dark fiction.
Much of this strength lies in this anthology's commitment to diversity. Plenty of hay has been made, in certain social media circles, over the lack of inclusiveness in certain high-profile anthologies recently announced and how, in 2018, certain publishers, editors, or compilers could release an all-white male anthology and completely ignore the breadth of voices dark fiction has to offer. Suspended in Dusk II makes no such mistake, giving readers a number of strong voices from across the gender and sexual spectrum. Dewar has collected here several powerful women, writers whose names may be instantly recognizable and lesser-known talents who deserve to become household names, people of color, authors with a wide range of religious affiliations or no religion at all, from a handful of continents. Each, of course, are storytellers first and foremost, but their works carry a certain depth and breadth of experience to challenge publishing's oftentimes default homogeneity.
Take, for instance, Dan Rabarts's Riptide. Rabarts is a New Zealand author, and his story of loss and revenge is built upon the foundations of Māori mythology as a bereaved father and widower battles a taniwha. Gwendolyn Kiste tackles issues of childhood abuse and sexual trauma through an allegorical tale of monsters. Karen Runge, too, tackles similar subjects and their fetishization in this anthology's opening story, Angeline. It's a powerful opener, and Runge's writing is flat-out wonderful. I haven't read Runge's work previously, but you rest assured her novel Seeing Double will be in my hands soon.
Suspended in Dusk II runs the gamut of dark fiction. Not every piece included here is a work of straight-up horror, although it's certainly an element common to most of the stories here. Some are more subtle horrors drawn from the tapestry of life, or death in the case of Bracken MacLeod's story of an injured hiker. Christopher Golden's The Mournful Cry of Owls is a fantastical coming-of-age story, and an incredibly well-drawn one at that, told from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl about to celebrate her Sweet 16, as she passes through the dusk separating adolescence from adulthood and the secrets in between. Others carry overtones of the apocalypse, such as Paul Tremblay's There's No Light Between Floors, a sort-of 9/11 event with Lovecraftian overtones, and Ramsey Campbell's Another World. Campbell's in particular is an excellent use of a decidedly foreign perspective, whose central character encounters our modern world through the filter of religious extremism. Letitia Trent takes her own tract on another world, giving us an encounter with infected, rabid children cast out into the wild and fenced off from society.
Dewar does a fine job balancing the tonal rhythms and themes of each story, giving the anthology a unique pulse. The stories dovetail between their similarities and differences, giving readers slight arcs across the narratives, book-ending them all between Runge's and MacLeod's wildly different, yet thematically similar, stories of a central figure cast out, either by choice or by circumstance, into the wild and left to survive by their own wits, suspended in a moment of dusk.
[Note: I received an advanced reader's copy of this work from the publisher, Grey Matter Press.]
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July 6, 2018
Review: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Brian Keene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
On his podcast, The Horror Show with Brian Keene, Keene has mentioned a few times that Darkness on the Edge of Town was partly inspired by Stephen King's The Mist. Commonalities certainly exist, but there's also more than a touch of King's Under the Dome, as if Keene and King had tapped into similar wavelengths and wrote their works concurrently, and likely unbeknownst to each other. King's Dome was published at the tail-end of 2009, and the first edition of Darkness was published by Leisure Books at the start of 2010, so clearly something was in the air, reaching into their minds from the beyond. I mention this only because there's a cool kind of synchronicity that can exist between creators and it fascinates and amuses me in almost equal measure that in being influenced by a much earlier King story, Keene wrote a somewhat similar story to a then-more current King tome (even if Dome itself is highly derivative of earlier, superior King books). For my money, though, Darkness on the Edge of Town is easily the better of the two.
As the title indicates, darkness is the predominate theme to this particular work. The town of Walden has been blanketed in perpetual night thick enough to blot out the stars. This darkness encases the town, and to leave Walden is suicide (but staying put could also mean certain death). Those who cross the city limits are never seen again, the violent cries of their death throes the final thing that is ever heard from them. Trapped within this small-town, madness begins to take hold as time loses all meaning and supplies begin to grow as scarce as hope.
Darkness on the Edge of Town is, suitably, a dark story. Darkness infests the town as much as it soaks the pages, and the people of Walden are driven toward their baser instincts, guided by their own inner darkness and personal torments. Keene slowly ramps up the violence, escalating from grocery store looters to gang-infested streets, home invasions, and rapes and murders that occur right in the middle of the street. It's bleak, but compulsively readable. I had to know what secrets the darkness held, and whether or not Robbie, Christy, and their neighbors were going to survive this endless night.
I also had to know if and how this book tied into the larger mythos underpinning Keene's narratives. Once the homeless man, Dez, made his appearance and began spouting off arcane craziness, my ears perked right up at the familiar concepts the fine folks of Walden brushed off as insane drivel. My patience was rewarded, and I can say that Darkness on the Edge of Town is most certainly one of the levels in Keene's overarching Labyrinth mythology. I got hints of it in the Clickers books he wrote with J.F. Gonzalez, as well as The Rising, City of the Dead, and The Complex, so I was absolutely delighted to see more of that mythology discussed and elaborated on here.
I'm a sucker for multiplicative Earth's and alternate realities and I dig the way Keene has merged scientific principles, like string theory and quantum mechanics, in a very layman way, with mythological stories to create a multi-storied overarching narrative to connect his works. Best of all, though, is that each of these works function independently. You need not have read The Rising to understand Darkness on the Edge of Town, but if you have you'll find some sweet name-drops along the way. This book in particular is a solid stand-alone, but it's made richer by the baked-in connectivity to Keene's other works.
While all that stuff is certainly cool to be sure, the story surrounding all these little Easter Eggs is just as good. I dug the characters and how they responded to the darkness encroaching upon both the town and their psyches. There's some great interpersonal dynamics at play, as well as some smaller examinations of mob mentality and how vicious and extreme human behavior can get in dire, pressing situations. Darkness is a bleak read on the whole, but a highly infectious one. Like Robbie and his neighbors, the darkness got into my head, too, and it forced me to keep turning the pages. Thankfully, I had plenty of light to read by.
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July 4, 2018
Review: Eat the Rich by Renee Miller
Eat the Rich
By Renee Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ed is at the end of his rope - a bit of an asshole, frustrated by the dead-end rut his life has fallen into, and trapped by debt and a loveless marriage. He makes the decision to walk away from it all, to trade his home and wife for a life of homelessness and freedom. What initially sounds like a glorified camping trip, minus even those simple luxuries of a vacation spent roughing it, ends with Ed directly involved in an alien overthrow of Earth. Led by Dahl, the human-looking invaders have gone planet to planet, freeing the local populations from the tyranny of oppressive capitalism. As the title might indicate, the aliens have a little bit more in store for Earth's 1%. Freeing humanity from the scourge of inequality is great and all, but even more important is the simple fact that rich people taste delicious.
Eat the Rich isn't quite the in-your-face work of message fiction I was expecting, and even mildly wanting, and while there is some exploration of the good and bad in contemporary capitalism Renee Miller is more focused on delivering a work of super-fun alien pulp horror. Economic politics may be the instigating premise behind Eat the Rich, but Miller is careful not to pound readers over the head with her personal opinions as she explores the ways in which certain ideas may appear superficially attractive but can quickly descend into madness. The denouement is very much a 'be careful what you wish for,' particularly in terms of utopian fantasy, let alone one involving life under extraterrestrial rule.
Of course, any kind of politics in fiction is too much for some reader's to handle, but if one were that worried about confronting opposing viewpoints or afraid of encountering even fictional liberal or conservative values in the first place, you probably wouldn't be looking at a book entitled Eat the Rich lest you're deliberately attempting to offend your own delicate sensibilities. And in which case, you probably shouldn't be reading horror or science fiction in the first place, both of which genres are present in this book in spades.
On the other hand, you have at least come this far in considering Eat the Rich, even if only superficially, and either have some kind of backbone, decent taste in fiction, and are either a cannibal or have a serious axe to grind, and so I encourage you to give it a read. It's fun, schlocky, gory entertainment, with sparse prose that makes for an easy breezy read. I quite enjoyed reading about Ed's encounters with various aliens, the police detective Marin, who is charged with investigating the murders of local elites, and the quisling Gopher who hesitatingly introduces Ed to Dahl. The relationship between Ed and Dahl, in fact, is reason enough to check out Eat the Rich and provides an interesting bit of meat and particular complications as the narrative progresses.
If I have any complaint about Miller's story, it's that it moves a bit too fast, with certain big acts getting glossed over. Some aspects of the alien invasion are told through second-hand sources, like news reports and characters telling other characters about things that occurred off-page. I would have preferred Miller to write about such instances directly, giving them a bit more prominence and a wider stage to play out on. On the whole, this is a fairly minor quibble, but it would have been nice to get some more face-eating action on page.
What action does make it to the page, though, and there is plenty, is highly entertaining. Eat the Rich is more Mars Attacks than in terms of alien invasion concepts, and Miller's focus is more on fun than extrapolations of sociopolitical dynamics. This isn't a book that will change the world, and maybe that's a good thing. After all, one person's utopia is another's dystopian nightmare.
[Note: I received an advanced print copy of this title from the publisher, Hindered Souls Press. It came delivered in a biohazard specimen bag, as somebody at this small press publisher is clearly a marketing genius. Alas, no bones or tissue samples were included.]
No rich people were harmed in the writing of this review.
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July 1, 2018
Review: Halcyon by Rio Youers
Halcyon: A Thriller
By Rio Youers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Halcyon is my first novel-length exposure to Rio Youers, although I had previously read only a single short story from him in the anthology Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror. In fact, it was that short story that made me eager to read more of Youers work, and Halcyon served as an excellent introduction to his long-form writing. I suspect, though, that a simple WOW! isn't quite satisfactory enough for a review, but it encapsulates my feelings perfectly.
For the first 30-50%, Halcyon is a bit of a dual narrative that ultimately meets in the middle. On one hand, you have a cult whose members are carrying out unrelated terror attacks in various American locales. On the other hand, you have Martin Lovegrove and his family, who are doing their best to cope with daughter Edith's night terrors. Her night terrors, in fact, are premonitions of violent incidents linked to Mother Moon's cult activities. As the story progresses, and without spoiling the nitty gritty of it all, Martin's family and Mother Moon's cult grow inextricably entwined.
Rio's writing is top-notch, and his storytelling prowess is honed to a knifepoint's edge, cutting bone deep at times. He lulls you in with a naturalistic style, and builds up his characters in ways subtle enough that even minor events carry the strength of a powder-keg's blast, but when he really goes for the heart and soul it's with unflinching brutality. Halcyon gave me two particular moments of tragedy in which I had to set the book down for a bit in order to regroup; it's been a while since a book has done that to me on an emotional-level, so huge kudos to Youers for that.
Beyond his excellent character work, I absolutely loved the concept of Mother Moon's cult, which felt perfectly real to me, as well wholly understandable, even a little bit sympathetic. Building off present-day American politics and disillusionment I could, perhaps too easily, believe why people would want to escape to Halcyon and Moon's promise of a simpler, back-to-basics lifestyle. It's more than tempting to leave behind our world of daily mass shootings and the instant-rage machine of social media to live off the grid on an idyllic island retreat, free of the daily grind, where you can reconnect with your family, know your neighbors, and enjoy the beauty of nature. Of course, there is that bit of fine print warning you to be careful what you wish for and if it sounds too good to be true, well then...
This is a book that's packed with suspense, tragedy, several moments guaranteed to ramp up your blood pressure, and plenty of horror from both the supernatural kind and the all too-real world around us. I really cannot recommend it enough, and I think this is a title that is just as deserving, if not more so, than some of this summer's much-hyped reads. Halcyon perfectly balances moments of soul-crushing despair with uplifting hope, reminding us that even in our darkest moments there's still some light to be found if only we look hard enough.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher, St. Martin's Press, via NetGalley.]
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June 30, 2018
BROKEN SHELLS: Reader Reactions
One of the coolest things as an author is hearing from readers about how much they've enjoyed your work. Being tagged in photos of your book out in the wild is not only awesome, but immensely rewarding. Now that we're half-way through 2018, people are starting to share some of their best reads of the year-so-far, and I've been shocked and delighted to see Broken Shells making the grade from some seriously voracious horror readers.
Sadie is a new reviewer for SCREAM Magazine and an incredibly prolific Bookstagrammer over on Instagram. If you're not following her, you should be! She's good people!
June 27, 2018
Review: Sick House by Jeff Strand [audiobook]
Sick House
By Jeff Strand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My original SICK HOUSE audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Usually, the haunted house and the home invasion story are two separate tropes within the horror genre, although it could be argued the two certainly have a fair share of overlap, particularly in terms of how the terror is delivered. In Sick House, Jeff Strand tears down whatever walls were separating these particular types of stories to deliver a tale of a home invasion from beyond the grave, one that is, in typical Jeff Strand tradition, laced with plenty of humor in between buckets of blood and gore.
Few authors straddle the realms of comedy and horror as well as Strand, and it can be a difficult balancing act to simultaneously make a reader laugh and feel grossed out. For Strand, though, it’s a natural talent and his comedic chops are firmly on display here. Paige, the thirteen-year-old daughter of new homeowners Boyd and Adeline Gardner, is quintessentially Strand, constantly trying her parents with her outlandish, ribald commentary that leaves Boyd demanding to know, “Why are you so comfortable with me?!” The dialogue between each of Strand’s characters is witty and tack-sharp, and it’s always a pleasure to listen to the character’s conversations unfold.
This lightness, however, is offset by moments to makes you squirm and, eventually, sheer brutality. Shortly after moving into their new home, the Gardener’s begin to notice that their freshly bought groceries rot with incredible swiftness, and soon several of them become ill. Odd occurrences mark their days with increasing rapidity until the ghosts finally make their presence known and the terror sets in. Strand delivers a number of extremely well-executed and shockingly violent set pieces as the Gardener’s struggle to survive, but it comes with a minor caveat. Some of the metaphysical shenanigans got a little too cartoonish for me, but I still found Sick House to be solidly entertaining overall.
Joe Hempel’s narration is wonderfully straight-forward, which serves to help keep the material grounded. I think that a less capable narrator might be inclined to ham it up and lean hard into some of the book’s slapstick elements, but Hempel acts as the straight man to Strand’s comedic stylings. Hempel and Strand make for a great double act, and I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Joe to not crack up at some of the material he reads here. Thankfully, the narration is smooth and flawless, uninterrupted by gales of laughter and gasps of discomfort, which is left entirely up to the audience to supply.
[Note: Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com]
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June 25, 2018
Broken Shells Goodreads Group Read-Along, and From The Ashes Is About To Go Extinct
The Horror Aficionados on Goodreads have selected Broken Shells for their July read-along, and they've invited me to be their guest author for the month. I'll be on tap to answer reader's questions about the work all throughout July, so be sure to pop into the forums and check it out. Discuss Broken Shells with your fellow horror fans, ask me all your burning questions, and enjoy a fun, briskly paced novella chock full of creature-feature mayhem!
You can join the discussion in the Group Reads: Guest Author Invite section of the Horror Aficionados community.
If you haven't bought your copy of Broken Shells yet, I've got good news for you! I've marked the eBook edition down to 99c on all platforms. This sale is good for this whole week, Monday, June 25 through Saturday, June 30. After that, it goes back up to it's usual retail price of $2.99.
You can purchase Broken Shells right now from the following places:
Amazon | iBooks | Nook | KoboGoogle Play | SmashwordsIf you're not an eBook fan, you can buy the paperback copy from Amazon or Barnes & Noble and have it with plenty of time to spare to join me and the Horror Aficionados readers. You can also find Broken Shells in audiobook from Bleeding Ears Audio at Audible and iTunes.
This morning, Broken Shells got a shoutout from the Ginger Nuts of Horror. Columnist Tony Jones named Broken Shells as one of his personal favorite underground-set horror titles in a list he compiled for "Going Underground: Horrors Which Lurk Below..." Besides my own work, Tony lists a number of excellent similarly-theme horror books, including Nick Cutter's The Deep.
Funnily enough, Tony's article is the second time this week Broken Shells has been mentioned alongside Nick Cutter's work, which I take as a high honor. Author Kyle Warner recently mentioned my novella alongside Cutter's The Troop in his article, The Expectations of Blood and Gore, for Scriptophobic.
Ginger Nuts of Horror contributor John Bender also recently reviewed Broken Shells, as well as Mass Hysteria and Revolver, at his personal blog for a massive review round-up of my recent works. Check it out!
As with all good news, there must come some bad news, I'm afraid. Amazon recently announced their termination of Kindle Worlds. If you're not familiar with Kindle Worlds, the gist of it is this: Amazon developed contracts with a host of popular, best-selling authors with successful brands and series, and allowed other authors to come in and play in those series by writing non-canonical stories under the KW banner. Some of these stories included properties from J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, Barry Eisler, Hugh Howey, and Nicholas Sansbury Smith, author of the Extinction Cycle series. In 2016, Nick invited to write a story for the launch of his Extinction Cycle Kindle Worlds line, and From The Ashes was released in October of that year.
Unfortunately, Kindle Worlds will be shutting down permanently very soon, and all Kindle Worlds titles will be going out of print effective July 16. From The Ashes will soon be unavailable, so if you haven't had a chance to read it yet, now is the time! You can still buy it exclusively at Amazon, but not for much longer. And if you do buy it, it will remain a part of your personal Kindle library despite no longer be available for sale on Amazon, and you'll be able to enjoy it for as long as you like and brag to your friends that you have something they may never be able to obtain again.
From The Ashes is set during the finale of Nick's first Extinction Cycle novel, Extinction Horizon. If you've read that book, you're all set to read and enjoy From the Ashes, although it's not necessary. I made an effort to make From The Ashes as much of a stand-alone work as possible, albeit one existing within the world created by Nick. If you haven't read Nick's series yet, the Extinction Cycle books revolve around an apocalyptic event and are military thrillers with plenty of cutting-edge science, ever-evolving monsters, and lots and lots of action. I enjoyed reading them even before I wrote From The Ashes, and I think you'll get a kick out of them too.
Review: Manifest Recall by Alan Baxter
Manifest Recall
By Alan Baxter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Eli Carver has a bit of a problem - he's a wanted man and there's a kidnapped woman sitting next to him in the car he's driving. That's not the real problem, though. The real problem is that he can't remember how or why he's gotten into this predicament. As an enforcer for a mob boss, Carver has killed his fair share of people, and a number of them are now sitting in the backseat of his car, rooting for his demise. To make things worse, Carver keeps experiencing lost time, blacking out just as he begins to recall the sequence of events that have put him on the run.
I haven't read Alan Baxter previously, but Manifest Recall was a solid enough introduction that I fully expect to cross paths with this author again in the future. Manifest Recall is satisfyingly violent, dark, and consistently engaging, even when you consider that not a whole lot actually happens in the first half of the book in terms of forward momentum. While there's plenty of information conveyed to the reader as Carver and Carly, the kidnapped woman, converse and Carver begins to recall certain details about himself and his past, the duo are mostly confined to the front seats of the car, driving to parts unknown and with no destination in mind. Baxter punches things up with some brief moments of violence, but much of the story is told in flashback until we hit the book's second half and the characters and readers alike are all caught up to speed. While part one of Manifest Recall is a smooth read, part two really kicks things into high gear as the story races swiftly to its big, action-packed, run-and-gun climax.
Although Manifest Recall is billed as a supernatural crime thriller, it can be read one of two ways. You either accept that the ghosts, each of them one of Carver's victims, are literally supernatural entities that only he can see and speak with, or you chalk up their presence as hallucinations belonging to a damaged man having a psychotic break with reality. Personally, I prefer the second path and while I choose to interpret Baxter's work here as more of a straight-up crime thriller, others may just as comfortably accept Carver being literally haunted. Given its billing, though, I was expecting much more spookiness and was a bit disappointed that Carver's ghosts was the be-all end-all to this story's supernatural element. However, if I approach this title as a straight-up crime story of a killer who is metaphorically haunted by his guilt and suffering an extreme mental break, Manifest Recall becomes supremely satisfying.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher, Grey Matter Press.]
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June 22, 2018
Review: Cockblock by C.V. Hunt
Cockblock
By C.V. Hunt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Heading out for a posh date night, Sonya and her girlfriend Callie find themselves harassed by groups of men as they walk from their apartment to a nearby Italian restaurant. The men quickly escalate from shitty pick-up lines and cat-calling to more sexually aggressive attacks. Sonya and Callie find that escaping into the restaurant has only brought them deeper into a realm of eye-opening depravity. Everywhere, men are transforming into violent sex-crazed zombies, all thanks to a message originating from a radio broadcast being delivered by the President of the United States. If the women of America have any hope of surviving, they have to terminate the message directly at its source. But will they be able to make it to DC and survive the sea of fully-erect men standing in their way?
Cockblockby C.V. Hunt is a work of extreme horror, and an original, wildly interesting, and often-times painful, riff on the zombie apocalypse. Yes, it's violent and angry and sexually-charged and filled with depictions of rape, but never callously or needlessly so. This is a work of extreme horror borne straight from the depths of the Trump administration, and it's necessarily grizzly.
What do you do when the supreme figurehead of your country is a repulsive, pussy-grabbing, racist, morally bankrupt, bigoted egomaniac whose daily existence is a dog-whistle for the absolute worst in American society? What happens when your friends and neighbors, even members of your own family, are suddenly rallied, energized, and transformed into savage, mindless, lunatic zombies by that man's messages of hate? You resist. You fight back. You try to fix your country anyway you can.
Cockblock is a smart and swift slice of Resistance fiction, one that is by its very nature ugly and sickening but with a core filled with enough rabble-rousing girl-power to give readers hope. I have little doubt that men will ultimately destroy this world, and that women will be the ones responsible and smart enough to fix our ineptitude and misdeeds. Sonya and Callie are forced to contend with a world that has changed overnight, in the blink of an eye, and has rolled over to expose its vile, cancerous, dark underbelly. Giving up isn't in their nature, though, and despite all the overwhelming sexual violence levied against them they never surrender - they keep fighting, and I kept rooting for them, living vicariously through them as they kicked every pair of diseased, low-hanging balls that got in their way.
Hunt filters Cockblock through a grindhouse aesthetic (appropriate, as the publisher of Cockblock is Grindhouse Press), drawing upon not only traditional zombie fare but various exploitative film genres as rape and revenge, women in prison, and sexploitation flicks. It's a bit of Caligula, a bit of I Spit On Your Grave, a bit of Roger Corman, and way too fucking much of Trump's America. Hunt's protagonists take their fight straight to the streets and all the way to the top with an angry, energetic fervor that makes Cockblock one of the most surprisingly patriotic splatterpunk reads I've come across, with one of the most satisfying finales I've read in some time. This book is a drop-kick straight to Trump's nutsack, and I fucking loved it. This book gets all the stars, and a few extra stripes of red, white, and blue to go with them.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher.]
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Interview: Hunter Shea, author of Jurassic Florida
Hunter Shea has been a favorite of mine for a few years now, earning my attention rather quickly with his weird western novel Hell Hole [review]. The fact that Hunter is one of the most reviewed authors on this site speaks both to my love for the man's work and also just how damn prolific he is. I haven't read all of Hunter's books just yet, but it's pretty damn close. Over the last few years, Mr. Shea has become inextricably entwined with creature features, oftentimes of the cryptozoological nature, and his particular brand of horror is all about fun. While the monsters are certainly important, the human element is equally well-crafted and vital to the success of Hunter's works.
This summer and fall, Kensington Books is releasing Hunter's One Size Eats All trilogy. Like last year's Mail Order Massacres, each title will be a stand-alone novella tied to one another by a common theme. First up is Jurassic Florida, which released this past Tuesday (you can read my review here). To mark this new release, Hunter was kind enough to join the High Fever Books blog for a few questions. Welcome to the blog, Hunter!
Favorite beer and favorite scream queen or Final Girl?
Oh man, favorite beer? It’s like asking me to pick my favorite child. For many, many moons, it was Sapporo, but lately I’m digging 914 by Yonkers Brewing. Love their place on the Hudson River, too. As for my favorite Final Girl, if we’re going old school, it’s Julie Adams from Creature From The Black Lagoon for damn sure. In more modern times, I would have to say Sharni Vinson as Erin in You’re Next. That little waif of a woman was a total bad ass.
It looks like your first published book was 2011’s Forest of Shadows, and over the last seven years you’ve built up a hell of a catalog of titles. How long were you writing prior to becoming a published author and tell us a bit about your writing process. What allows you to pump out so many consistently good and entertaining books so quickly?I got bitten by the writing bug in the mid-90s. I spent years working on short stories, tried my hand at a couple of novellas, then dove into the deep end and wrote a romantic comedy as my first novel. I just wanted to see if I could sustain that passion and momentum for a whole book. Once I proved to myself I could, I wrote another, this one a pretty dark comedy. All of it was prep work to write my true love, horror. I didn’t want to do it until I felt I was ready. Forest of Shadows took years to write because my kids were babies at the time, and years sitting in one editor’s hands (Don D’Auria) before it got accepted. But it was worth the wait. When I’m working on a book, I try to write at least 1,000 words every day, trying to double the output on weekends. That way, I know I can get a book done and edited in 4-5 months. Novellas I attack like a sprinter. They key is to just sit my ass down and write. There are so many distractions out there, but if you want to be a working writer, you have to learn to ignore them. There’s no shortage of ideas, just time to get them all out of my head.
You don’t just write about the paranormal and cryptozoological, but you actively seek it out. In your Monster Men YouTube series, you’ve discussed all things supernatural and have taken the occasional visit to a haunted cemetery or two. Where did this fascination come from, and have you had any encounters with the supernatural? Tell us about your monster hunting!Growing up, one of my grandmother’s was a psychic. Not the kind that had people pay her money to read their palms or tell their future. My grandfather said she would hold séances and he’d seen their table levitate a couple of times. By the time she was just grandma to me, she looked a lot like Mrs. Butterworth. She was an amazingly sweet lady who never talked about her gift. Cut to my getting married and my wife and I moved into what we now know is a haunted house. We see a boy walking around from time to time. Not like a pale ghost, but an actual boy. You get this very calming feeling when he’s around. It’s hard to describe. I’ve had several other odd experiences, including one the night my father passed, that make it impossible for me not to believe there’s more to death than just THE END. I haven’t done much monster hunting simply because there aren’t many monster sightings in lower New York. LOL But, I have gone on many, many UFO hunts in Orange County, NY.
Jurassic, Florida just came out earlier this week and revolves around the sleepy little town of Polo Springs coming under attack by enormous prehistoric iguanas. What do you have against iguanas? What made them the perfect monstrosity to base a story around in your latest creature feature?
I hate reptiles. I love animals, just not snakes and lizards. My kids have been asking for a pet iguana since they could talk. I tell them they are free to get as many iguanas as they want when they move out. My editor and I wanted to do this big, Bert I. Gordon inspired novella with giant reptiles. Watching Floridians get eaten by them just seemed like a lot of fun (no offense to Floridians – I get joy out of all people being terrorized by prehistoric beasts). Now I can tick killer giant iguanas off my writing bucket list.
Jurassic, Florida is also notable for being the first in a series of novellas for Kensington Books that are united under the One Size Eats All banner. Last summer you wrote the Mail Order Massacres novella series for them. How did these trilogies develop? What’s the creative processes like in bringing these works to life?I have a great editor there, Gary Goldstein, who, like me, is just a big kid warped by comic books, B movies and bad television. We had so much success with the Mail Order Massacres series that we wanted to tackle a new one, but shift it from comics to nature gone wild. The original series title was Hunter Shea’s Don’t Fuck With Nature, but naturally we were turned down on that one. Gary and I trolled for stories on the Internet for inspiration. Living in NY, we read a news article about how rats were becoming resistant to rodenticide, so in comes Rattus New Yorkus. Another story about swarms of tiny iguanas got us to Jurassic Florida. The Devil’s Fingers came from I think Gary seeing a horrid picture of what they look like. Once I saw it, I ran with it. Those things look like they’re either from outer space or hell.
The Devil's Fingers mushroom looks like the love child of Giger's facehugger and Hellboy's Ogdru JahadOver the course of your career so far, we’ve had books about Loch Ness, Orang Pendek, a megalodon, the Montauk Monster, chimera fish, and so, so much more. How do you decide what creature to feature from book to book? When you set out to write, does the creature come first, or do you develop a story around the creature first and plug in a threat? Do you have a list of cryptids you’re working your way through?
It’s crazy how I’ve fallen down this cryptid hole. And I love it. I’m a huge fan of cryptozoology, so yes, I do have a list. I always start with the monster and flesh the story out from there. Even though they’re creature features, getting the humans just right is most important to me. People don’t walk away from Loch Ness Revenge wanting more Nessie. They want more Nat and Austin and Henrik. That makes me happy. Plus, I’m just having a ball writing about all the beasties that have fascinated me since I was a kid.
What’s your personal favorite cryptid (and why)? Is there a creature you haven’t written about yet, but that you’re dying to tackle in the future?Growing up, I was a huge Nessie lover. I wanted to move to Scotland and just live on the Loch. Back then, I loved any aquatic creature. My fascination went from sharks to whales to Nessie. Now, to me, the most fascinating cryptid and backstory belongs to the Mothman, hands down. Everyone should read John Keel’s book, The Mothman Prophecies. We are talking some wild, weird stuff. It wasn’t just about a winged creature terrorizing people. We’re talking ghosts, UFOs, men in black and so much more. I really have to get my butt to the annual festival this year.
You’re perhaps best known for writing really fun, humorous, off-the-wall works of horror that are high on action and adventure. But you’ve also got a few works that are more serious in tone, like We Are Always Watching. In the fall, Flame Tree Press will be releasing its first wave of horror titles, including your novel Creature, which sounds like it’s one of your more serious works with its heroine, Kate, suffering from an autoimmune disease. What can you tell us about Creature and how your own life inspired this book?I love character driven stories, and Flame Tree gave me a golden opportunity to explore some dark and scary issues. It was very difficult to write because so much of it is drawn from my own life. My wife has a series of autoimmune diseases that have nearly taken her life more times than we can count. I took all that fear we’ve experienced and laid it out on the page. Sure, it’s set in a cottage in the Maine woods, but it’s not a teen slasher romp. I want readers not just to be scared by the antagonist, but to also understand how tenuous their own health and lives are. Nothing is more frightening than that. People who loved We Are Always Watching I think- I hope - will devour this one.
Creature also sees you working again with famed horror editor, Don D’Auria. You worked with him previously when you both were with the now defunct Samhain Publishing. How was it working with Don again?I love Don. He was the only editor I sent my very first book to because I only wanted to work with him. And by some magical twist of fate, here we are years later, not just editor and writer, but friends. Don is great because he values the writer’s vision. If he’s chosen to work with you, it’s because he loves your work and trusts your instincts. He’s just there to tighten things up for you. It’s incredible creative freedom. With Don, I can try my hand at just about anything, so long as it hits certain marks and has characters people give a crap about. Without that, you have nothing.
Do you prefer writing the pulpy creature features, or the more serious horror novels like We Are Always Watching? Do you find one style to be more rewarding?The more serious toned books are much, much harder to write and like all things in life, more fulfilling. It’s just a different experience. I almost feel like when I write the creature features, I’m a kid who can’t believe I get to do this for a living. When I step into a book like Creature, I have to put my big boy pants on and be an adult. Both are extremely satisfying in their own ways.
What comes next for you? Pimp away!After Jurassic Florida, the next in the series, Rattus New Yorkus will come out in August, followed by the series ender, The Devil’s Fingers in October (just in time for Halloween!!!). Right now, I’m working on a ghost writing project that is a whole new world for me. Once that’s complete, I have a new novella for Severed Press to work on that people who dig The Thing will salivate over. Then it’s on to my next book with Don and Flame Tree. Speaking of that, I have to get the synopsis over to him!
Where can readers find you? Share you links!It’s all at www.huntershea.com. On Instagram, you can find me @huntershea2017. Feel free to visit me any time! I actually respond to folks when they reach out to me. :)
FLORIDA. IT’S WHERE YOU GO TO DIE.
Welcome to Polo Springs, a sleepy little town on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It’s a great place to live—if you don’t mind the hurricanes. Or the flooding. Or the unusual wildlife . . .
IGUANAS. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE.
Maybe it’s the weather. But the whole town is overrun with the little green bastards this year. They’re causing a lot of damage. They’re eating everything in sight. And they’re just the babies . . .
HUMANS. THEY’RE WHAT’S FOR DINNER.
The mayor wants to address the iguana problem. But when Hurricane Ramona slams the coast, the town has a bigger problem on their hands. Bigger iguanas. Bigger than a double-wide. Unleashed by the storm, this razor-toothed horde of prehistoric predators rises up from the depths—and descends on the town like retirees at an early bird special. Except humans are on the menu. And it’s all you can eat . . .
