Introducing “Pack”

01 Sep Introducing “Pack”

My second novel comes out in a few months. Here’s the cover!

I am biased, obviously, but the best adjective I can come up for it is badass. It could sit on a VHS horror movie shelf at some mom and pop video store in the late 1980s. It could hang with all the horror covers at your local book store. It gets better the more I look at it. I love it and hope you do too.

But, I hear you asking, what’s the book about? Here’s the catalog copy:

From the author of FantasticLand comes a supernatural thriller set in a sleepy Nebraska town that mixes the novels of Ann Rice and the pulpy, bloody works of Donald Ray Pollock.

Cherry, Nebraska, population 312, is just off the highway between the sticks and the boonies. It’s where Dave Rhodes and his friends have lived all their lives. They own businesses, raise families, pay taxes, deal with odd neighbors and, once or twice a month just like their fathers before them—transform into wolves. It’s not a bad life, but when one of the group members goes astray, it sets in motion a series of events that will threaten to destroy the delicate balance that has kept Dave and his clan off the radar. Between a son getting ready for his first transformation—called The Scratch—a wife with sordid secrets, a new sheriff who knows nothing of the creatures in his midst, and a mysterious man in a bow tie with a shady agenda, the middle of nowhere is about to get very dangerous. 

Interspersed with historical documents and newspaper clippings, and court documents that reveal the past of Cherry, Nebraska, a past informed by spirits, the devil, and crooked cops. In the vein of Donald Ray Pollock and Glen Duncan, Pack is at its heart is the story of family’s survival in an unforgiving world. Mike Bockoven’s second novel moves at breakneck speed with prose that hits like an injection of battery acid. Raw, real, and funny, Pack exposes the horror and tenderness that festers in the forgotten corners of the American Dream.

So, that’s what I’ve been working on. The book comes out in March or possibly later. I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it. I appreciate your support so, so much.

-Mike