Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: FantasticLand
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.mikebockoven.com/
CITY: Grand Island
STATE: NE
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Sarah; children: Emaline, Tessa.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and marketing executive. Grand Island Independent, NE, reporter, 2000-07; Stuhr Museum, Grand Island, NE, marketing manager, 2007–. Has appeared in community theatre productions.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Mike Bockoven is a writer and marketing executive based in Grand Island, NE. He worked as a reporter at the Grand Island Independent for seven years before joining the Stuhr Museum in 2007. Bockoven serves as the Stuhr Museum’s marketing manager. He has performed in community theatre productions for plays, including Spamalot.
In 2016, Bockoven released his first book, FantasticLand. The title refers to the fictional amusement park in North Florida where the action in the book takes place. The volume is comprised of a journalist’s interviews with witnesses to a horrific event that occurred at FantasticLand. The interviewees recall hearing about Hurricane Sadie, a violent and powerful storm that headed straight for the theme park. Park managers scramble to evacuate visitors, as the storm approaches. Meanwhile, employees of the park are asked to stay in order to keep watch over it. Hurricane Sadie does even more damage than expected, leaving FantasticLand cut off from contact with the outside world for over a month. Luckily, they are able to survive on water and food that was on the premises to supply the park’s restaurants. However, as time passes, supplies dwindle, and tensions between the employees rise. They break into groups based on the area of the park where they work. Those who work in the Pirate Cove area band together, calling themselves the Pirates. The Deadpools are from the area of the park devoted to superheroes. The people who work in the tunnels below the park are called the Mole Men, while the Shopgirls group is comprised of the people who work in the retail stores. The Pirates emerge as the most powerful group, in part because of their mentally unstable leader, Brock Hockney. Eventually, the situation becomes so violent that members of the groups are killed.
In an interview with Jeff Korbelik, contributor to the Lincoln Journal Star Online, Bockoven discussed the things that inspired the story in FantasticLand. He explained that he first became interested in writing a story set in a theme park after traveling with his wife and two daughters to one of the Disney amusement parks. He told Korbelik: “I had a great time. … I respect the Disney corporation. It was the trip you want to take your kids on in every way, shape or form. But when I got home, the idea kind of got fixed in my head.” Bockoven explained to Korbelik that hearing a song by The Killigans, a band from Lincoln, Nebraska, helped him to solidify his storyline. Of the song, he stated: “It’s a sea shanty sort of thing. … The next thing I know I’ve kind of got this idea of pirates running amok in a theme park–like the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ breaking the bonds of their ride and spilling over into other parts of the park.” In the same interview with Korbelik, Bockoven revealed that a podcast for writers helped motivate him to harness small bits of free time, during which he would work on the novel. He told Korbelik: “I … would write while my kids were in piano lessons or gymnastics.”
Critics offered mixed assessments of FantasticLand. A Publishers Weekly contributor described the volume as “a polemic against social media” that featured “cookie-cutter narrative voices and characters who are generally uninteresting and unlikable.” Kristin Centorcelli, reviewer in Booklist, suggested: “The premise here is an intriguing one.” Writing on the Hellnotes Web site, William Grabowski commented: “Bockoven’s narrative tension, deep mining of psychological triggers and clinical prose.” Grabowski added: “Obviously, the author is someone who’s given serious thought to the effect–good and ill–’social’ media has on us all, particularly those born after 1990.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2016, Kristin Centorcelli, review of FantasticLand, p. 35.
Publishers Weekly, August 29, 2016, review of FantasticLand, p. 69.
ONLINE
Hellnotes, http://hellnotes.com/ (November 2, 2016), William Grabowski, review of FantasticLand.
Lincoln Journal Star Online (NE), http://journalstar.com/ (October 8, 2016), Jeff Korbelik, author interview.
Mike Bockoven Home Page, http://www.mikebockoven.com/ (May 30, 2017).
SciFi and Scary, http://www.scifiandscary.com/ (May 3, 2017), review of FantasticLand.*
Mike Bockoven writes nasty little thriller/horror novels while his kids are in gymnastics class and piano lessons.
He lives in Grand Island, Nebraska and loves it. His first book, “FantasticLand”, comes out in October of 2016 through Skyhorse Publishing. His second book, “Pack” is currently being written in gyms, his car and late nights when time and constitution allows.
He has a wife, Sarah, and two kids, Emaline and Tessa. He really appreciates you reading this and won’t waste any more of your time. You can get hold of him at *protected email*.
Mike Bockoven writes thrillers, horror and other stories while his kids are in gymnastics class or at piano lessons. He lives with his wife, Sarah, two daughters, Emaline and Tessa, and an exceptionally dumb wiener dog named Sherlock.
You can find out more at his website, mikebockoven.com, on Facebook (facebook.com/Bockovenbooks) and on Twitter @mikebockoven. He lives in Grand Island, Nebraska.
QUOTED: "I had a great time. ... I respect the Disney corporation. It was the trip you want to take your kids on in every way, shape or form. But when I got home, the idea kind of got fixed in my head."
"It’s a sea shanty sort of thing. ... The next thing I know I’ve kind of got this idea of pirates running amok in a theme park -- like the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ breaking the bonds of their ride and spilling over into other parts of the park."
"I ... would write while my kids were in piano lessons or gymnastics."
Grand Island author publishes first horror novel
JEFF KORBELIK Lincoln Journal Star Oct 8, 2016 (0)
When Mike Bockoven auditioned for the musical “Spamalot” in Grand Island, he brought his guitar and sang the Jonathan Coulton song “Re: Your Brains.”
Coulton is an American singer-songwriter known for his songs about geek culture. “Re: Your Brains,” for instance, is about office zombies.
“Heya Tom, it's Bob from the office down the hall
It's good to see you buddy, how've you been?
Things have been OK for me except that I'm a zombie now
I really wish you'd let us in …”
“What’s fun about this song is it doesn’t become weird right away,” Bockoven said in a phone interview, recalling the late spring 2013 audition. “It starts with office speak before it evolves into horror.”
So when “Spamalot” director Ron Jelinek learned Bockoven, whom he cast as Sir Robin in the Monty Python musical, had written a horror novel, well, it didn’t really surprise him.
“No, not at all,” Jelinek said. “It seemed pretty much in line with his character.”
On Tuesday, just in time for Halloween, Skyhorse Publishing will release Bockoven’s debut novel “Fantasticland.” The thriller will be available online through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
The publisher calls it a combination of “Lord of the Flies” and “Battle Royale.” You can throw in a pinch of the 1979 cult film “The Warriors” for good measure, too.
When a hurricane ravages the Florida coast, the Fantasticland theme park becomes isolated. The high school- and college-age employees left behind to take care of the park during the storm find themselves cut off from the world, with no idea of when or if help is coming.
When authorities rescue them five weeks later, they encounter a horrific scene. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks and shares. In the absence of technology, the inhabitants had created a new, brutal social network.
Presented as a fact-finding investigation through a series of first-person interviews, “Fantasticland” pieces together the grisly series of events.
Bockoven, marketing manager at Stuhr Museum in Grand Island, said “Fantasticland” resulted from a family vacation to a Disney theme park.
“I had a great time,” he said. “I respect the Disney corporation. It was the trip you want to take your kids on in every way, shape or form. But when I got home, the idea kind of got fixed in my head.”
As did “Devil in the Deep Blue Sea,” a song by the Lincoln rock band The Killigans that Bockoven enjoys listening to while running on his treadmill.
“It’s a sea shanty sort of thing,” he said about the song. “The next thing I know I’ve kind of got this idea of pirates running amok in a theme park -- like the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ breaking the bonds of their ride and spilling over into other parts of the park.”
The leader of the pirates, a 20-something named Brock Hockney, proves to be the most disturbing in a novel filled with unseemly characters.
“Throw in a little bit of Hannibal Lecter and with a little bit of the bullies that beat you up in high school, add a little dash of egotism and cruelty and then add in the idea of what would happen to that sort of person if nobody was looking and what you end up getting is Brock Hockney,” Bockoven said.
Before joining the museum staff in 2007, Bockoven spent seven years as a reporter at the Grand Island Independent, covering entertainment and nonprofit organizations.
“Mike always looked for the scene (in his reporting),” said R.J. Post, Independent assistant managing editor. “He was anecdotal, which lent itself well to this book.”
Bockoven, who’s married (his wife, Sarah, also is a former Independent reporter) and a father to two girls, ages 13 and 8, said he always wanted to write creatively, “which means lots of starts and stops and lots of first chapters,” he said. “I just never completed anything.”
Until “Fantasticland,” which he began writing in early 2014.
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“I think what happened was I had two things come together at the same time,” he said. “The first was what I thought was a good idea, and the other was a podcast that I listened to that gave me a lot of really good advice.”
“Writing Excuses” is a podcast featuring 15-minute long episodes “because you’re in a hurry and we’re not that smart.” Bockoven learned that, to be successful, he had to carve out time to write and guard it.
“What I did, while I was running my kids around, I grabbed the iPad,” he said. “I bought a cheap little keyboard for it, and would write while my kids were in piano lessons or gymnastics or whatever it was. Basically, I would have two hours a week, and it started to snowball. I thought ‘Hey, this actually could work.’”
He’s had a longtime interest in the horror genre.
“Let’s put it this way, I’ve got a good collection of Stephen King novels and B movies in my basement,” he said.
Once he finished “Fantasticland,” and started garnering positive feedback from friends and family, he sent out query letters to agents -- five a week for three months.
“I got one yes, 20 no’s and 30 to 40 of not hearing back,” he said.
His agent secured him the book deal with Skyhorse. He spent nine months in the editing process, which included a rewrite to add a social media aspect to his story.
“I thought that made it so much better,” he said.
Now, he’ll wait for reaction to his novel and see if it leads to another. He’s already written another and has ideas for two more, one in the horror genre and another that’s “basically me trying to be Nick Hornby.”
“My goal is to have four or five books on the bookshelf that I wrote,” he said. “That would be a pretty awesome thing to look at when you’re 60 years old.”
QUOTED: "The premise here is an intriguing one."
Fantasticland
Kristin Centorcelli
113.3 (Oct. 1, 2016): p35.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Fantasticland.
By Mike Bockoven.
Oct. 2016. 272p. Skyhorse, $24.99 (97815107094471; ebook (9781510709461).
The premise here is an intriguing one: the unprecedented Hurricane Sadie demolishes a Florida coast, and although most of the visitors to the amusement park Fantasticland are evacuated, many employees are left behind to hold down the fort and wait for rescue. After all, there's plenty of food and water, but after being stranded for more than a month, it's obvious that all the supplies in the world wouldn't really matter in the end. Almost immediately, the employees separate into "tribes"--the most vicious, the Pirates, led by psychopath Brock Hockney. Soon after Brock mercy kills a teen who's fallen from a great height, the door is open for more brazen attacks, driven mostly by the Pirates. However, the other groups start to adapt, and the violence only escalates. The story is told through a series of interviews conducted by a journalist hoping to find meaning in the terrible event, and the juxtaposition of such senseless violence against the backdrop of what should be a place of joy makes this exploration of the evil that lives in us all that much more terrifying.--Kristin Centorcelli
Centorcelli, Kristin
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Centorcelli, Kristin. "Fantasticland." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 35. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467148027&it=r&asid=620eb5d01f9bc0372489261973952a71. Accessed 3 May 2017.
QUOTED: "a polemic against social media"
"cookie-cutter narrative voices and characters who are generally uninteresting and unlikable."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A467148027
FantasticLand
263.35 (Aug. 29, 2016): p69.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
FantasticLand
Mike Bockhoven. Skyhorse, $24.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-5107-0944-7
Bockoven's first novel, a high-concept riff on The Lord of the Flies and The Warriors, has plenty of gonzo potential but degenerates into a polemic against social media and millennials. When North Florida's FantasticLand theme park is cut off thanks to a storm, the workers in the various areas, such as Pirate Cove and World's Circus, have a decent amount of supplies at first, but each area soon devolves into its own faction (with names that include the Deadpools for the folks from the superhero area, Mole Men for maintenance workers in the tunnels, and Shopgirls for the retail employees), and things get bloody extremely quickly. Told in the format of a series of interviews conducted by a reporter, each narrative slowly introduces the core characters, most notably Pirate Cove employee Brock Hockney and Sam Garliek, the manager on duty at the time who goes power-mad when the disaster strikes. Cookie-cutter narrative voices and characters who are generally uninteresting and unlikable make for a ride that's less than thrilling. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"FantasticLand." Publishers Weekly, 29 Aug. 2016, p. 69+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462236437&it=r&asid=a4b93077b710001e9e24a583a1de745b. Accessed 3 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462236437
QUOTED: "Bockoven’s narrative tension, deep mining of psychological triggers and clinical prose."
"Obviously, the author is someone who’s given serious thought to the effect–good and ill–'social' media has on us all, particularly those born after 1990."
FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven – Book Review
by William Grabowski | Nov 2, 2016 | Book Reviews, Hellnotes Reviews | 0 comments
thumbnail_fantasticlandFantasticLand
Mike Bockoven
Skyhorse Publishing
October 2016
Reviewed by William Grabowski
Prior to receiving his debut novel, I’d not heard of Mike Bockoven. Having read FantasticLand, I’ll not forget the name.
As someone who reads and reviews a lot of books, I’ve learned that press releases, synopses, back-cover copy and the like are not reliable indicators of quality. Usually—when promotional materials originate with mid-size to large publishers—the author has no hand in the matter. Hit-or-miss seems to be the rule. With FantasticLand described as “…Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale…” I took a deep breath, sighed, and began reading.
Some 264 pages later, I found I had run out of text.
FantasticLand chronicles 35 days of hell on Earth in the eponymous theme park, a Disneyesque icon opened in 1970s Florida. Admin policy forbids employees, most of whom are twenty-somethings, from carrying electronic devices. When Hurricane Sadie hits the Daytona Beach area, storm surge isolating the park, the workers project their inner fantasies and fright onto outer darkness.
At this point, the author might have opted to tell the story from some remove—like third-person POV. Given Bockoven’s narrative tension, deep mining of psychological triggers and clinical prose, the novel might very well have succeeded. But we aren’t granted that relative comfort, for FantasticLand gives us the complete blow-by-blow via journalist Adam Jakes, whose fact-finding interviews with the survivors immerse us into personal perspectives, whether we like that or not. This collage-like weave provides camera-eye urgency—and spares us nothing.
What most drew me in, beyond the promise of a well-told story, was a compulsion to see what this Bockoven guy was made of. Was he intelligent? A pulp-meister offering Z-movie fluff in book format? Since I already leaked my answer, all you need do is trust it.
Obviously, the author is someone who’s given serious thought to the effect—good and ill—“social” media has on us all, particularly those born after 1990. What happens when people in this age group are cut off from accessing the internet and expressing cyber-selves even partly at odds with who they really are? In the FantasticLand park itself, already a surreal mix of historical and pop-cultural structures, characters, and imagery, then mostly flooded and empty under rainy skies, what happens when less-than-fully-formed identities are forced to endure a month with no external contact?
For Review: FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven
fantasticlandTitle: FantasticLand
Author: Mike Bockoven
Genre: Horror
Pages: 272
Available: 10/18/2016-12/18/2016
Readability: Meets Standard
PLEASE NOTE: Epub not available.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!” But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?
Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?
FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.