THE JERSEY DEVIL IS HERE! Sneak Peek Time & Goodies For The Hellions
Man, it feels like I’ve been waiting forever for today to come. My latest foray into cryptid monster madness, THE JERSEY DEVIL, is finally here, available EVERYWHERE. It’s going to be a week long full court press, with lots of fun along the way. Think of it like shark week, only with a killer creature birthed in the primordial Pine Barrens 200 years ago. If you plan to purchase the book on Amazon, please do so through my store or the links on this page.
First up will be an interview on the Horror Happens Radio Show with my main man, Jay Kay. This guy loves horror and is one of the biggest advocates for the genre. I’m scheduled to be on tonight at 7:30pm ET. We’ll be talking JD and other crazy stuff.
Wednesday is the big Facebook live event where I’ll be live and on camera answering your crazy questions and Lord knows what else I’ll get up to. Hellions who participate will be eiligible to win awesome new swag, free books and more! I’ll be giving the store away as we mosey along. I think we’ll need to come up with a drinking game. The party starts at 7pm ET and goes until I end up face down on the keyboard.
Aaaaand, here’s a sneak peek at the first chapter of THE JERSEY DEVIL. Hope you dig it, join the fun and let’s get our monster on!
Jane Moreland couldn’t believe how heavy Henry was, now that he was dead weight and starting to ripen. She should have done this last night, right when it happened, but she’d needed a clearer head. Polishing off the bottle of Knob Creek and passing out on the kitchen table hadn’t helped matters much.
Well, no sense complaining. She’d been due a little me time.
She woke up after noon, unsure what had transpired the night before until she saw him, lying there beside the sofa, neck all twisted to one side and his face blue as a Smurf.
At least there isn’t blood all over the place, she’d thought. Just a little at the corner of his mouth. None on the carpet. One less thing she had to worry about.
There was no way she could get him in the truck during the day without anyone seeing. To kill time, she took a long, hot bath, washed and dried a load of laundry, drank three bottles of Coors that had been tucked away in the back of the fridge, watched a Jimmy Stewart movie on TMC and chain-smoked half a pack of coffin nails. The entire time, her eyes kept flicking to the clock then the window, waiting for the sun to check out. She found some old jeans and a .38 Special concert T-shirt, put on her scuffed cowboy boots and tied her blond hair in a high pony tail.
When it was half past six, she dragged an old throw rug from the garage, laid it next to her husband and turned him into it with a whole lot of grunting and sweat. She’d thought it would be as easy as rolling up a burrito. Back when she was in high school, she’d worked at a burrito joint owned by a pair of Chinese brothers with deep Southern accents. She’d never been able to reconcile the words coming out of those faces. It was a time before Chipotle, when a burrito was a mushy thing you got at a Mexican restaurant that tasted like crap. The job, and the place, didn’t last very long. In the two months she worked there, she became an expert at making burritos so fat, they were just about to bust out of their flour straitjackets.
A dead Henry, she learned quickly, was a hell of a lot more to handle than shredded beef, beans and rice. Once she’d gotten the rug around him and cinched off the ends with duct tape, she sat propped up against his cocooned body and laughed, wondering how many burritos it would take to equal Henry’s total mass. Logic dictated that she should have been distressed at this point, perhaps freaked out or even, daresay, remorseful.
“You didn’t earn my remorse,” she said to the rug-encased corpse, giving it a hard slap as she stood up.
Good old boy Henry was a righteous bastard, a redneck from some pissant town in South Carolina who’d made his way to New Jersey via a construction job when he was in his twenties. They’d met at Dingo’s Bar when she was still two years from legal drinking age. At first, she’d been entranced, as young, dumb girls will, by his sweet Southern accent. She’d heard him order a Jack and Coke over the din of meatheads and was immediately drawn to the rugged cutie with long hair and five day stubble. He couldn’t have stood out more if he had worn an alien mask and bikini.
They dated for six months, took a trip to Vegas and became a cliché. It took a whole year before the real Henry Moreland came out. He smacked her across the face in a drunken stupor one night because she didn’t hand him the TV remote fast enough.
The rest is the same sad story that too many women confess to at shelters or police stations. After a while, Jane didn’t know who she hated more – Henry for being an abusive asshole or herself for not having the guts to run away.
On nights she couldn’t sleep, she’d let her mind linger on all the different ways she could make him disappear. That was her happy place. Poison his dinner, cut the brake lines in his truck, loosen the top step going down to the basement, the possibilities were endless. Thinking about it always settled her down. But that’s all they were – private thoughts. Jane knew she was too chickenshit to actually do anything. Hell, she couldn’t even bring herself to jump in the car and just drive until she hit a border crossing, north or south. It didn’t matter.
And then he came home last night, so drunk he could barely stand. He’d parked his pickup on the front lawn, stopping just a few feet from the house. Jane had been reading in her favorite lounge chair – the one with the little head cushion- on the ground level porch. It had been a nice night and even the bugs tapping against the overhead light didn’t bother her…much. If Henry had applied the brakes just a hair later, he would have killed her.
This is a fine example of why you read to the end of a blog post. Starting September 1st, you can enter a contest on Night Owl Reviews to win a $25 Amazon gift card. Don’t say I never gave you anything!
A Live Jersey Devil Release Party – Join The Madness!
Alright ya nutty Hellions, I’m calling on you to join me next week for a live Facebook event to celebrate the release of my latest foray into monster insanity – THE JERSEY DEVIL! That’s right, on Wednesday, August 31st from 7pm ET on, I’ll be live on my Facebook Fan Page talking about the book, sipping cocktails and answering your questions with zero filter. This could be the end of my career, so watch the crash and burn. 😉
Oh, and everyone who takes part is eligible to win a super secret prize pack that’ll be like Christmas in August! I’ll also be giving out random books throughout the evening.
Early reviewers are digging my take on the Soprano state’s favorite beastie –
“THE JERSEY DEVIL, by Hunter Shea, is a fast paced rampage of the type of “old-school” horror I’ve always loved.” — Horror After Dark
“Plain and simple – this book is just pure bloody fun. High-octane action, guts galore (in terms of both gutsy characters and actual guts dropping onto the forest floor), and enjoyable characters make this a stand-out creature feature.” — Author Michael Patrick Hicks
If you plan to buy the book on Amazon, I ask you to please do so through this page or my bookstore. That way, I get to keep the lights on and my ass planted in a seat writing more insanity for you.
And just up today is an interview over at 2 Book Lovers Reviews where I do a little devil talk and reveal whether I prefer David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar.
So please set a reminder to join me next Wednesday and think of crazy/fun/bizarre questions and topics. A little Patron might help, too.
One Step Closer To The Jersey Devil
I got my final page proofs for THE JERSEY DEVIL in the mail this week. This is my last pass before the whole shebang goes to print. I have my multi-colored pen ready to roll. Prepare for the madness to come in late August!
Mystery of the Chupacabra
As a lover of all things cryptid, I’m naturally fascinated by the strange and mysterious Chupacabra. Is it an unknown animal, alien, government experiment gone wrong?
Well, to help us all out, I’ve turned to one of my buds, Raegan Butcher, who has just written an excellent monster novel, FURY OF THE CHUPACABRAS. To write the book, he dove into the deep end of the chupacabra pool.I can’t think of anyone better to teach us a thing or two about the dreaded goat sucker! So lock your doors and windows, settle in to a comfy chair and read on if you dare…
The chupacabra.
What is it?
The name, coined by Puerto Rican comedian Silverio Perez, means “goatsucker” in Spanish, and comes from the animal’s reported habit of drinking the blood of livestock—especially goats. The first reports of this mysterious creature came from Puerto Rico in 1995 when eight sheep were discovered dead, with three puncture wounds in the chest, and completely drained of blood. At first, a Satanic cult was suspected, but soon the first eyewitness reports appeared, which described a creature – some sort of lizard-like beast, about the size of a small bear, with sharp, glowing quills on its back and large, round eyes. The beast was said to be able to hop like a kangaroo, suck blood like a bat, and was reported to emit a strange, piercing cry.
As a youngster growing up in the 1970s, I was enthralled by the numerous Bigfoot sightings that occurred in my home state of Washington and other parts of the Pacific Northwest. The idea that some unknown animal could be lurking on the edge of civilization tickled my imagination in all the right ways. Because of my love of horror and sci fi, I have always been fascinated by monsters, and the chupacabra sounded right up my alley. Doing a bit of research, I discovered some cases from the past that were eerily similar to the infamous goatsucker.
In New Orleans there is a popular lover’s lane known as “Grunch Road”, named as such after several reports of a lizard-like beast haunting the vicinity and frightening horny teenagers appeared in the local press in the 1940s and ‘50s. And then there is a case which sounds almost exactly like a chupacabra: the dreaded “Vampire of Moca”. This unknown fiend kicked off its killing spree in February 1975, in Barrio Rocha, a sector of the town of Moca, in Puerto Rico, where it took the lives of a number of animals in a grisly manner never seen before. Fifteen cows, three goats, two geese and a pig were found dead with bizarre perforations on their hides. Autopsies showed that the animals had been bled dry, as if consumed by some predator. After six months, and the deaths of over 150 farm animals, the mysterious “Vampire of Moca” vanished into history and obscurity.
Or did it?
Almost exactly twenty years later, the chupacabra appeared, and the Puerto Rican press once again began to report sightings of a strange beast that preyed upon livestock. Some people on the island believe that chupacabras are a genetic bio-experiment which escaped from a secret laboratory (The US military has had a large presence across Puerto Rico since the 1930’s, with bases on the island used as Research and Development facilities for a number of classified projects). Others speculate that the creature is an escaped pet of alien visitors that wandered off while its master was visiting Earth. How’s that for a far-out theory? The chupacabra does have a slight resemblance to the Grey aliens, which could mean that they are somehow genetically related, a wonderfully tantalizing theory.
For reasons too complicated to explain here (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21972578-stone-hotel ) I ended up in prison from June 1996 to March 2003 for armed robbery (yeah, I was a crazy sumbitch, back then). As you might imagine, I had a lot of time on my hands. I was already a writer when I went down, so I tried to use my excess of time wisely and write as much as I could during those seven years. I’d always wanted to write something about the chupacabra, as they seemed heaven sent, as far as “rule of cool” goes: some kind of lizard monster that drinks blood? As a creature-feature fan from earliest childhood, I was all over it.
But I couldn’t get a handle on how to shape the story. At first I thought of that great old British sci-fi movie Island Of Terror, and I remembered the first scene with the constable finding a body with its bones sucked out. Maybe I could set my chupacabra story on a small island off the coast of Mexico…first scene would be some guy finding his livestock drained of blood…and we go from there? Hmmm. I put the idea in the back of my mind and went on with my life, such as it was.
Years passed. Then, one day in 2002, while I was walking the yard with another inmate (who, for legal reasons, shall remain nameless) it all clicked into place. This nameless inmate was telling me a story of almost getting busted at the Mexican border with a car full of illegal weapons and the anecdote was told with such flair that I immediately saw it as a scene in my chupacabra book. Two brothers, Americans, one of them an ex-soldier (as was the nameless inmate) smuggling guns into Mexico, and they get attacked by chupacabras. Story starts out with the tense scene at the border and we go from there. I wrote it as a screenplay first and, like I always do, I finished it, put it away, forgot about it, and moved on to the next thing.
Flash forward ten years. I was now a free man, with a few poetry books under my belt, (http://www.amazon.com/Raegan-Butcher/e/B00BO6QI3M/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1) and I wanted to work on my prose skills. I rummaged around in my papers and found the chupacabra script. I had such fun turning it into the novella Attack of the Chupacabras (included in the book Fury of the Chupacabras) http://necropublications.com/collections/raegan-butcher/products/fury-of-the-chupacabras-by-raegan-butcher-trade-paperback that I ended up writing four novels and creating a whole series, which I’ve dubbed the Chupacabra Chronicles. The books started out as simple survival-horror situations but they quickly became a series of action-conspiracy-monster-mystery-adventure-sci-fi-horror books. The Chupacabra Chronicles were written purely for fun. My goal was to keep the reader turning the pages, surprise them, make them gasp; keep them entertained by the developing story. I tried to fill the series with everything I like: action, tension, suspense, dark humor, and all of the most outlandish sci fi and conspiracy tropes I could come up with during my many hours of research on the internet.
I am grateful that Necro is crazy enough to publish these chupacabra books, one volume in the continuing saga of the chupacabra chronicles every six months for the next two years, with perhaps more after that. I had an absolute blast writing them. Now the pleasure is all yours. Have fun.
New Bigfoot Movie – Stomping Ground
You all know how much I like to get my squatch on. I’m always on the lookout for new flicks about Bigfoot…and aliens. Well, here’s one that hits DVD and VOD on March 8th. It’s called STOMPING GROUND and it looks like a hell of a ride. Hellions, start your squatches!
First, the elevator pitch – “A young couple on a weekend trip in the American south embark on an impromptu “Bigfoot hunt” that threatens both their relationship & their lives.”
Ben & Annie are a young couple living in Chicago, on a weekend trip to Annie’s small North Carolina hometown. At the local bar they run into Paul, a charming old friend of Annie’s, and Ben learns something he never knew about his girlfriend: She believes in Bigfoot. In fact, she and her friends used to “hunt” for the creature when they were kids. Before Ben knows it, he’s off on an impromptu Squatchin’ trip deep in the Carolina backwoods. Amidst the Squatch calls, campfire stories and beers, Ben quickly realizes that Paul may have an ulterior motive in bringing Annie to the woods. And something else out here seems to be after her as well. Everyone but Ben thinks its Bigfoot. But it can’t be, can it? After all, Bigfoot isn’t real…
And as an added bonus, the film features a cameo performance from Theresa Tilly, best known as one of the original “Ladies of the Evil Dead” from Sam Raimi’s horror classic, The Evil Dead.
Check out some of the early reviews –
“Successful in warming the hearts and chilling the bones, Stomping Ground is a whole lot of fun to watch.” – Ain’t It Cool News
“A cast that delivers… Terrific use of the natural settings… A step above most Bigfoot films…” – All Things Horror
“It’s not easy to find a creature feature where the characters are as relatable and believable as they are in Stomping Ground.” – Film Bizarro
Get your best tree knocking bat and deer pheromones and join me in the forest, won’t ya?
For all the latest Squatch news, sign up for my free Dark Hunter Newsletter today.
Take A Walk With A Demon
You don’t even have to go to hell to stride along with this demon. I’m very happy to announce that The Dover Demon Blog Tour has begun, 6 weeks of cryptid love with chances to win signed books and more. This may be a critter you’ve never heard of, but I promise you’ll never forget him…or her…after you’ve read the book.
“Hunter Shea takes these (cryptid) legends to a petrifying new place and drags you along for the ride. He is quickly becoming of the authors I can count on for a great read. 4.5 out of 5 stars! Horror Maiden’s Book Reviews
Big thanks to Erin El Mehairi for putting everything together. She is truly the patron saint of horror’s lost boys. Visit the tour stops by clicking the above image and make sure to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway for your chance to win signed books.
You can get The Dover Demon in trade paperback or ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Samhain Publishing and everywhere books are sold. This little sucker doesn’t phone home and he’ll do very bad things with Reese’s Pieces if you let him.
Jack and I jaw about The Dover Demon in the latest episode of Monster Men, as well as some great horror movies you should add to your to-watch list for #Horrortober. Oh yeah, it’s that time again!
The Montauk Monster Coming To A Museum Near You!
I know I’ve said in earlier posts that my book, THE MONTAUK MONSTER, is on display at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. This is the museum created and curated by Loren Coleman. I haven’t been able to get there since it was put in the display, but thanks to Asher Ellis, I now have photographic proof! Kind of like what we have of the creature itself. Thank you so much Asher for taking the pictures and sharing. I’ll be at the museum this summer and maybe again in the fall with copies of my next cryptid book, THE DOVER DEMON, in hand. Now I can retire early and happy.
And a closer shot…
Cover Reveal for THE DOVER DEMON
Yes, I’m diving back into the cryptid pool this September, this time training my sights on The Dover Demon, a bizarre creature spotted in a small Massachusetts town in the late 70s. The cover art was done by Kelly Martin and she knocked it out of the park. Pretty damn creepy.
I’d heard a little bit about this alien-looking creature, but didn’t get a true education on the legend until I met Loren Coleman on a trip to his International Cryptozoology Museum. In fact, the book is dedicated to Loren, who urged me to make the demon the star of my next show. And let me tell you right here, there’s more to this story, both the true accounts and my twisted take on them, than what you may think looking at the cover. This little cryptid defies classification. Gray aliens can kiss this beastie’s ass.
So, what’s it all about Alfie?
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, their lives forever changed. Decades later, the town of Dover is 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 more than they could have believed, and deadly. These creatures are not alone, and their desires cannot be stopped. Can Sam and his reunited friends battle a race of creatures so powerful, so sinister, that human history has been shaped by their secretive presence?
I know we have a whole summer between now and its release, but I had to share this cover. And if you’re in the Portland, Maine area on vacation, stop by the Cryptozoology Museum to check out the Dover Demon display. I promise, there will be no probing.
If You Love #Bigfoot, Please Support The International Cryptozoology Museum
It’s the heart of winter here in the north east, judging by the snow and preponderance of heavy jackets and wool hats. One of my favorite places in the world is the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. Let me tell you about Maine in winter. It’s cold. I mean spit freezing before it hits the floor kind of cold. Portland is right by the Atlantic Ocean. Brrrrr.
Needless to say, Portland is not a big tourist destination in January and February. Sure, plenty of interior parts of Maine get a ton of visitors because of all the skiing. In Portland, there are no slopes. Just cool joints to eat and frozen water.
The Cryptozoology Museum is owned and operated by Loren Coleman, the man I call the godfather of modern cryptozoology. I wrote an article about meeting him at the museum in the summer of 2013 that you can read by clicking here. If you’re a fan of Bigfoot, The Jersey Devil, Mothman, sea serpents, The Dover Demon and a host of other strange and unusual beasties, this place was designed just for you.
Winter months are lean months in Portland, which is why Loren needs your support. Please visit their website and either make a donation, in any amount, or purchase something from their gift shop. Every dollar goes to keep the museum running. There is no other place like it on earth. I went and bought a Bigfoot action figure and signed copy of Fate Magazine today. This way, Loren and I are both happy.
Squatch above soon to be on the Monster Men set!
A Montauk Monster Video Review, New Project & Next Summer’s Thriller
I’ve now seen the coolest review of THE MONTAUK MONSTER. I want to give a big shout out – and thank you – to Erik Smith and his Low Budget Review Show (love the name!). I have to say, I think he said nicer things about the book and me than my own mother. If you haven’t picked up the book yet, I think Erik can give you the final push to grab one at your local bookstore or online.
After taking a summer break from writing, I’m gearing up to start my next book. I wanted to go back into the world of monsters and cryptids, so I figured who better to ask for a creature to unleash on my readers than world famous cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman. I have to say, he gave me a great one to tackle. I’m going way beyond Bigfoot and Montauk Monsters this time around. Get ready to meet a monster you may not have heard of before, but will never forget when all is said and done.
Pinnacle is planning to release my next summer paperback in July, 2015. It’s called TORTURES OF THE DAMNED. Set in a New York suburb right at the moment when the world as we know it ends for good, TORTURES follows an ordinary family thrust into extraordinary circumstances. It’s 100% zombie free and not your typical post-apocalyptic nightmare. If it gives you heart palpitations, I’ve done my job.
OK, that’s all the news fit to print for now. I’m going back to my first movie marathon of the summer. So far, I re-watched Dark Skies (I’m a sucker for alien flicks and this is a favorite), Alien Abduction (pretty damn good), The Quiet Ones (better than I thought it would be but nothing to crow about), Thor 2 (dig it), and finally watching Arrow (promising after 5 episodes). The Green Arrow/Green Lantern comics in the 70s and 80s were always a favorite team-up of mine. And even though I’m a Marvel guy, I’m oddly psyched for The Flash this fall.
Oh, and I have officially given up on The Strain. Damn, I really wanted to like it.
Hunter Shea 