Skunk Ape Semester

Just when you finished Big, by Lloyd Pye, along comes another exciting new ebook Skunk Ape Semester

This story revolves around young Jeremy Fishleder, a zoology professor whose childhood run-in with Florida's "skunk ape" has driven his lifelong pursuit of Bigfoot and other such animals. Prompted by a health scare, he goes on sabbatical and, along with three students, travels the country seeking out the unknown. From Willow Creek, CA to Lake Champlain and beyond, theirs is an eclectic journey, filled with strange characters and even stranger possibilities! I can't wait to read this story since I have visited all of the places author Mike Robinson mentions in his book. Has he been following me?

Skunk Ape Semester embraces part X-Files, part On the Road, and part Forteana textbook, it establishes an introductory gateway for the skeptical layperson to learn of and appreciate the legitimacy of the field and the dedication of its researchers -- not to mention the truly odd things that happen out there.

Author Mike Robinson was partially inspired by his own Fortean journeys several years ago, including an experience with Bigfoot vocalization.

Skunk Ape Semester currently is an eBook, available for Kindle, for only $3.99 with a print edition to debut in a few months.
Here is an excerpt from the book to get you started!
~The tapping began one heavy July evening, almost two months after my eleventh birthday and about a year before we moved out of Florida.
I first heard it in the bathroom and assumed, given our house’s history, that it was another bout of plumbing indigestion. Likely sink water gurgling through. Or the shower dripping. But in consciously stopping to listen there was no mistaking the metallic thunk of the drainage pipe being struck in the sideyard. Glancing out the window solved nothing; I didn’t really expect it to. Encompassed by an abundant froth of soupy greenery, the woods at night was one big apocalyptic shadow.

As a child, I was not exactly gifted (or burdened) with an overstock of imagination, and so I let the noise be, my developing science-mind assuming it nothing but rocks in the gutter or some rambunctious bugs or animals.

But it seemed to grow louder. Bigger. I heard it from several different areas and always at night, usually late – one time it even woke me up. There was nothing predictable about it; I think it happened arbitrarily four or five times in the span of a few weeks, and it never lasted very long. After the first two or so incidents my parents took notice and they began to think, as I did, that someone was throwing rocks at the house, using the cover of darkness to conceal best they could their launching point. Thankfully none of the ammunition struck a window.