#BadMoonRising Friday Night Massacre by Michael Patrick Hicks #horror #occult

On By Teri PolenIn Bad Moon Rising

Today’s author has been featured most, if not every year at BMR. I’m a little behind on his books, but if you’re a horror fan, you’ve come to the right place – he has plenty of titles to choose from. In his neck of the woods, there’s certainly no shortage of urban legends. An annual parade is even held in honor of one of them. Welcome Michael Patrick Hicks!

Which urban legend scares you most?

Here in Michigan we have some nicely freaky urban legends, and even hold an annual parade for Nain Rouge! We have our own version of Melon Heads, those wonderfully deformed and possibly incestuous humanoids that might have escaped from an insane asylum and have turned cannibal while living in the woods. But the one that gets me is our local version of basically a sasquatch called the Michigan Dogman, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s either a mutant that has the body of a human with the head of a dog, or a very large bipedal canine. And like the sasquatch, there’s (supposedly, anyway) all kinds of eyewitness reports of this creature going back to the 1800s. As for why this scares me the most? Well, first of all, I’m no fan of the woods, where this sucker would most likely be found, so imagine you’re out camping and this thing’s hungry and sniffing around. I’m also not really fond of large dogs and this sucker is reported pretty damn big, about the size of a gorilla or a bear, so… that’s a big ol’ nope for me.

Would you rather dunk for apples or carve a Jack o’ lantern?

Carve! Dunking for apples is gross! Unless you’re the first person to go and are able to get your apple, you may as well be sticking your head in sewage. And in the midst of a pandemic, with flu season on the way, and everybody catching colds?! No thank you. I’d much rather stab a pumpkin.

Candy apple or candy corn?

Oh, candy corn. 100%. I know they have a bad rap, but people are just haters. Those little suckers are pure sugar, which is what makes them tasty. When I was a kid I would eat them by the layer, starting from the bottom because the white tip was my favorite part. I may even still do that as an adult, somehow still convinced that the layers have different flavors…

Would you and your main character get along?

For the most part, I think so. At least I’d like to think so! They might disagree, depending on which book we’re drawing from. And god, how awkward would that be to not even be able to get along with somebody I made up?

If you decided to write a spinoff of a side character, who would you choose?

Oooh, good question. Technically, I already did when I wrote my sci-fi novel, Emergence. Where Convergence focused on a memory thief, the sequel put his daughter, Mesa, in the central role. In my cosmic horror Salem Hawley series, there’s a character that appears in Book Two, Borne of the Deep, by name of LeMarché that could conceivably have the most spinoff potential. Hmmmm….

Which book have you read more than once?

Stephen King’s IT is one of the rare handful of titles I’ve read more than once. I’m not a big re-reader, but it was also the first audiobook I ever listened to, many years after having read a hardcover copy 20-some years prior. I expect some will argue that listening to an audiobook isn’t the same as reading, but… I don’t really care, and I’ve decided it counts as a reread, so there! 😛

Night of the Demons meets Olympus Has Fallen in this novel of White House horror from “one of the supreme rulers of delivering unsettling, gore-filled bursts of violence” (Steve Stred, author of Ritual).

After succumbing to a deadly virus and incurring the wrath of voters in the 2020 election, the President of the United States makes a deathbed deal with the devil.

Imbued with supernatural power, President Tyler Coleridge refuses to surrender office after being defeated by his rival candidate and rings in the New Year with a White House bloodbath.

After turning against the press and his own Secret Service detail in a violent display of savagery, it’s up to the lone survivor of Coleridge’s protective detail, Mike Hutchinson, to put a stop to the U.S. president’s reign of madness before the nation is utterly crippled.

Inspired by recent events, Friday Night Massacre is a splatterpunk horror action novel in the grindhouse fashion, with a dash of comic book sensibility.

Friday Night Massacre contains graphic content that may be upsetting to some and is recommended for readers of extreme horror.

Purchase Link

Available in print, Kindle ebook, and audiobook

Purchase: http://mybook.to/FridayNightMassacre

ABOUT MICHAEL PATRICK HICKS

Michael Patrick Hicks is the author of several horror books, including the Salem Hawley series and Friday Night Massacre. His stories have appeared in more than a dozen publications from Crystal Lake Publishing, Death’s Head Press, Off Limits Press, and Silver Shamrock Publishing, among others. His debut novel, Convergence, was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Finalist in science fiction. He also co-hosts Staring Into The Abyss, a weekly podcast focused on all things horror, and is a member of the Horror Writers Association.

Michael lives in Michigan with his wife and two children. In between compulsively buying books and adding titles that he does not have time for to his Netflix queue, he is hard at work on his next story.

Social Media

Website: http://www.michaelpatrickhicks.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mikeh5856

Staring Into the Abyss Podcast: https://staringintotheabyss.libsyn.com/

41 thoughts on “#BadMoonRising Friday Night Massacre by Michael Patrick Hicks #horror #occult”

  2. Mike, I’m with you on carving rather than gross dunking. And I like candy corn, too. But you’re eating them incorrectly. They’re made to be consumed like a slice of pizza! You can’t start at the wide end. That’s just wrong. (Kidding. Enjoy them however you’d like. It’s nice to find someone who even admits to liking those tasty triangles.) Your work sounds awesome. Wishing you all the best.

    Teri, as always, thanks for hosting.

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  3. I loved hearing about all those urban legends. I was familiar with the Melon Heads but not the Dogman. Very cool!

    I always ate candy corn in sections too, but I started at the top. Like Mike, I was convinced each section had to have a hint of a different flavor.

    Thanks for another great interview, Teri, and all the best to Mike with his book!

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  4. Victoria Zigler

    I can see why you’d be especially scared of the dogman legend, particularly with your fear of large dogs to start with. And I’m totally with you on how gross it is for everyone but the first person who bobs for apples.

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  6. Oh, Michael, I agree with you about the dogman. Wowzer! Stay out of the woods! I had to laugh at how you eat a candy corn, because that is exactly how I eat them, knowing the flavor will not change with the color. 🙂 Great interview! Thanks, Teri!

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  9. Great post, Teri and Michael! I, however, love the woods, no matter if they’re down here in swampy ol’ Florida, or up in the nippier regions, like Michigan. I’m not sure I’d love them quite as much if Dogman or Sasquatch showed up, but then, could they be much worse than hungry alligators hiding along the shoreline of a wooded pond?

    And I had to laugh at the candy corn comments. I, too, used to eat them from the bottom up, one color at a time, until I got to be about 12 or so and realized they pretty much had no flavor at all. I immediately switched to peanut butter cups and Snickers bars.

    Friday Night Massacre looks pretty much irresistible to me. Nice and shivery! Gonna head over to Amazon shortly and check it out. (It’s a darn good thing eBooks don’t weigh anything, or I’d be totally unable to lift my Kindle!)

    Super post! 😊👍

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  10. Pingback: #BadMoonRising – Post 27 Featuring Michael Patrick Hicks | The Write Stuff

  13. I wouldn’t want to meet up with the Michigan Dogman either, Michael. I agree about candy corn. It gets a bad rap, but I like it. What you said about the white part tasting better is how I feel about red M&Ms. They’re better than the other colors.

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  14. I read the answer to the first question and had to run over to the web and look up Nain Rouge and the Dogman. There are photos of the dogman! Lol. And the comment, “And god, how awkward would that be to not even be able to get along with somebody I made up?” made me laugh. I think we all do that. 🙂 Great interview, Teri and Michael, and the book sounds great. 🙂

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  17. Michael, I’m not an It fan but I do reread some favorite novels. I think audio books count as rereads perfectly well. It’s the experience of the story that matters and sometimes we want to experience that adventure again and again. Listening to audio or even watching the movie can be very satisfying. I also get more from a second read or even a third read of a novel. Somehow we can go deeper into the familiarity.

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  19. I have read MPH stories and he is great! I, too, used to eat the candy corns by layer believing they had different flavors. I have never been to Michigan but it sounds like the scariest place on earth between the cryptids and the shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. Lots ot terror to fuel your awesome stories!

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